If there's one thing I can say about the past year, it's that Starla and I have certainly been blessed. I went from a dead-end, unappreciative (and under-paid) job to one of fulfillment at Midland County. After six months of employment, I was promoted. Three months later, our first son, Hayden, was born. Then a previous employer offered me a programming job in the private sector (something I always wanted) about two months later (and completely out of the blue); allowing Starla to become a stay-at-home mom (something she always wanted to do).

Leaving the County was a bittersweet experience. I worked for a great boss, the work environment was fun and never dull, the people were fun to work with, and I enjoyed going into work everyday. Since I'm finally able to blog easily (the past had me using MS SQL Management Studio to edit fields... ugh), I wanted to say thank you to you all.

My new job keeps me pretty busy, but I'm enjoying it. I spend most of my day in my office coding (we're a .NET shop), reading, and planning. I've learned quite a few things that I'll carry over to my site's back-end (PDF generation for DHTML widget references for one). I've even gotten to work on a new version of XWebMenu (it's a-comin'!).

God certainly has been good to us, and I know I can speak for Starla when I say that we thank him every day for the blessings he's bestowed on us.