Today was a pretty good day. We went out for smoothies and spent a little time at one of the local arcades. The boy had a good time on the carousel and all of the little toddler rides. We played a few games and won enough tickets to get him a little toy car prize. I don't have a lot of weekends left before I take off for my extended vacation, so I'm trying to make time for the family. It's unfortunate that I have to take off while my boy is at such a fun age. He loves to horseplay with me and during the day when he hears a noise outside he points to the door and asks my wife, "Papa?" I try to keep it in perspective by reminding myself that one-year deployments are a relatively new development. Past generations often went away until the war was over, and you read a lot about people leaving their homes and families to get a job and send money home. I'm still not sure how having twins halfway through my absence will work out. One baby is a crazy thing to deal with; two babies and a toddler just seems a little over the top. I hope that her support system is able to keep things going for her.

I've been considering what exactly I'm going to do while I'm overseas. I know I'm going to try painting up my Dwarf Warhammer army and I want to work toward a higher PT test score, but I'd like to do something that's new to me as well. I'm thinking about building a website, mostly just a glorified blog. The trick is that I want to learn about optimization and build it as a money-making venture. From what I've read on the subject, a blog site that is well-networked and has good content will take a year or two to really make any money. I'm hoping to make enough from it to fund my hobbies, but I've seen a great number of bloggers out there who make a living from their websites. These are generally the well-established bloggers with large readerships and regular updates, but it's something to work toward. Anyway, it's an idea I'm kicking around.