However, it'll be worth it especially as on Tuesday we both got the first glimpse of our baby to be during a scan at hospital. An amazing moment for both of us, especially as it confirmed that the baby's heart was beating fine and confirmed our due date of mid December

I'm still suffering with a lot of headaches and lack of sleep, although I'm starting to get used to them a bit more now, but it does mean that most of my time is either spent in bed nursing the pain or getting work done. Hopefully, on average, this should only last another week or two and then I'll be into my second trimester and apparently have a new lease of energy, and be able to get on with enjoying being pregnant… I'm counting the days!

So a few plans for this site may have to take a back seat for a while now as I need to spend any computer time working, earning and saving as much as possible and teaching David some PHP as he'll be running the company at first, once the baby comes. However I will try to get some non personal posts up here when I can, especially with WordPress 3.0's release just around the corner. RC2 is already out so it's worth having a play with to get ready for the final version

It's been a mad rollercoaster of a year from setting up as a limited company, getting engaged, losing a good friend, moving to a much better house, the birth of my nephew, getting married, making new friends, and now preparing for Christmas in our new home. So many highs but one major low.

I've also been a bit lost as to how to proceed with this site. It's gone through quite a few ideas and changes of subject content, from a personal blog with tech posts, to a business and tech blog, back to personal and tech with a bit of business and money making thrown in. My posting has slowed down a lot, at first due to writing twice a week for Blogging Tips, but I took a leave of writing for there over 6 months ago.

I feel like I've exhausted the subject of WordPress from the technical point of view, but maybe not from real world example point of view. A lot of what I write on WordPress and PHP could easily be found on hundreds of other blogs and sites. Plus I've not been keeping up with other blogs, my feedreader wonders who I am if I ever go there!

So over Christmas I need to work out what to do. I'm not going to drop the site but I need to get some focus back, possibly get my new design implemented (it's on paper, that's about it!) and kick start blogging again. I think it'll start to cover a broader range of topics, and as my photo blog just gets no attention from me at all, I'll probably bring my photo posts back here too.

Got lots to work out for the new year! There's a few things I can't really go into just now but January and the rest of 2010 is looking good Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and have a happy new year

Normal service should resume soon

From a personal point of view I've been window shopping online and working out everything I need for my wedding which is now in 10 weeks time! It's quite fun, especially as I enjoy shopping!, and we're both really looking forward to the day when it finally arrives. It'll be great to see all of our family and friends, and the food sounds fantastic

Workwise we've been quite busy. I've been working a lot on a calendar availability system using jQuery and PHP to control it, update dynamically and refresh to keep the calendar updated between a number of users. It's a bit of a challenge and a lot of reading to find out how to do things and how to do them the most efficiently, however it's great fun and different from the normal websites we work on.

I've managed to get a migration script in place for my Page Menu Editor plugin for WordPress. About 6 weeks ago I discovered that the developer on the All in one SEO pack plugin had integrated my code into his plugin at the request of a number of users, which rendered mine a bit obsolete when both are running. However, there was no migration script and he'd used different option names to me, so nothing was copied over. Having both plugins on a number of sites myself, it's a pain to sit and copy it all over manually. So I've now set up a simple migration to allow users to do it themselves if they wish, so if you do use both plugins then an upgrade should be coming through soon with the new migration system.

Finally, our new venture Blog Themes Club is going well. We've added a new theme and I've been adding a number of additional page templates to all our themes to hopefully give our users more than just a basic theme. We're looking to add another new theme next month too and have plenty of ideas for themes to keep us going for a while.

It's all going well

This is very much a personal post.

We've been wanting to move house since Christmas 2007. This was the first winter in our new house and we discovered that it was majorly prone to damp. Mould covering all the outside walls, behind any furniture by an outside wall, creeping into the wardrobes, getting onto shoes etc. It was horrible, not to mention not good for either of our health. The summer wasn't as bad, however a lack of space was getting to us too, but due to the amount of work I had we just put up with the house until March, when we decided we wanted to move.

After looking around we finally found somewhere we liked, somewhere big enough and affordable, and put out application in, in early June. The application was probably more stressful to deal with than the actual moving house. Firstly our payslips are brand new for the company and we've paid ourselves as little as possible to allow the company to actually build some profit to help pay for things or help if/when we have a not so good month of income, so our payslips didn't reflect our true earnings. So we also offered our tax returns from last year (2008-09) which were more than appropriate, however the company doing the credit check on us didn't have a clue about self assessments and continually asked us to supply information that we don't get and therefore couldn't supply. Then finally they seemed to accept the tax returns and then delayed things further with speaking to our current Landlord. We actually found out the day we had to hand our notice in to him that we had been accepted, meaning our written notice was actually a day late. So finally getting accepted on 18th June meant we could relax a little and begin to pack.

A week later we were due down at my parents as we were off to a party for my ex-boss and one of our clients, a party on a boat on the river Thames. However, on the Friday evening we found out that a good friend of ours, Khalid who owned Pixelcraze, had passed away at the age of 25. He'd had major surgery two weeks before, but we'd all relaxed as he was back home recovering well. Finding this out was probably the biggest shock I've had that I can remember. Khalid was an amazing and generous person, a fantastic PHP programmer, the person I would turn to when I got stuck, and just a great friend to chat with about photography, gardening and business. My heart goes out to his young wife and one year old daughter

Naturally we cancelled on going to the party, especially as I'd been awake all night, shell shocked. On the Sunday we drove home via my brother's as he and his girlfriend had just had a baby boy, my first nephew. We got to meet him at 13 days old, probably the youngest baby I've ever been in the presence of. It was a brief moment of happiness amongst the grief of losing of a friend. Taryan (a Welsh name) is a gorgeous little boy and I'm so chuffed for my brother and my parents with their first grandchild.

The following week was a blur. The loss of a friend, the forthcoming (minor) stress of moving house, plus the happiness of a new nephew. Trying to get as much work completed when you're really not with it isn't easy. Last week we headed to Leicester to stay with some friends, and see how their one year old was doing (walking and always with a big smile on her face), and then on Tuesday we headed further east for the funeral. It was a hard day but an overwhelming number of people attended, just goes to show how many people had been affected by Khalid's death.

We then travelled back home the same day, as my parents arrived on Wednesday to help us move. We managed to get home safely that night, but then the next day the car suddenly started to shake a great deal, really not what you need when about to move house! Luckily a garage fixed it the next day plus serviced it (as it was due), although £100 cost that we could have done without On Friday we had a van hired for the day and got everything moved to the new house, leaving us with a week to clean the old house.

So we're now in the new house and already much happier. The house itself is great. It's detached (so no more being woken up at 6am and 7am by the screaming 2 year old next door), it has a garage which is great for extra storage space, and we have a conservatory, which is where we've sat to eat meals in, although it's a little noisy when it rains. We've also got a family of baby blackbirds in the garden, funny to watch over breakfast.

We've got a bit more cleaning to do at the old house plus a bit of painting to tidy up a few areas, and then we can hand the keys back on Saturday and we should get all of our deposit back.

In the meantime Wedding plans are still going fine. I've just got a bit behind on getting the evening invites out and we need to start sorting a few more things out such as the rings.

So moving house on its own, not really too stressful, but with everything else combined in one week, well I'm glad the week is over. Now we can try to get back to a bit of normality (RIP Khalid).

I mentioned last time that David and I had merged our businesses to form a company, which starts trading on 1st April. So we've been making a few preparations for that, getting the client list in check, getting the clients added to our online accounts system – Kashflow (read my review), and also sorting out the new company site, bank account, insurance etc.

We were also planning on using WHMCS to manage all of our hosting and domain clients, along with those on support contracts, however the main reason was for the automated billing, which I then discovered Kashflow could handle, so why duplicate the work and the cost!

In our personal lives things have taken a major turn in that we got engaged a couple of weeks ago and hope to get married towards the end of the year This is obviously a bit of a distraction, and also means we need to work even harder to save up for all the costs involved!

So yes, it's even more all go here than normal!

I can't believe the christmas season is almost over! I feel like I've done nothing productive!! Well, I've had to reformat my computer and reinstall all of my software, so that has taken a little bit of time. About a month ago something happening, which I still don't have a clue what, and on the Sunday evening I shut my computer down as normal, and Monday morning it took about 25 minutes to boot up and log in. Despite my best efforts, and even increasing the RAM by 1GB (that was already planned, regardless of login speed!), nothing changed, so I've done a complete format and fresh install, and everything is running along speedily! I'm about halfway through installing software so I should be ready for work on Monday.

I also twisted my ankle pretty badly last week on Friday (Boxing Day / St Stephen's Day). I've spent most of the week with my ankle strapped up and me not being able to walk too far or do much at all. It's been a painful few days, and even now, although I can walk normally, if I twist my ankle slightly it's still very painful

I don't seem to have cleared much off my to do list over the past fortnight! The time off has flown by, which is great as we're both pretty relaxed, something I've not felt in a long time, but of course the anxiousness of pending work that I have to get done next week is weighing on my mind. However, for now I'll just put it out of my head for another day or two!

I've also decided to start creating a post for my posts that I write elsewhere, as they're usually technical or related to WordPress, and whilst I know I've got a page listing them, I'll most likely remove that once I've created a post for each post elsewhere. It's not to boost my post count, but more to ensure that even if I haven't had time to write a post on this site, then the site doesn't look too quiet, plus the posts may be of interest to regular subscribers anyway

Anyhow, I hope everyone's celebrated the new year in style and let's hope this year is a good 'un

However, for now, the dinner is cooking on the BBQ (just how it should be), and the wine is calling out to me, so have a good Christmas and New Year where ever you are

A quick wrap up of what's been happening:

WordPress 2.7 was finally released this week, and not a moment too soon. WP 2.7 is the best version yet, the admin is beautiful and the features are great.

We finally took a day off work (on an exceptionally cold but sunny day) and got to the zoo, something we'd been planning to do since October. It was all worth it when I got to see what I went for – the new lion cub. I could have just stood and watched him for hours!

Work has continued to be busy, which is obviously good from a credit crunch / recession point of view. I'm just a tad bit tired and need a break! However, come Friday I'll be stopping work (well client work) for Christmas, and certainly can't wait! Although I seem to be arranging to sort out so much stuff over Christmas that I'll probably be busier than ever!

I won a competition the other week and got a premium WordPress template for free, so I need to get around to injecting my own personality into that, plus the 2.7 code (yes another job for Christmas). So I'll be updating the design of this site soon.

Both Dave and I won a bit of cash off the BloggingTips.com forum competition, so we put our winnings together and put it towards a new Sigma 10-20mm camera lens. I've not had a chance to get any shots with it yet, however I hope to have a play next week and see what I can capture.

I've been eying up Sam's iPhone with a major amount of jealousy! Frustratingly, I've got over a year left on my current contract (yes the one that had no improvement on it whatsoever!). I'm quite tempted to take on a second contract just to get the iPhone, and use that for business, then keep my other for personal for the time being until the contract runs out. But I do keep trying to tell myself to just wait!

And I've finally got Family Ski (We Ski) for the Wii, a bit of an early christmas present off Dave. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's good fun anyway. I've only spent about half an hour on it due to lack of time, but it's quite surreal shussing down, round the trails and paths, avoiding the silly people standing having a chat on the slopes (it's just like real life!).

However, hopefully I can take a long weekend here and there next year and get up to Scotland to do the real thing

We stayed right by the bus station in Dublin which was so great for the airport bus! The only downside to the hotel was the room was overheated and on the Friday night there seemed to be a group of people, possibly from the bar next door, who decided to congregate right outside the window (we were on the first floor) until about 3.30am! However, other than that it was a nice place and just 5 minute walk from O'Connell street, one of the main streets through the centre.

However, from a combination of the heat in the room, spending a couple of hours on the top of the tour bus on Saturday and the air conditioning on the plan, I came down with a head cold and have spent the past week with my sinuses full up with cold It's pretty frustrating as I'd taken this past week off work too, to allow us to get some admin sorted out, work on some personal sites/projects and also go to the zoo, instead I've spent every day under the blanket on the couch watching boring daytime television and just faffing all day. A very unproductive week! So I'll have to grab some time next month if I can, as I've got a few projects going live this month.

Other news… I've started to write twice a week for Blogging Tips. On Sundays I continue my WordPress coding and design posts, and on Thursdays I'll be writing about basic (x)HTML and CSS. As always, all of my posts for Blogging Tips can be found on my Author Page.

Finally, this week I've done a little bit of work on this site. As you're probably already aware, I merged the two blogs on this domain into one, hopefully creating a less confusing and better resource of info for everyone I've added in a new fancy plugin called comment info tip which gives you a bit more info on each commentator on the site. If you go to one of my other posts with some comments on, and hover over the name of one of the commentators (besides mine) you'll see how many times that person has commented on the site, the last 3 posts they commented on and, if the plugin can find it, an excerpt of their last post from their site (if it's a blog and uses a standard feed address). I've also created my own logo which can be seen up top ^^. I'm not a designer, so it's nothing special, but I quite like it, and it adds a bit of colour to the header