I mentioned in a post over at my Goal Keeping DBA blog that I was not planning to attend the PASS Summit this year because of family time. Yesterday, my wife and I let the cat out of the bag: we're due to have a girl in mid-October. Usually, my family goes with my for trips. SQL Rally was going to be the first in a long while where they weren't. Then I got sick and didn't get to go. But since they usually go with me, we're not doing any heavy traveling after August (no plans yet past SQL Saturday #132 - Pensacola, which I'll be at next week) for obvious reasons. I will still look at hitting some nearby groups. It's been a while since I've been in Charlotte, NC, or Greenville, SC, so I need to catch up with those organizers.

For those keeping score, that means the balance of power in the house will shift. Our first two children are boys. Our next two are girls. So this means girls will finally outnumber the boys in the house. One of my Citadel classmates said, "Hey, this isn't a competition!" Oh, but it is. Not because of me or my wife. No, it's a competition because of my oldest daughter. She is, far and away, the most competitive person in the house. She's ecstatic because now the numbers have shifted in her favor. This should prove interesting.

So why the Voltron picture? Because that will make five children, another friend pictured one of them saying, "And I'll form the head!" That would be my oldest daughter. She may be a girlie girl who is into princesses and fairies (and it's not unusual to see her wearing butterfly wings as a result), but she loves battle. She plays the battle video games with her brother, she takes karate (as well as ballet, lest we forget the girlie girl side), and she's a menace when the swords are broken out. The boys have adopted a rope-a-dope type of defense when they fight swords with her not so much because they are afraid of hurting her, but if they don't go full defense, she's going to get a ton of whacks in. Her philosophy is, "The best defense is all-out offense." She plays chess the same way. This is also how she's training her baby sister. I'm guessing the training regimen for baby sister #2 will be similar. So the Kelley household is in for it!