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The Meaning of Easter

April 12th, 2009 · Uncategorized

I just wanted to wish everyone a very happy Easter Sunday!

Last night I was reading an article from a 1992 Ensign by Ezra Taft Benson, titled “The Meaning of Easter.” It was a very simple article, covering the historical account and the testimony of President Benson, but it still held a powerful message.

If you would like to read it, you can find it here:
http://www.lds.org/ldsorg/…

One quote from the article I’ve heard spoken a lot lately,

“The greatest events of history are those that affect the greatest number of people for the longest periods. By this standard, no event could be more important to individuals or nations than the resurrection of the Master.”

And isn’t it the truth! I know I am grateful for the resurrection and the affect it has and will have on my life.

HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

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Aren’t they just ADORABLE!!?!

April 11th, 2009 · bridget, random, spencer

I love these two little punks!

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Ready!Set!Graduate!

April 9th, 2009 · a day in the life, bridget

Back in September we put Bridget in a little “preschool” class at the Family Center. The program was called Ready!Set!School! The class was for kids ages 3-5 and it taught skills for kindergarten readiness. You may remember the original post about her starting school… she was so excited.

She loved going and interacting with friends. And toward the end of the program she even started asking for homework.

All the fun had to come to and end though. Last week they held a little graduation for the kids – complete with construction paper hats and yarn tassels. Adorable!

I’d still like to see her be able to get in the Adele Dale Young program at Utah State in the fall, but who knows if that will happen. I’ve heard good things about “Melody Lane” preschool as well… maybe I’ll look into that if she doesn’t make it past the waiting list again this year.

Does anyone else have any suggestions? What programs were your kids in? Did you like it? Love it? Hate it?
I’m hoping to find something well organized and with a strong curriculum! The kid loves to learn, I want to feed that desire while I can!

Congrats on your little graduation sweet girl! May there be many more in your future! 🙂

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Jeffery H. Uchtdorf

April 8th, 2009 · a day in the life, bridget, random

A few weeks prior to General Conference we started putting a little more emphasis on Bridget recognizing members of the quorum of the twelve.

My sister made her this great “Prophet cards” with the name and image of each member of the first presidency and quorum of the twelve. We keep them in her church bag, and the past few Sunday’s they’ve been pulled out to test her knowledge. She’s getting there, slowly but surely… Thanks Livia for the flash cards!

Anyway, this past weekend she had them out during conference and had fun finding the appropriate card when that particular apostle was talking. “Hey, I have that guy” was a pretty common phrase coming from her. Then she’d proceed to find the card and hold it up to the screen to make sure it matched.

She doesn’t recognize everyone by name yet, maybe by next conference.

Dieter F. Uchtdorf confuses her a little though. She calls him “Jeffery H. Uchtdorf” – I suppose its an improvement over last October when she wouldn’t even try to say his name. Dave and I do find it funny, though, that she’s combining 3 different names to come up with her version.

But the best part is that she walks around the house saying “Jeffery H. Uchtdorf” pretty regularly now.

She also seems to like to say “Quinton L. Cook” – I’m pretty sure that she can’t quite match a face with a name on that one yet, because all during conference she’d ask me, “Is that Quinton L. Cook?,” to any speaker she didn’t recognize.

Well… I think she’s adorable. And I just wanted to share.

P.S. This session we tried setting out 3 different bowls of snacks. One for missionary work (animal crackers), one for Jesus (marshmallows), and one for Obedience (nilla wafers). She was supposed to eat a snack from the bowl when the corresponding subject was discussed. It worked really well for most of the Saturday morning session… then it effectiveness wore off. I think we need to change things up a bit next time.

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Ouch

April 5th, 2009 · bridget, random

The other night Bridget was trying to hurry down the stairs, and in her haste she fell from the very top – all the way down. She landed flat on her face.

I watched the whole thing happen in slow motion from the bottom of the steps.

She was screaming, and she didn’t move. I ran over to pick her up.. when I picked her up there was blood covering her face. I wasn’t sure if it was coming from her mouth or her nose, but it was everywhere. In the few minutes she was bleeding it got in her hair, on her shirt, on her pants, on my jeans, and in our carpet. I grabbed a wet rag and cleaned her face as I tried to calm her down. I soon realized that it was her nose that was bleeding.

Once we stopped the bleeding and calmed her down, it was time to address the stains on her clothing and in our carpet.

It was quite the evening. Having a toddler fall down the stairs wasn’t exactly on the agenda for the night.

I’m just glad that she didn’t get injured any more than she did. It could have been worse, it could have been a lot worse. I think the whole thing scared me almost as much as it did her.

The picture was taken when she woke up the next morning. Just a little rug burn left.

I’m glad she’s okay.

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$4.76

April 2nd, 2009 · random, techno geeks

Well, I’ve had my google ads on this page for a month now. I know some of you were interested to hear how well it works. So…

To date I’ve earned $4.76.
Totaled 3,440 page impressions.
And 10 clicks.

Note: They only pay out once earnings accumulate to $100. (it might take me awhile)

::The Nitty Gritty::

I’ve noticed so far that I can earn different amounts for clicks on the same ad (or at least the same ad space). I wonder if it is related to the length of time a visitor spends on the sponsored page… but I have no way of verifying that. I’ve also noticed that I earn more for clicks on text ads, but the image ad seems to get clicked on more. The image ads also earn revenue based on page impressions alone (no clicks required), at the rate of about one cent every few days.

…the thought has occurred to me to place 500 image ads at the bottom of my page and just let the page impressions roll. $5.00 every few days… but I figure that would not only be really annoying, but also poor sportsmanship. Besides, Google probably already has some sort of filter for stuff like that. Haha. Anyway…

I’ve noticed that the ads aren’t always relevant to the content on the page, particularly on the home page. But the ads are usually more focused on individual post pages.

I did use the ad filter and remove a couple of cellulite-type ads from the sidebar a couple of days ago (since Sandra complained :)), so hopefully we’ll have less of those moving forward.

To sum things up –
I don’t know if all of this is worth it yet. We’ll give it another few months and see what happens.
Its not exactly a get rich quick sort of thing. But I imagine it will be fun to randomly get a $100 check in the mail in 5 years. lol!

So there you have it. I imagine I’ll report on this again in a few months.

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Potty Talk, Volume VIII

March 30th, 2009 · a day in the life, bridget

For those of you unfamiliar, Potty Talk is my ongoing series on the joys of potty training. The first installment was in January 2008, soon after we began potty training with Bridget. Between January and June 2008, a total of seven posts were dedicated to the process. Since then, the potty news fell silent.

Until now.

When we had our second baby (about 3 months ago), I was a little bit worried about regression in the potty department. I’d heard horror stories. Anyway, I was pleased to have avoided that – at least mostly (she had only ONE accident shortly after he was born that caused me to think that is was related his crowding her throne). She has actually been nothing short of amazing with her new little brother, but that’s a topic for another day.

The past week or so has been interesting.

Accident after accident. Sometimes just a little. Sometimes puddles. Sometimes #2… boy, those are fun. About one a day.

She could care less if she doesn’t get to wear princess underwear anymore. And she’s a pro at timeouts – they don’t get to her anymore either. After about the third day in a row of accidents it was pretty obvious that whatever we were doing wasn’t working. I sat her down and we had a heart-to-heart. We talked about what would be a better punishment – what would get her to stop having accidents.

First timeout was increased to 5 minutes. And no princess undies.

Then 10 minutes.

Then another 10 minutes.

Last Tuesday she had an accident that lost her the privilege of playing with friends for an entire week. She hated having to tell her friends “no” when the asked if she could play, and she hated when I told her “no” to inviting friends over. Since last Tuesday, she’d done really well! No accidents.

Until today.

We were sitting down to lunch and she said, “don’t look at me.” I asked why, she wouldn’t say. I asked if she had an accident. She said, “I’m not telling.” We went around and around like this for a couple of minutes before she told me that she had pooped her pants. Yes, poop.

Ugh!

“So, if you had an accident, why are sitting at the table and not in the bathroom?”
“I didn’t want you to know”
“Did you know that you get in even more trouble if you have an accident and try to hide it from me?”
(nodding)
“Go to the bathroom. I’ll be up in a minute.”
“BUT, I just don’t want you to take away my polly pockets!”
“Just go to the bathroom. We’ll talk about this in a minute.”

Yep.Taking away Polly Pockets was the next thing. Only for 2 days, but she did not want those to go! She tried apologizing. “I’m so, so, SO sorry I had an accident.” She tried bargaining. “You can take my PEZ dispensers AND my doctor stuff, but please don’t take my polly pockets.” She tried begging. “Please. Oh please mom.”

I wanted to give in. But I couldn’t. That wouldn’t get us anywhere.

So I had her go down to the playroom with me. We cleaned them up, and I made her hand them over. She cried for a few minutes, but overall was pretty mature about it. She said she understands why I took them away.

But does she understand?

Will it keep her from having accidents this time?

What will I have to try next? No friends. No toys. No movies. No treats. Just math homework for the next 48 hours???? Ha.
(That probably gives math a negative wrap. Sorry, math – you shouldn’t be the one punished here. I actually liked doing math homework most of the time.)

Has anyone else had to deal with these periods of regression? What has worked for you? Seriously, I’m dying over here.

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Audit Time

March 29th, 2009 · Uncategorized

I have to perform a self-audit on my photo business, and turn in my findings to the Utah State Tax Commission.

Hello?! Intimidating.

And annoying.
Seriously, its not high on the list of things I’d like to make time for. Actually, its not on the list at all. Ha!

Well, wish me luck as I dive into a maddening mess of papers…. See you next week. Ugh!

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Make Your Own Kind of Music

March 26th, 2009 · dave, domestic attempts, food, random

I mentioned a couple of posts ago that we had a Dharma-themed ‘party’ for Dave’s birthday. I use the word ‘party’ pretty loosely since it was a rather intimate group – Dave’s not really into big parties. Sunday night we invited one of Dave’s good friends over. We visited, had dinner, sang, had Dave open gifts, and worked on the LOST puzzle he got (I forgot to take pictures that night)… but it was great fun!! I found a place online where I could download Dharma food labels… I modified them in PhotoShop and we had Dharma Dr. Pepper, Dharma Vanilla Coke, Dharma Sprite, and Dharma Strawberry Soda as our drinks to go along with the meal. It was kind of fun to see those labels on the cans.

Monday we finished the LOST puzzle, sang, and ate the Dharma cake. This time I took some pictures.

This is Dave working on the LOST puzzle. The puzzle is 1000 pieces, and quite tricky. The final picture is not on the box, so that added to the difficulty. It took 2-3 adults about 12 hours to finish! So we figure it would take a single person around 30 hours. Wow. I’m surprised we actually got it done. Seriously though, it was a pretty impressive puzzle.
FYI, this is Puzzle #1 of 4 in a series of LOST puzzles, it was titled “The Hatch”… Apparently you can build all four puzzles to get some secret message on the back. (I don’t imagine we’ll try that anytime soon though).

Here are a couple examples of the Dharma labels. I modified the ‘Dharma Beer’ can label for the pop and came up with the Ranch on my own, since I couldn’t find that one to download.
Here are a couple of Dharma label links:
– The Knight Shift: We’re Ready to Party with Dharma food (this is the place I downloaded them from).
– StumbleUpon WebToolbar: Max Pictures’ Blather
– Then there’s Insanely Great News – I think they started it all, but then they were told to take the labels down.

P.S. The Dharma Ranch is actually an old pickle Jar. I spray painted the lid, and filled the inside with spices and rubberized roofing cement. Its not perfect – but it gives the illusion of Dharma Ranch. The pop can was also spray painted white. Then labels applied to both. Yes. I am a nerd.

This is me working with the fondant for the logo on the cake. It was my first time making/using fondant. I think it turned out pretty well!

Its not exactly Ace of Cakes, but I was pretty pleased with myself. But it kind of took a long time. I imagine I’ll get faster at fondant as I get practice.

We just did one candle. We’ll save the massive number of candles for his next birthday (30 years).

It was carrot cake, by the way. YUM! I posted the recipe for the carrot cake and the fondant on my food blog. Check it out if you’d like.
(I actually found a recipe for a marshmallow fondant on a friend’s blog and tried adapting it to add a cream cheese flavor – it was pretty easy, and tasted pretty good too).

All we were missing were some Dharma jumpsuits and some ’70’s hairstyles. We had a pretty good time though!

Hello, my name is Tina, and I’m a LOST-ie. And so is my husband. And my daughter.
I’m not in denial.

Last, but not least, I just wanted to note that even though I made up my own ‘Dharma Ranch’ I would still welcome an autographed jar of the stuff. 🙂

Check out this video, where a fan gets Dharma Ranch (though I doubt its autographed):
http://video.aol.com/video-detail/lost-comic-con-panel-fan-wins-dharma-ranch-dressing-part-8-of-10/2528204095

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Look Alikes

March 25th, 2009 · bridget, dave, family, random, spencer, tina

After all the comments on yesterday’s post about our kids looking just like Dave, I thought I’d post some more comparisons.

I do agree that both of them look more like Dave than they do me… but the side-by-side comparisons are still pretty interesting!!
(Also note the side-by-side Bridget/Spencer comparison from an earlier post)

Tina – Bridget -Dave:

Tina – Bridget -Dave:

Tina – Spencer -Dave:

Tina – Spencer -Dave:

What do you think???
Who looks the most like who? Are they both spitting images of Dave? Or do they have features from both of us?

…Are these even my kids? Kidding

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