Spring?

Is that spring I see outside? We're having a really nice day today. It got up to 67 today and Riley and I even got outside to enjoy it. We started at Dunkin' Donuts and had breakfast. Then we went to the forest preserve and did a one mile hike. Riley did pretty good, but was complaining during the second half when we were walking into the wind. It is a bit windy today. Looks like gusts to 18 mph. It felt stronger than that. Then we headed over to the park and she found some new friends to play with. When it was time to leave, she of course didn't want to. She has been playing outside with Grace and a couple of her friends all afternoon. I know someone that will sleep well tonight...Dad (ha ha.) We'll have to keep this up. I need the exercise! My fitbit is happy today! So far I've gone 6,612 steps, 22 flights of stairs (doing a little laundry) and 2.95 miles. I'd say that's not too shabby. Especially for a Friday. Hopefully we can get outside this weekend to and get some things done around the house. But I do still have a lot of homework. School isn't over yet.

Patching

Our youngest daughter Riley wears a patch for her strabismus or crossed eye. Grace had to do the same thing and later also had surgery to correct her eyes. She had strabismus and amblyopia both. Amblyopia is lazy eye. Grace's doctor was Dr Paras Shah who is a pediatric ophthalmologist. He has since moved to the San Diego area. This was sad news for us when he said he was moving. We were even more bummed when Riley started showing the same problems several years later. But we have a different doctor in the area now and she seems pretty darned good too. Just maybe not as personable as Dr Shah. So anyway, the reason I'm bringing this up is because Riley has been patching for maybe a couple years now. She also wears glasses. And they have prisms in them that help keep her eyes aligned. At our last appointment with our doctor four months ago, she lowered the time that Riley needed to wear her patch to two hours a day. I was excited...Riley was just done. These last four months have been the worst with her as far as getting her to wear her patch. During our last appointment, the doctor gave Riley a new prescription which wasn't super urgent that she have filled as her prescription hadn't changed that much. But of course, not long after that appointment, her glasses broke. So we ordered her some new glasses and when she finally got those (we lost her actual prescription and had to have them mail us a new one) and was used to them we tried to start the patching back up. She just fought it every minute almost of every day. It was a real struggle to have her wear it for even an hour. Then about two weeks ago she just basically started refusing to wear her patch at all. She had every excuse: "I can see just fine", "I don't care", you name it she came up with it. So we go to see her doctor yesterday and I'm fearing the worst since she just really hasn't worn it that much over the last four months, but especially the last two weeks. Well, her weaker eye was doing fine the doctor said. So she said we would go for the next three months without a patch (you read that right - no patch) and see how her weaker eye looks then. If it has gotten weaker we'll have to start patching again. But she said why do something we don't have to do. This was the best news ever for Riley. And quite honestly for me too. It makes the days really long when you struggle to have her wear it constantly. Things should be a little easier around here for the next three months. Lets just pray her eye stays strong for her next appointment!

iPhone part 2

So I have switched from the android cell phones I always had to the iPhone this week. It is quite the change. I am still getting used to things after a few days. This phone is very fast. I don't have to wait for it to do hardly anything except sending photos. Everything else has been almost instantaneous. I am also liking it more each day. I left off talking about the differences in the android and iOS versions of Instagram. Now I'd like to cover what I've noticed so far with Google apps. Surprisingly, google apps are better on the iPhone. Call me crazy, but they are better. Starting with Gmail, it's easier to look at multiple email accounts, the interface just seems nicer, and I just like it more. Maybe I can't pinpoint why that is. My only complaint is that when you resize your emails, the text doesn't repaginate at all. If the text is too large for you to see it on the screen, you have to scroll back and forth to see it. In android it would usually repaginate. Emails with only text can't be enlarged at all as far as I can tell. Chrome for iOS is amazing. The integration that Google is famous for is out front and in your face. Which is great. When I start typing a web address, any searches or webpages I've loaded from other machines comes up as hints I can click on to go to. My desktop bookmarks are available and I can even see and open the tabs I have open on other machines. That is cool! Google Maps seems to have the same functionality, it just seems to flow better. Things are in different places than they are on android and on your desktop, but it's easy to find. Now keep in mind that these comparisons are my experience and they are also with the Gingerbread version of android as my phone never upgraded from that to Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean. Some of these comparisons may be wrong with those two operating system upgrades. This however, was one of the reasons I decided to switch from my android phone to the iPhone. I didn't like the fact the no phone in the android world is a true "android" phone. It's an android phone wrapped in Motorola "stuff" and Verizon "stuff." So when a new version of android is released, Motorola has to modify it and then Verizon has to modify it and all the testing these two modifications imply. That makes it a long time between a new OS release and any kind of implementation. With Apple, that is not the case. That was a plus for me in the pro/con analysis of switching. And this is why the phone I used to have never upgraded, Motorola decided not to create a Ice Cream Sandwich release for my phone. And Verizon isn't going to do it on their own. This brings to mind something I've noticed that is just different in general. I have to use a different portion of my fingertip to "click" things on my screen than I did with my android phone. I used a spot closer to the bottom of my finger on my old phone, whereas with the iPhone I've noticed that the most effective spot is closer to the tip of my finger. With any other email address you may have, you can add it to Apple's mail program. This is put into one icon at the bottom of the screen and you have the option of having everything show up in one big inbox. This is very convenient, but also for me a bit confusing. I would like to see some way of visually separating each email address within the "all inboxes" feature so I know immediately with account it is associated with. I think a background color would be the easiest for me. I did an internet search and I did find an "app" that does this, but it is only for an iPhone that has been jailbroken. I haven't done that, and I'm not sure I want to. Certainly someone has or will develop an app for this, right? Or Apple could just add this as a setting...hint hint. The music app is really just like your iPod if you have one. Except better I think. It's easier to traverse the menus and find what you want to play. And syncing is super easy...it's just like syncing your iPod. Will I use my iPod anymore??? I'm not sure. On one hand, why carry two devices when my iPhone performs the same function as the iPod? When I'm mowing the grass, I listen to my iPod, and don't carry my phone with me because I don't want it to get dusty or damaged. The case I'm using for my iPhone (the Lifeproof case) is waterproof, so I won't have to worry about dust getting into my phone. I may not need to leave my phone in the house when I mow the grass anymore. We'll see when the weather gets warmer. Speaking of phones, I haven't even mentioned the sound quality of using the iPhone as a phone yet. I would say that so far I really like it. People's voices seem a little lower than what I'm used to, but call quality is excellent. Using an android phone before this, I had all my contact information in Gmail. This is great because then you have it on your phone or your desktop, or even on someone else's computer. When I purchased my iPhone, the Verizon dude couldn't get my contact information from Gmail into my iPhone. I think I found out why. I think Google changed the procedures for doing this. But I don't really know why it didn't work, that is just a guess. What I do know is that it's easy to do and the instructions are here. Twitter is just a little different. Instead of long-clicking on a tweet to favorite or retweet it, you can slide it to one side and then the pop-up menu that appears in android slides into view. Subtle, I know, but different. Dropbox seems to have some more functionality to it. It has tabs at the bottom for your folders, your pictures, your favorites and settings. This isn't on the android version I was using. I just had folders. Gasbuddy seems to have left out my favorites. I had some favorite gas stations that I use and on android you can access these directly from the start screen. In the iOS version, this is replaced with a share button on the start screen. The Starbucks app is completely different. Completely. In the android app, it just has information about your cards and it lets you use them. They are full screen when you are using them. You can check your rewards and see details about rewards, and that's about it. The iOS Starbucks app is amazing! You get messages about the download of the week...which you can download straight to your phone. You can save your favorites to the favorites section including stores, drinks, etc. You can look up detailed information on coffee, food, and drinks. The card tab is about the same except it's not full screen when you use it. It's pretty small actually. you can check your rewards, buy gifts and look for stores. It's much different and much better. Like I said above, this could just be an issue of not having the latest version of android. I just really don't know. That's about all I can point out at the moment. So far I'm very happy with my decision. I have a couple friends that will be very unhappy with me, but that's OK. One of them even works for Motorola.....oops.

iPhone 5

This is not a techie blog. Actually for almost two years it hasn't been a blog at all. But, I digress. I have been a loyal android user since android came out. My most recent android phone was a Motorola Droid X2. This was very unfortunate. Especially for Motorola. My wife Julie and I had gone into the Verizon store two years ago to upgrade her phone. The Droid X2 was one of the phones I was thinking she should consider. When we went in it actually turned out that they had a sale where if you buy one, yes, that's right, you get one free. We should have immediately realized this was a red flag to stay away. When we bought the phones they had android version 2.2 or Froyo on them. Not long afterwards they were upgraded to Gingerbread or android version 2.3. The last upgrade this phone ever received was 2.3.4. After that...nothing. It never got Ice Cream Sandwich or Jelly Bean. This phone just wallowed in it's slowness. At the end of it's life (just before my contract period was over--yesterday) it was just ridiculous how poor this phone worked. The worst part was that the battery was just useless. I could charge it for 8 hours and have it say it was shutting down because the battery was critically low in a matter of minutes. You could literally watch the battery status icon "drain." This may have been the source of a lot of my issues, but there were other things that just drove me crazy. I use Instagram and when you go into the app, it has to load the photos from the web. When I opened the app it would just time out and say it couldn't load anything. The way to fix this is to turn the phone off and then back on. This took over three minutes. We did visit the Verizon store and ask about this issue and they gave me a shortcut that sometimes worked. You put the phone into airplane mode and then turn airplane mode off. This would sometimes fix this issue. The only way to fix the battery issue would have been to replace it. Yes, I could have replaced the battery. But I figured with not too much time left on my contract and knowing I wouldn't be keeping this phone I didn't see spending the money on a battery. So the decision now came down to what phone to upgrade to when my contract period was over (yesterday.) I had a countdown going and was driving my family nuts. I narrowed the choices down to either an iPhone 5 or the Motorola RAZR Maxx HD. I have stuck with Motorola almost exclusively through the years. As I already said earlier, I have had an android phone pretty much since android came out. One of my research strategies when I need to make a decision like this is to talk with people that have the phone, or whatever it is, and ask them if they like it. This has served me well for many things. I struck gold on Easter when our family came over and two family members had the two phones I was considering. I have to say that one of the things that really turned me off of the RAZR was how large it was. I really wasn't sure how well it would fit in my pocket. So I agonized for quite a while, but obviously from the subject of this post, you have probably extrapolated that I chose the iPhone 5. Now, I only got the phone just yesterday, but I have to say I really like it so far. There are some key differences, obviously, between this phone and my old one. My old phone was only 3G. The iPhone 5 is 4G LTE. Then there is the operating systems. Although, at a basic level, they are both basically UNIX/Linux based. While it's screen is larger than previous iPhones, it's actually smaller than my old phone. But I think it's mostly just the width. The height is about the same. The iPhone 5 is much lighter and seems much smaller though in general. I used it for a while without a case and I would say that while I would probably not need to have mine in a case, I feel better having it in one. The iPhone's outside surfaces are pretty smooth and it can easily slip out of your hand. Especially when your hands are super dry because of the cold winter weather we've had for so long here. Your hands just really have no moisture in them from mid-winter on. So it would be easy to drop the phone. For a case I chose the new Lifeproof case. I liked that it had a warranty against falls and it is waterproof to 6.6 ft (3 m.) I figure that way I can take it to the water park in the summer or my sister-in-law's pool and use my iPhone in the water to take pictures of the kids this summer without having to buy another waterproof enclosure for my phone. We'll see how that turns out. While I haven't installed all the applications I used to use on my droid, for the ones I have installed, some of them are quite different. This really surprised me. We use the Cozi organizer. If you don't know about this, it is great. You can put everyone's schedule on one calendar among many other features. Anyway, it is exactly the same on the iPhone except for input methods and stuff like that. But those kinds of things are because I'm using iOS instead of Android. Instagram wasn't much different, although it's MUCH faster. I'm guessing that is due mostly to the 4G LTE. What is different about Instagram is that on the news page it doesn't show the names of people that have started following you. On android it did show this. Just like if was someone liking your photo. That appears to be missing on the iPhone. But maybe it's just that I don't have any new followers. I'll have to get to some other differences tomorrow, as I've run out of time to write this. I will comment more tomorrow.

Friday

The day started out pretty normal. Trying to wake Grace up wasn't so easy. By the end of the week she's tired and usually can't get up on her own. Getting her on the bus is pretty easy though as she's becoming more and more self-sufficient. She was having hot lunch at school so she only needed a snack in her backpack and no homework to turn in so she was off to the bus stop in plenty of time.

The morning was warmer than the rest of the week had been. Preview of how warm it would be later? Yes. After Grace is on the bus and off to 2nd grade I usually check my email and twitter. Right after I was done with this Riley was waking up already. She isn't usually up that early, so I was hoping she'd go back to sleep, but she didn't. After she was up I made us some breakfast. Scrambled eggs for her which she proceeded to throw most of on the floor. And a 3-egg omelette for me. Adding bacon made all the difference in flavor. It was an excellent choice.

We're guessing that Riley hasn't been eating as well as normal lately because she just got a new tooth a few days ago. The interesting thing is that one day she'll eat pretty normal and the next she won't. I'm wondering if she isn't getting another one. I think we'll find out pretty soon.

After breakfast Riley and I set out on our errands. We headed to the shoe store and actually found some baseball cleats that fit me. And they were on sale. That was great. Riley was a little stir-crazy sitting in her stroller but she did pretty good. After this we headed to my favorite store, Lowe's. We planted a new Bradford Pear tree in the front yard last week and then right after I planted it we had a big storm so it hasn't been straight and it's also flopping around. So we stopped at Lowe's to get a tree support kit so it can grow straight.

After Lowe's we ran to get milk and rushed to beat Grace home. After she got home I actually got them both in the tub and cleaned up. Then Riley went down for a nap and Grace finished up shampooing her hair. After that I actually got to sit down for a few minutes before starting dinner. It was taco night. Put the meat on the fire and starting shredding lettuce and chopping tomatoes. Realized I forgot to buy avocados, so no guacamole for us. About the time dinner was ready Julie was home from work. We sat and talked for a few minutes and out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw a butterfly land on a bush in our front yard. Then it hovered and it's wings were moving really fast. I couldn't believe it. A hummingbird! In our yard! That's the first time since we've lived in this house that we've even seen one. We used to put hummingbird feeders out and they never came. But apparently they like our bushes out front.

After that excitement I got everything packed up to go and we headed to the in-laws for dinner. Dinner was good and Grandma even had dessert for us. So it was a good day. Now on to the weekend. Yay!

Crazy week

This last week was crazy. Not so much for Grace having a super busy week, just a lot of little things going on. Last Sunday was Mother's Day and I got Julie tickets to 42nd Street. We're going in a few weeks. She's pretty excited.

Monday turned out pretty normal. Riley and I did make it to the bike shop and got some new tubes for the trailer. I also used a LivingSocial deal from our bike shop and got a new helmet. I was lucky to get that. Got a cool helmet for much less than it would have normally cost. My old helmet was 10 years old. I think it was time for a new one!

I was able to change the tubes while Riley was napping so it was all ready on Tuesday for her first ride. She was really excited and she really enjoyed it too! Here's a photo of her all excited about going.



We rode down to the village hall and paid our bill and saw a canadian goose family. She just loves birds and was excited to see them up close without a window between them and her. Here's a shot I took of them swimming away from us.



Then we went over to this "new" business in our town that sells gardening plants and supplies. They've been there a year and I had never visited it. Riley liked this too. Then on the way back we happened to go past the park so we stopped there. She finally got up the nerve to climb this by herself this time. I think it was because she saw another girl that was there doing it.



She did get a little nervous for this last step that she's doing here in the photo, but I just told her to hold on to the bar further up instead of the ladder and she was fine. This girl just love, love, loves the slide! It's definitely her favorite. That's why she was going up the ladder here instead of going all the way around the playset and going up the steps.

She enjoyed the ride home too but was obviously disappointed that all the fun was over when we got home. We actually took a family bike ride after dinner on Tuesday also. Riley was super excited. Now if it would just warm up again (the high today was 46 I think) we could do this more often. I know it's coming soon, but it's hard to wait when it's still so cold here in mid-May.

Here are my girls before we had dinner.



Wednesday and Thursday Grace had dance class and brownies. I suppose the rest of the week was pretty normal. Especially considering that it was cold and rainy. We weren't doing much outside. On Friday we finally made it to the eye doctor for us to get Riley fitted for her new glasses. They had been waiting for some other frames to come in that were more her color, but they were backordered. The frames we picked out were the cutest ones they had but were blue. That's alright as they are still really cute. My only concern is that people will mistake her for a boy. Hopefully her clothes will give her away. Here is a photo I took of us when she tried them on.



This weekend was crazy as well. Our nephew graduated from our community college on Saturday and Julie took Grace while Riley and I stayed home. Well actually we ran to the Home Depot for a few things. Wow was the graduation ceremony long. They didn't get home until 4 hours after it started. So Saturday was more like a weekday. Then today we took Grace to get her Nintendo DSi after church. She's really excited about this. The funny part is I think she's really only excited about the built-in camera. I don't think she realizes all the extra things it will do compared to her DS.

Well, I'd better try for a decent bedtime. The shuttle Endeavor is launching in just 7 hours. And Grace will be going to school just before that.

May? Really?

Sorry for the delay since my last post. Obviously I don't have a good track record though, so I suppose it doesn't come as much of a surprise. We have been super super busy around here. Grace had something going on each day last week. And her first communion was yesterday.

Fortunately for our house, we keep having company, so we've been keeping it pretty clean. I won't go so far as to say it's spotless (ha ha, yea right,) but it's cleaner than we normally keep it and I have every intention of keeping it this way and working towards getting it cleaner yet now that it is as good as it is.

Our entertaining started with having some of Julie's relatives over last Saturday the 30th. We were originally going to have them over for dinner back in February I think. But then Julie got the flu. Really bad flu. So we cancelled that get-together (surprise!) After re-scheduling it, we had them over last Saturday. We had gumbo and it turned out really good. I've never actually made gumbo before, but I got my Uncle's recipe (his family is from New Orleans) and it turned out great. They even asked for the recipe.

After this Grace had her last REP class (religious education) on Monday and a practice on Thursday to get her ready for her first communion on Saturday (yesterday.) Tuesday she had softball evaluations and Julie wasn't home before we had to leave so we brought Riley with us. It hasn't been so very warm here so we had to bundle up. Poor Riley's little hands were freezing. Actually all of our hands were freezing. Grace did well and saw another girl that was on her team last year. She wants her to be on her team again, so I have to remember to call and see if they can do that.

Anyway, Julie came by and picked up Riley a few minutes after Grace had started and got her home to warm up. Wednesday is dance class and Friday she had more dance stuff as she was practicing for the finale of her recital coming up next month and then she had a pizza party after that.

Yesterday was super busy for Grace's first communion and the party was afterwards at our house. Remember the clean house? Yea, we did spend some time "refining" the house in the morning, but the day went really well. We had to be at the church a half an hour before the service started and we were actually early. Yes, you just read that, we were early, by a full 12 minutes. This never happens. The only glitch was not getting back to the house in time for the catering to be delivered (taking pictures.) We had to send my cousin home ahead of us leaving the church so that someone was there. Actually I think they had to wait a few minutes as my neighbor called wondering what to do. We do have good neighbors!

We even made it to church on time today. Not early, but not late either. I can't say I made this Mother's day super special for Julie, but I think we made the day about as good as we could. This week is much less hectic and that is certainly welcome. And actually a lot of things are starting to wind down as Grace only has a few weeks of school left. Then we'll move on to the summer schedule. As always, right now I'm looking forward to it. The summer...no schedule or at least a limited one. Sleeping in...or at least mostly sleeping in. Grace doesn't seem to sleep in anymore. In fact Riley hasn't even been sleeping in all that much any more either. I really miss that. Clearly it would help if I'd go to bed earlier so I can get more sleep, but I can't seem to break this habit of staying up late.

The good thing about this summer is that Riley is old enough to go and do things we couldn't really do last year when she was only one. I tried to get our bicycles and the trailer ready for us to use today. Since Grace and Julie got home so late this evening we didn't have time to go out for a bike ride anyway. We haven't used the trailer since Grace was like 3 or 4 probably so I'm guessing about 4 years. I had been cleaning it up and airing up the tires as well as airing up the tires in all of our bikes. As I was working on Julie's bike I hear this pop and then a loud sound of air coming out. Maybe it's their age or something, but the tube on one of the trailer tires had blown a hole. I think I'll replace them both. I have a feeling that the other one will go at some point anyway so I might as well just replace them both while we're not in the middle of a trail with no pump to air up a new tube.

Grace will obviously be playing softball this summer and I'll be coaching again. I'm really looking forward to it. I feel much less anxiety than last year as I didn't really know what I was getting myself into. Now that I know how it all works and how everything fits together I'm guessing it will be much more fun as most of the stress will be removed. She's also going to a half-day day camp for a couple weeks. I'm going to try and get us outside a lot more this summer. We all need it and the kids both really enjoy it.

Better start implementing my earlier bedtime. Gotta go.