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.

Did I Mention Rain?

So today it rained most of the day. Seems like we're living in Seattle. Today was day 21 of rain this month (28 days.) Luckily tomorrow will allegedly be rain-free. I hope so as I still need to plant those darned blueberry bushes.

Yesterday was a tragic day here in the States. There was a massive storm front that spawned hundreds of tornadoes and they went through 6 states just destroying everything in their path. I've never been through a serious tornado like this one, and luckily few have as most tornadoes aren't this bad. These were just insane. A mile-wide swath of destruction is just crazy. And scary.

Riley seems to be feeling better as she is acting a little more normal. The only thing that wasn't normal today was her nap; it was a bit short today. I know she was tired since she was laying her head on my shoulder. That's what she does when she's tired. One of the cutest things she does when she's really tired is to just lay on the floor wherever she is and act like she's sleeping.

Some other "big" news yesterday was President Obama releasing the long-form version of his birth certificate. For some reason certain politicians believed that the POTUS (President of the United States) wasn't born in the United States. Some people say it's just because they disapprove of or hate or something him so much that they are just looking for anything to get him out of office or discredit him or whatever. I believe that. I don't see any other reason for this whole thing. I don't see any racism as everyone is saying now. It's interesting that they are only now saying this. How long have there been these "birther" allegations? A year?

What I find especially interesting is that the POTUS waited so long to release the document. The way I look at it, either he releases it right after the allegations are first brought out, or he ignores them and moves on. Why wait all this time and then produce it now? That doesn't make sense, especially since during his press conference after having released his birth certificate he said he found the allegations amusing. I read somewhere that he did it yesterday to try and take media attention away from his announcement about the new Secretary of Defense (Leon Panetta) and Ben Bernanke's historic press conference. That I can definitely believe. The Obama administration has used the media very well for their benefit.

On a lighter note I was excited to see that OT Gabe Carimi from the Wisconsin Badgers was drafted by the Chicago Bears today. Being a Badger fan that makes me happy and being a Bears fan I'm happy too as we have needed offensive line help for a few years. Am I convinced that Jay Cutler is the perfect quarterback for our team and the offense we run? Not completely, but Carimi will certainly help.

Did you hear about the "elders" in Korea today? The name you'll recognize is former POTUS Jimmy Carter. Sounds like his visit their wasn't very productive as the headlines afterward read "thanks for nothing, Jimmy." I've been reading a lot about Korea and specifically our involvement in the Korean war lately. I'm not sure North Korea (DPRK) will ever really cooperate with the south. They just have this deep-seeded hate against the south almost as if it's from back in the days of the birth of communism, even though they didn't get communism until later. And the nuclear situation just ruins everything. If they would lay off the development of nuclear weapons that would really help their stature in the world and especially with the south.

I saw an article just today that their was new construction sited at a nuclear site in the DPRK. The world and especially South Korea will not take anything seriously from them if they continue to develop nuclear weapons. What I did learn from former POTUS Carter's visit and press conference is that the humanitarian conditions in the north are pretty bad. Unfortunately this is what happens when you have an evil dictator like Kim Jong-Il. He doesn't care about his people at all. He has his own agenda and that's what matters. I also find it deplorable that the DPRK refuses to take responsibility for the sinking of the South Korean ship and the attack on the South Korean military base. Oh, but they have deep regret. Whatever.

Today the DPRK was threatening the south with "merciless fire" if the launches of balloons, which contain pamphlets ridiculing Kim Jong-Il & family, didn't stop. With that attitude how can they expect the south to want to meet for any kind of summit or have any food distributions. Craziness.

So Grace has off school tomorrow, but she has a birthday party to go to. We still haven't purchased a gift yet. She has started the card so she should be able to finish that up pretty easily in the morning. Looks like we'll be heading out to Target to get that gift taken care of. I'll also need to decide on something for dinner as I haven't planned anything.

Tonight I made blueberry pancakes and you'd think I had made everyone's favorite meal. I made two batches (Julie cooked most of the second batch) and they are all gone. I think I could have made more and at least some of them would have been eaten also. That Riley just love, love, loves pancakes. If I feed her them for breakfast she will eat like 6 of them. In her defense I do make them a little on the small side, but she had at least 5 I think for dinner tonight. She is pretty much the same way though with a waffle. Those seem to be some of her favorite foods. She gets very excited.

You should have seen her tonight. It was just too funny. After she finished her fourth pancake I think it was, she was actually licking her plate. And I don't mean a little bit, I mean really cleaning it off. She had blueberries everywhere: pants, shirt, face, table. This girl really enjoys her food. Here is a cellphone photo of her after she enjoyed a marshmallow bunny a couple days ago.



You can really see her eye crossing in this picture unfortunately. Try to focus on the messy face. Most meals this is how her face looks. Today she took her "extra" yogurt and was rubbing it all over her arms and hands and calling it soap (hope.)

I have a few more cellphone photos I can share. These next two are from a walk we took. She was walking her bear in it's stroller. In the second one you can see Grace racing down the hill way out in front of Riley. This was just before Grace crashed. It wasn't pretty.





This last one is Riley in a shoe box. She's almost getting too big to do things like this anymore, but she still tries. Sad to see her growing up, but I have to admit we're spending the time to enjoy watching her grow up as opposed to when we had Grace at this age. It's amazing how different you are with a second child. I'm not even sure it's only that she's the second child so much as that Grace is 8 already.



Alright, I must go and get some sleep.

Rain

Today turned out to be a little more rain filled than the weather man would have had us believe last night during the news. But the amount of precipitation wasn't really all that substantial so I guess he wasn't all that far off. Unfortunately that means I didn't get the blueberry plants I need to get planted into the ground yet. They're leafing out in my kitchen. And I haven't even watered them since they are in plastic bags and not pots.

I suppose I'll get them planted one of these days. Right now I'm watching the Blackhawks game against the Canucks. I'm not impressed so far. The Canuck defense has been pretty strong so far. We'll see how it turns out. Only a few minutes left and they're down 1-0. They're certainly capable of winning this game but they haven't displayed that yet tonight.

Everything else today went a little more normal. Except Riley was awake for a lot of the morning while Grace was getting ready for school. Lucky for me she went back to sleep again. You know you're in trouble when she's asking for a book to "read" in her crib at 8 in the morning. Like I said yesterday, she's normally up between 9 and 10. This week has not been normal for her because she's been awake early but then sleeping late. I think she might be getting another tooth. Guess we'll find out soon enough.

She did do something really exciting today when she was eating lunch. She has this terrible habit of throwing the food she no longer wishes to eat. Leftover macaroni and cheese? Throw it on the floor. Little extra applesauce from Dad? That goes on the floor. So what did she do today? She actually said she didn't want any more and handed me her bowl. BTW "bowl" is one of her favorite words. She's been trying to say "more" the last couple of days too. It's really cute. She really emphasizes the "r."

She also did the same thing when she was eating her apple (app-al.) She would be chewing off the skin and putting it in her bowl instead of throwing it on the floor or across the room. This is a very welcome change. I'm really tired of cleaning the floor and the table and her and the tray on her booster seat and the booster seat every time she eats. One fewer thing to clean...very exciting!

Now the true question is whether it will continue. Obviously I don't know but I can hope right? Thank goodness we're officially past the whole undressing in her crib thing. OMG. This went on entirely too long. It's nice to not have to change her sheets every day. And I clearly don't miss cleaning up poop from all over her and the crib and the wall. That's not fun to wake up to.

She also said a semi-sentence today. She said "Ri-Ri app-al nummy." Or maybe she switched nummy and apple. Apple is one of the few words she uses for food besides nummy. Generally ALL food is a "nummy." She really likes apples! That's good considering we have an apple tree in the back yard.

Alright, the Blackhawks lost in overtime. That stinks. Guess I can concentrate on baseball now.

Julie is much better today. I hope it was just an anomaly yesterday where she ate too much of something she shouldn't have. I still haven't gone to the grocery store. I have to go tomorrow now. We have nothing to eat and Riley has no milk to drink. Guess I'll have to start working on that menu...

What?

So today was kind of a strange day. I never knew what was coming next. Got up at my normal time but when I went to get Grace up for school, Riley was awake and whispering "daddy." I just said to go night-night in hopes she'd go back to sleep. She's never up that early. Each time I tried to wake Grace up she'd snore and complain so I left her to sleep a little longer.

After giving Grace an extra 20 minutes of sleep I went to get her up and she actually woke up this time. I don't know why I then bothered to tell her that she had 15 minutes to get ready because two minutes after we normally get ready to walk out the door she was starting to brush her teeth with her pajamas on. I was thinking there is no way she's going to make the bus, but it seemed like only one minute later she was running down the stairs with her clothes on and heading to get her shoes on. I was surprised. Good thing she had her clothes picked out already.

She did make the bus, and we didn't even have to run. Talking to the neighbor at the bus stop and she had some similar issues this morning. When I got back in the house Riley was saying hi to me. Luckily she did fall back asleep. And she slept for quite a while as she didn't wake up until 11:45. Actually that's later than normal nowadays. Normal for her these days is between 9 and 10. But Monday's are hard because she's sometimes recovering from the weekend when she doesn't always get a very long nap.

When Grace got home from school she was in a very good mood. She even watched Sesame Street with us...of course while she was doing her homework. I swear she can't do her homework without the TV on. Last week was turn off the TV week (which reminds me, she was supposed to return the paperwork for that today.) So she can do homework without the TV being on, but she seems to feel she can't. It was about this time when Julie said she was leaving work and coming home because she'd gotten sick and it wasn't getting any better.

After she got home she put Riley down for a nap and went for a nap herself. Unfortunately it was only a few minutes later that our neighbor started playing volleyball outside of our bedroom window. They practice by bouncing the ball and then "serving" or hitting it up against the side of their house. But our houses are pretty close together, so it also inevitably hits our house too. So anyway, she didn't get much of a nap. And unfortunately Julie really didn't get much better for the rest of the night. Oh, she felt better, but she still couldn't eat anything. Let's hope tomorrow is a much better day for her.

We made a ham for easter and so we have leftovers. Julie leaves this note this morning that maybe we could have ham for dinner tonight. If you read the last paragraph, you know she didn't even eat dinner, but the problem I had is that we don't really have anything else in the house to eat. So I had it for lunch and dinner. And I'll probably have it for lunch tomorrow. I haven't planned any meals for the week so I'm not certain what we'll do for dinner. I'm just hoping I don't have to plan for ham again.

I try to go as few places as possible these days. I don't want to pay to put gas in my car unless I have to. So I've been going fewer places. I'll be happy when the weather is warmer and Riley and I can get out on my bicycle and go places. Right now it's raining and the high today was a cold feeling 50 or so. Not such great bicycling weather, especially with a 2 year old.

Anyone out there use Twitter and/or Facebook? I have to say I'm addicted. But my addiction has changed. I'm not so addicted to Facebook anymore, but much more so to Twitter. I find myself posting completely different things on each one and spending much more time with Twitter. Facebook has mostly become a Mafia Wars habit and a good goto for checking in with my friends to see what they've been doing and to see pictures and things like that. With Twitter, you have a window into things you're interested in as well your friends. So I can still keep up with friends plus I can add in some news and fun interests.

I wonder why everyone isn't disenchanted with the gasoline situation. Certainly if you're very wealthy a 25% increase in gasoline costs probably isn't a big deal. But this is seriously a big expense for us. With Julie driving so many miles to work each day it really adds up if you look at it from a monthly viewpoint. 60-70 miles a day for 20 days at least each month. Luckily her car gets pretty good fuel mileage, but it's not THAT good. She doesn't get what I get and I wouldn't get much better mileage than her driving where she does every day anyway since I get my best mileage around town which is what I mostly do. So lets generalize and say Julie uses about 3 gallons of gas a day for about 20 days a month. That's 60 gallons at the new price today of $4.29 that's about $250. Then add in the gas I use and it's at $400 or so. That's like having another car payment. And what do we get in return?

Well sure, we get the money we need to survive in the lifestyle we want to live in. I definitely understand that as I pay the bills and see the money come in and the money go out. It goes out quickly when you have only one income, I'll attest to that. But let's look at a year ago when gas was "only" $2.85 a gallon. That same scenario would have put us at around $250-270 a month. Compare that to now and all my gas would be free since Julie is buying that much just for her car.

Julie was just saying tonight after the gas prices went up today that we need only wait and the price will come down. And she's absolutely right as they just play this game with you. This morning gas was $4.07 and they raised it to $4.29. Tomorrow it probably won't change, but if it does it will come down to $4.28 or maybe even $4.27. Then in another day or two it will be down to $4.20 maybe or $4.19. Then it will come down as low as it will get going forward; probably something like $4.10 or $4.14. Then it will start all over and jump 25 cents the next time to $4.35 or $4.39. So this cyclical up and down shows the general trend of only going up. It never really goes down, it just comes down to a false low that only feels low compared to how high they raised it a few days prior. The actual trend is up, up, up. I'm not surprised at all that they're calling for $6 gas by summertime. Around here we'll pay more for the summer blend of gas plus all this price gouging for gasoline made from crude oil that cost less than the gas we bought a few months ago for $3.25. It's just a big ripoff that lets oil companies get rich and crude oil producing countries get richer. And the gas we use to get to our jobs continues to cost more so our pitiful little raises are actually decreases in income because it's costing more to get to our job every day.

And how is all this going help our economy? I'm not going to spend money on anything I don't absolutely need because quite honestly I don't have extra income anymore. That all goes to the oil companies.

And...I'm off my soapbox. Have a good night.

Happy Easter

Believe it or not, I do remember I have a blog. I know...surprising.

We scored a bonus (in my mind at least) by getting my favorite priest at church today. Of course all the people that only come to church on Easter and Christmas kind of ruin it for the rest of us. I really wish us regulars could get priority seating. Is it wrong to want that? And saving seats for people coming ten minutes after the service has started? Really? What is this, high school?

I think I surprised Julie today. We parked a block away and walked into the church. As soon as we walked in you could see they had set up rows of chairs in the outer area (sorry, I can't think what that area is called.) We walked into the sanctuary and tried to see if we couldn't squeeze into one of the pews, but their just wasn't enough room. So we came back out of the sanctuary and tried to find a spot in the chairs that were set up. But those were all taken also, so I just sat down at the spot I was in when I realized there just wasn't any place to sit. It's very disappointing. Not being able to sit in a seat. I have to admit we aren't exactly early to church on a normal week, but we actually got to church a few minutes early. It made no difference.

Oh and then after church we were leaving and had made it a whole block away from church and were at a stop sign. There was a little cross-traffic, but I was hesitating at the stop sign because of the volume of traffic we'd be turning into compared to a normal Sunday service. I wasn't certain if I should go the normal way or turn and go the long way to avoid the traffic. There was this "older" person behind me and after I hesitated when the cross-traffic had passed, they honked at me. Well, let's just say I wasn't nice back to this lady (nothing illegal mind you, just a little rude.) Is this what the world has come to that even people in their 60's are in a hurry and can't wait an extra 2 seconds at a stop sign? Grrrr.

We had Easter at our house today. It went really well. The food was good and I'm pretty sure everyone had a good time. Here's to more low-stress holidays!

Really excited that the Chicago Blackhawks won game 6 of their playoff series tonight against Vancouver. It was a pretty darned exciting game. I can't wait for game 7 on Tuesday!

Grace will have her first communion in a couple weeks. We're getting ready for that now with both the things that have to be done for her actual communion service and also for the party afterwards.

We took little Riley to the pediatric ophthalmologist on Thursday and our own personal "not-a-doctor" analysis was spot-on (spock-on.) She needs glasses for now for her lazy eye with a follow-up in a month to see how she's doing with them. The good news is that we're treating her earlier than Grace was treated so there is a possibility that we could avoid surgery.

Hopefully I can start writing more regularly. Only time will tell.

Softball

On Monday Grace had an orthodontist appointment. We just learned last week that our orthodontist is suddenly retiring. Some of you know that I had braces as an adult and in fact had them when Grace was born and for a few years after that. Anyway, I used this orthodontist off a recommendation from someone...I can't remember who anymore. He is an excellent orthodontist and has specialty brackets made for him that are smaller than typical brackets. He also has a different philosophy in regards to how fast you move teeth and expand palates.

We just started Grace's treatment about 6 months ago and I think most of the hard work is done already and her teeth are looking really good. The teeth that didn't have room to come in have started to break through now too. So anyway here we are in the middle of her obviously early treatment as she will have to have more treatment when she's older just like everyone else, as that is the normal age to get braces. Our biggest concern is that we get an orthodontist with a different philosophy than his that likes to just shove teeth around with little regard for pain or the future structural integrity of the palate. He's recommended an orthodontist that is in the complex we go to now and she also has a similar philosophy and uses the same brackets, but does to a few things differently. So I'm not sure what to do. We meet the orthodontist he's suggesting we use on Wednesday but I'd like to also talk to him about someone a little more similar to him that might also be closer. It's a real bummer and it also sucks that it's so suddenly. I'd really like to find out why he's doing this so quickly.

I usually go to bible study at my Dad's house on Monday nights and this week Grace came with me. I honestly thought she'd get bored at some point, but she really hung in there. I'm not sure how much she really understood, but was mostly paying attention and appeared to enjoy being there. It was cute as she brought her study bible with her and was reading along as we read through the scriptures we were discussing (2 Samuel Chaps 5, 6.) I think she especially liked our snack this week which was ice cream.

Tuesday was kind of crazy. We had plans to go swimming at my Aunt's friends house also with my Sister and her kids. The night before, Grace's friend from across the street asked her to go to Great America with her as it was the last day to use their bring a friend for free coupon. We decided to let her go with her friend and reschedule the swimming (sorry Nancey.) My Sister-in-law also called and wondered if we could go swimming on Tuesday. So she asked when we could swim at her house later in the week. I said either Thursday or Friday and they said Thursday sounded great. But not long after that my Aunt called and wanted to reschedule our swimming with my Sister and Thursday was the day as my Sister was busy on Friday. So now we have to reschedule with my Sister-in-law. It's hard to be popular...ha ha ha. I know it's the girls, not me, that are popular.

Yesterday we only had plans to take Grace to the library for a meet the author event. This local author was coming to read her book to the kids and then sign copies for them to take home. We couldn't do much during the day because the weather was still not cooperating. We've had a lot of severe weather here lately. In fact I'm concerned that the only large tree on our property which is in our back yard might have to be cut down. I think there is a crack in the middle of it now which would mean it's too weak to be left up. It probably wouldn't hit our house if it fell, but it would still affect us. It is actually over three properties, but the trunk is in our yard. I'd really hate to lose it as it provides a lot of shade for us. Speaking of storms and my Aunt, they did get their power turned back on Monday morning - close to Noon. Then when we had the severe weather today it went out again but came back on within a few hours. We're really lucky that it never went out for us.

So Julie wasn't home before we went to the library so we brought Riley with us and she acted about exactly as I expected...she was all over the place. She hadn't had much of a nap and so was tired and just didn't want to sit and listen or anything like that. I tried to let her explore in the back of the room, but of course she wanted to go up by the kids. That would have been fine, but she wasn't quiet so we just couldn't stay in there and keep disturbing everyone trying to listen. That's why they were there. So I didn't hear really any of the story because Riley and I were walking all over the library. Then Julie got there and picked up Riley and took her home. I forgot to ask her if she had any cash on her so we could buy the book so after it was over Grace and I ran to the ATM and got some money and hurried back to have the author sign it before she left.

Today we had our rescheduled swimming with my Sister and her kids. Also my step-Mother came and of course my Aunt was there. We all had fun I think but it was just a lot of work and I was tired afterwards. Because of road construction it took us about twice the normal time to get home so we didn't have much time between swimming and softball practice. But we got there and we both made it through. I was really feeling it during the stretching let me tell you. I was worn out.

I named this post softball because of what I found out at practice tonight. Remember my last post where I mentioned that I wasn't so happy with my pitching at Grace's game on Saturday? Well, apparently I wasn't the only one as another coach on our team said that the coach from the opposing team asked her during the game if we wanted them to pitch to our team. Wow! Maybe I should end my pitching career now.

Remember Me?

Alright, so it may have been nine months since I last blogged, but believe it or not, we're all still here. Things are going well. Grace is finished with first grade which actually makes her sad. She just loves school and is not so happy that she's not going now. Hopefully that won't change too much as she gets older.

Julie and I have decided to give her a little "summer-school" over the summer by having her do some work that we give her each week so that she has something to do and to keep her up on her school skills. We don't want to teach her everything that she'll learn in second grade before she starts, just keep her skills up and help her be more ready for school when it starts up again at the end of August.

Oh, speaking of school, why do we have to pay a "registration" fee for our child's "public" education that we pay a LOT of taxes for? And why does this fee go up so much each year? I find it ridiculous. It's hard to plan how much money to save up each year if it goes up so much.

We're trying to plan a vacation for later in the summer before school starts again. We don't want to spend a lot of money which probably will also translate to not travelling very far. Unfortunately we haven't decided what to do exactly yet. We have ideas, but nothing is written in stone yet.

Grace is playing softball this spring and I am her coach. We just had our third game yesterday. Since they're so young and most of them are playing for the first time we don't keep score. They really are just playing to learn and have fun. So far it's been a lot of fun. I pitch to the girls and I have to tell you...I need to improve. Grace had vacation bible school this last week and so we were super busy all week and I never had a chance to practice pitching and it really showed during the game yesterday. Obviously I will need to keep up my practicing so as to maintain some type of consistency for the girls.

We had some big storms here on Friday and my Aunt and Uncle still have no power at their house. Unfortunately they really need electricity as they both use c-pap machines to help them breath at night and my Grandfather uses oxygen at night and those machines don't work without electricity. My Grandfather stayed with us last night so he'd be cool and so he could breath. But he was ready to go home today even though they are saying the electricity won't be back on until sometime Monday.

While Grandpa was with us we took him and my Dad and step-Mom out for dinner last night for Father's Day. We went to Outback Steakhouse. We don't go there very often and they've really changed the menu. I have to say I wasn't so impressed. The bloomin' onion was good and the sample I had of the cheese fries was really good, but the food just wasn't the same. I'm not sure why that is, but I'd say we won't be going back anytime soon.

Is it the weekend yet?

Another day is done. Riley and I took it even easier today; we didn't go anywhere.

Grace woke up on her own again today. I had to convince her to eat something for breakfast though as she's just not hungry when she just gets up. She got to the bus in plenty of time and when I got back in the house Riley was still sleeping but not for too long. I got her up and she ate and really didn't play for too long and she got tired again. Then she proceeded to take a 3 1/2 hour nap. This was time for me to finish mowing the grass by mowing the back yard and other yard stuff. Then a sealcoating guy came by and so I got the driveway sealed.

By this time Grace was home with her friend and Riley was waking up. So she was really tired by the time Julie got home which was actually a little early today. I never decided what to make for dinner; well that's not entirely true as I had intended to go to the grocery store but since Riley took an early and long nap I didn't have time since I couldn't go once Grace got home. So we just basically had breakfast stuff.

Speaking of Grace...she's so funny. She played with her friend for like 3 hours after school. Then when she went home Grace saw the next-door neighbor outside and told him she would find out if she could play with him after dinner. So she comes in asking if she can play with him after dinner. Since it was 6pm and her bedtime was fast approaching we said no. You would think she hadn't been allowed to play with any friend for a week and she had this great opportunity to play with him and we said no. Oh the drama. "It's not fair," "he's going out of town for the WHOLE ENTIRE weekend." There were more, but you get the idea. Julie was able to squash it by letting her play right then for 10 minutes until we had dinner ready. Crisis averted; Mom's are good at that.

Anyone else following this whole issue regarding the alleged "torturing" of al-qaeda detainees after 9-11? I don't feel waterboarding is torture because no permanent physical harm is done. What the Japanese did to American POW's in WWII was torture. Waterboarding isn't torture. But that's just my opinion which I'm entitled to in our country. This has spawned a criminal investigation into the Bush administration whether any laws were broken and if any punishments should be handed out because of enhanced interrogation techniques following 9-11. My feeling is they should thank their lucky stars that this was done because it could possibly be the reason they are alive today.

I'm SO SICK of hearing that Obama has "inherited" all of these issues from the "previous" administration and that everything bad about our country is because of the previous administration as well. When Obama took office and even to this day he continues to state he only wants to look forward. Yet how many times has this whole issue of what the Bush administration left them been brought up? And now Atty. Gen. Eric Holder had been allowed to pursue this investigation and the rest of the administration is basically saying that it's Holder that's doing this and anything that comes of it is entirely on him. They had nothing to do with it.

There were three...yes, THREE detainees that were waterboarded. Thats all. No more. I hate to be the one to break it to people but war is hell. This is a war whether Obama wants to change the name or not, plain and simple it is a war. Things done in a time of war are quite honestly horrible; war is about killing people after all. Understand that not everything done on a battlefield would be acceptable to the common citizen. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded something like 185 times and after this he gave in and starting teaching his interrogators how to fight a terror war. He didn't just provide information about other plots that were to follow, he gave them a glimpse into how it all works and what they are ultimately trying to accomplish. I don't know about you, but to me that was worth the price of admission, legal or not. Of course I've already stated that I believe it was legal to begin with.

I'm officially off my soap-box now.

Have you also been following the case against David Earls in Oklahoma? He raped a 4-year old girl and received one...yes, ONE year in county jail (not even prison) for this. He is scheduled to be released on September 24th but now they are bringing about new charges for other child crimes he's committed in hopes of keeping him in jail. Thank goodness.

And did you see that the Netherlands have told Laura Dekker that she can't sail around the world yet? I think if the Dekkers had approached this differently by stating that she'd have a support crew following her in case anything bad happens they wouldn't be going through this legal proceeding right now. That's what the kid that just finished sailing around the world did. I think this would help ease a lot of concerns. Just my 2 cents.

I don't miss summer

Everyone here is complaining it's not hot this summer but personally I don't miss the heat at all. I had enough of that when I lived in Oklahoma. Why would I want to sweat all day or stay in the house in the air-conditioning? Why not just have it be nice outside like it has been? Ever been to San Diego?

I do have to admit it really hasn't been warm enough to swim very many days this summer so for that, I can understand someone missing the warmer weather. But otherwise, I don't miss it. I think the high today was 74 and right now it's already down to 58.

Here's a fun article (and short) for you to read about pink flamingos. This just happens to be in the town we'll be going to in a few weeks for our football game. I just ordered the tickets a few minutes ago. Yea!

Well I did a little research on the whole student-to-teacher ratio thing and I've found this study: Project STAR which pretty much clearly states that smaller class sizes equal better students in the long run. So I guess I don't have anything to complain about. I guess we should just go with the flow. Not sure if Julie will agree though.

As far as today was concerned Riley and I took it easy. Grace woke up on her own today and ate breakfast again. She was excited that I had gotten Captain Crunch cereal. So she was off to school and Riley still wasn't up yet. She finally started to wake up around 8:30 today. I had another chiropractor appointment today (I'm going three times a week for another month until things straighten out.) After that we just came home and hung out. She got tired and I put her down for a nap which unfortunately wasn't at the best time. I probably should have kept her up a little longer and fed her lunch and then put her down for a nap. I say this because she slept until Grace and her friend came home from school. So I got her up and fed her and we played for a while again and then only about a half an hour before Julie was going to be home she started to get sleepy again. But I put her down and she fell asleep for about 30-45 minutes so actually it all worked out just fine.

We just had left-overs for dinner so that was easy. Then after I did the dishes I ran outside and mowed the front yard and pulled a few weeds. Now I just need to get outside tomorrow and mow the back yard.

Now for tomorrow I still need to figure out what we'll eat for dinner. I'm still not liking this new "diet" thing. It's really hard to cut dairy and garlic. It sounds silly but pretty much EVERYTHING has either milk or garlic in it. Try and find a salad dressing that doesn't have one or the other. I think I'll just have to start having oil and vinegar for my salad dressing.

Cruising along

Can you hardly believe that Grace finally took her school supplies out of her backpack on Monday?!?!!! I'm so glad that's over with. She even got a few papers back yesterday too and one said "great" and one said "wow." I think school is on track for Grace this year. I made it to my Chiropractor's appointment yesterday morning with little Riley. She was so cute; I had to wait a few minutes and so I took her out of her car seat and was playing with her. Then when it was my turn I put her back in but didn't strap her in. About half-way through the treatment she fell asleep. She was just so cute; she had turned on her side and fallen asleep almost cuddled up. I wish I had my camera so I could show you how cute she was.

After stopping at Target on the way home to buy some food and Riley taking a good nap I made BBQ Chicken and corn on the cob on the grill for dinner. After dinner was bible study at my Dad's house where we finished up studying Joshua (chaps 20-24.)

So yesterday wasn't so eventful but at least Grace finally left her school supplies at school. Today was a pretty good day too. I had to wake Grace up again today (yesterday too) but she had breakfast and was out the door in plenty of time to catch the bus. Then I came back in the house and was expecting Riley to be waiting to get up but she had fallen back asleep; possibly a remnant from not enough sleep the day before. So I read the paper and did some other stuff while I waited. After she finally got up I got her fed and then like clockwork my sister shows up only 2 minutes after the time she says was the approximate time she might be over. She's funny!

She was just dropping off some clothes and stuff that doesn't fit April anymore for us to use for Riley. After that Riley and I played for a while but she was ready for a nap pretty quickly so she went down for a nap around 11am and while she was sleeping I started cooking some sweet potatoes for her and while they were cooking I did some research on the places we are wanting to go. We have decided to take Grace to her first Badger football game (yeah!) So I was researching tickets and I did find some but I need to check with the person that usually watches Riley when we leave to see if they can actually do that on the day we are planning to go. If so then I think we'll be able to get some pretty good seats for a pretty reasonable price. I can't wait!

After that Julie and I want to get away for a night. We haven't had a "date" night in a while, but also our anniversary is coming up. Since we didn't really do anything for our anniversary last year (our 10th) we've decided to do something nice this year. It is a little pricey, but it will be SO worth it! The biggest problem with going away is obviously the person that usually watches Grace and Riley but also hotel availability and our busy schedule. We haven't worked out an actual date yet, but we ARE going. We deserve it.

In Grace's folder today was a note from her principal and no she isn't in trouble (how could you think that?) Apparently there has been a significant increase in the number of kids enrolled in first grade this year which they didn't expect. Personally I thought that's why you enroll so early in the year so that this isn't a problem but maybe people wait until the last minute. What they want to do is add an additional teacher and spread the kids out among the four teachers instead of three. Right now in her class there are 27 kids and there are two other first grade classes. So it sounds like there is approximately 80 kids or so and they want to get the teacher-to-student ratio down. Honestly for both Julie and I when we went to school we usually had this many kids in our class every year. So I don't see what the problem is unless the classroom just isn't build to hold that many students. What the letter that was sent home was asking was if we wanted them to do this. The options were a) no preference b) keep it the way it is c) add an additional class. I guess ultimately the lower your teacher-to-student ratio is the better their education would be, but I don't know if that's necessarily a proven fact; especially with kids this age. We'll see what happens.

The rest of the day was pretty normal today. I made dinner early (egg salad) since Tuesday is my night out. I had dinner ready for Julie so she didn't have to "find" something around the house or make anything. Plus then we'll both have lunch for tomorrow as well. Then I headed to a new place in the area that felt like home. In a town about 14 miles from our house they just opened up a new SONIC! You read that right, a Sonic! Unfortunately if you read my post a few days ago you know that I can't have limes so no limeade for me :-( But the burger was good.

Now I'm at the library which is where I usually end up each Tuesday night. It's quiet and I can read or surf the internet or whatever. Did I mention it was quiet? :-)

Fridays and Hard Drives

Grace has officially made it through her first week (although only a partial week) of first grade. I think she likes it just as much as she liked kindergarten last year except she did say tonight when I was putting her to bed that she hopes she isn't so tired at the end of the school day next week. I told her she'd get used to it pretty quickly. It is a big difference as kindergarten was only about 3 hours and now she's in school for about 7.

Now tomorrow she has gymnastics at 8am so she'll be getting up at the same time as all week for school. But that's for 3 hours, not 7.

Hold on, watching the shuttle launch...

Discovery (STS-128) made it up tonight. Looks cool at night.

Anyway, back to blogging. So you might be wondering what Grace may have brought home with her in her backpack. You would be right if you thought that she still has pretty much everything in her backpack. She took out her 3-ring binder today, but she still has 22 glue sticks, markers, pencils, all kinds of stuff in there. She says she just forgets to take it out and that she doesn't want to take it home with her every day even though she has been doing that. Hopefully Monday we will see better results with this.

She had what they call "Buddies" today. I'm still not really certain what it is but it has to do with 3rd graders and them getting together and it just so happens that the 3rd graders they are teamed up with include our next-door neighbor. So she says she'll get to be teamed up with him. That's pretty cool. She also had art today and I can tell she enjoyed that because she has some marker on her forehead and all over her hands. She's not the neatest kid, but she enjoys what she does. I do really think she enjoys art because when she came home she started on some art project of her own with a bookmark we picked up at the library the other day that you're supposed to color yourself.

Riley keeps waking up each morning as Grace isn't the quietest kid either. I don't want us to have to tip-toe around the baby when she's sleeping so honestly I don't mind her making noise but for some reason she keeps waking up pretty early. And that would be alright too as she doesn't need to sleep until some set time each morning but if she gets up too early then her nap schedule won't really work. Honestly she hasn't really been on a wonderful nap schedule yet as she is usually just taking one long nap. Today since she got up fairly early I put her down for her nap early and she almost slept until Grace got home. So this would be alright too but she can't stay up from 1:30 until bedtime. That's just entirely too long. She was acting sleepy around 4:30 so I put her down again and she got a little nap it before Julie got home, but it wasn't a normal nap. Maybe I'll have to start getting her up from the first nap if she sleeps too long so we can split them up better.

But then we run into problems if we aren't home. It's always give and take like this. If we aren't home she pretty much just doesn't take a nap although she will sleep in the car typically. So if we aren't home then she would generally only get one nap anyway and it would be good for her if that were as long as possible. Oh who knows, we'll get that all figured out as time goes on.

So if you looked at the subject of this post you'll notice more computer related stuff. Can I just say before I start this part that Western Digital drives from my personal experience fail and pretty much always before you would expect.

When I bought my HP desktop last year I had a 400 GB Western Digital hard drive that I just transferred over to use as my main drive and used the larger drive that came with the computer for storage. It started to act funny so I took it out and put in a 500 GB Western Digital hard drive I had to preempt any problems that may have happened. Several months later the 500 GB drive dies so I buy a brand new 640 GB Western Digital hard drive to use for my main drive. In less than a month I think it failed. So now I have 3 drives (all in warranty) that have failed. Thank goodness they are under warranty, but honestly how does a person go through 3 hard drives in one and a half years? I'm starting to think this darned HP is cursed. I'd just like to burn this thing.

So anyway I go on the Western Digital website and find out that the 500 GB hard drive's warranty is expired unless I can prove when I purchased it. They go by manufacture date unless you have your receipt to show when it was actually purchased. Well I do have the receipt so when I put that information in, I only had a few weeks of warrantly left. So I sent that one out on August 17 and they received it on the 21st of August. They mailed the replacement drive on the 25th and I received it today. The only problem is I have to do this two more times but at least I'll get 3 new drives. All I can say is to ensure you backup your system regularly. Luckily I have been except when I lost the 500 GB hard drive I did lose 2 months worth of emails. But it could be much worse.

Does this mean you shouldn't buy Western Digital hard drives? I don't think so. Just keep your data backed up and pray it doesn't die after the warranty period is over.

Just a couple of photos

I wanted to get these pictures online before I forget.

Here is Grace from her first day of school.


Here is Riley from last week where she's only almost 7 months.

1st Grade

So Grace had her first full day of school today. She says she likes it and can't wait to go back tomorrow. Yeah! But...guess what she brought home with her........again!?! Yes, she has all of her supplies in her backpack still. Silly kid. She claims her scissors are no longer in the backpack. We asked again if everyone else emptied their supplies out and she says not everyone and that she forgot. I can't believe this chick. Why would you want to bring a full backpack of supplies back and forth to school everyday? She's pretty silly.

She still needs to bring in a picture of herself to put over her locker. Their lockers are open (no door) and at the top there is a little cubby where instead of putting her name they are supposed to bring in a framed photo of themselves. I got the picture printed tonight, but unfortunately the frame we had got into a little accident this morning (apparently when attempting to turn off the light) and we no longer have a piece of glass in the frame anymore. :-0 Hmmmm, what to do...

Last night at dinner Grace said her day was good. When she got to school she went to the cafeteria and everyone was finding their teacher and then their teacher took them all and showed them their classroom. After that they took a tour of the whole school. She said they went past the map that I helped paint last year and that she told the teacher I helped to paint it. I, of course, wondered what the teacher said in response to which Grace replied............."I don't remember." Should have seen that coming. Honestly as I write this I can hear myself as a kid....hmmm, very fitting I suppose.

So today she says she had a good day too. She got to eat lunch in the cafeteria for the first time. She went to P.E. for the first time this year. She has the same teacher as last year. I think there was some kind of rumor last year that this person wouldn't be back or something this year. I think it's good to have consistency so it's a good thing this teacher is back. (Plus I hear they like the Wisconsin Badgers!) What could be wrong with a person that likes the Badgers?

She did say a few other things about what she did but honestly at this point I don't remember what they were. Who's bad at remembering here? Lets just hope AGAIN that she doesn't bring all of her supplies home for the weekend. I'm guessing she's just getting out what the teacher tells her from her backpack since that's where her supplies are and then puts them away in her desk or wherever, and then never takes the time to put all of her supplies away and then all the sudden it's time to leave.

I had an appointment with my new chiropractor today and took Riley with me. She didn't do as well as the last time I went, but she made it through just fine and of course got more comments about how cute she is, such nice blue eyes, etc. She's still got it. We think she's pretty darned cute. I think she didn't do as well because she's starting to wake up earlier since her sibling is up earlier and isn't exactly quiet it the morning.

Who knew that Grace could turn out to be a morning person? She woke up at 6:30 all by herself again today and comes in the bathroom where I'm showering and says "Good morning Dad." She was even pleasant sounding. She was talkative all morning long. She's never gotten up that early two days in a row as far as I can remember. She's never been an early riser and usually is quite cranky by the end of the day if she does happen to get up early one day. But so far we're doing well with the new school schedule. Let's hope it continues. We have school tomorrow and then Saturday morning is gymnastics. Sunday is church, but we don't go too early; usually around 10:30am. So that's her "sleep in" day. She will have R.E.P. (used to be called C.C.D.) on Monday nights. I'm not sure when that starts yet. I just dropped off her enrollment form with the tuition payment today (finally.)

So that's the school situation so far. It's early I know but so far things are going well. I continued my new diet restrictions today and I have to say that so far this really sucks. I did read the instructions that come with it and it says you may not feel well after you start this and so far I'm not feeling so great. Not flu-like symptoms (which are possible) but I just don't feel good. And yesterday and this morning I've just been REALLY hungry because we just really don't have many foods in the house I can eat so I haven't really eaten much. I used to eat two eggs, some cottage cheese and a yogurt for breakfast. That's been cut down to only two eggs. I don't have anything else to eat with it. I could have a piece of toast but I'm really not thinking I want toast without butter.

I bought some soy milk today so hopefully I can have some cereal or at least some oatmeal tomorrow. That should help. I made the mistake of looking for some snacks to eat at Target today. I was looking down each isle trying to find something I could eat (anything, really) and found not one snack I could have. Nothing in cereal bars, granola bars, chips, snack foods, nothing. I found NOTHING to buy. And by the time I was done looking at all that I was depressed and just left. I had had enough. I'll have to sit down this weekend and work out some type of menu so I have things around the house I can eat but right now it's pretty much slim pickings.

Has anybody seen these news stories about the girl in the Netherlands that wants to sail around the world solo at 13? Actually she will start next week on the 1st which is apparently her 14th birthday. Family services or whatever it's called in the Netherlands is trying to take temporary custody of her so that they can prevent her from doing this as her parents have given her their blessing to do this. Her name is Laura Dekker. I actually think if done right she could do this, but I'm not so sure they're approaching this the right way. A UK teenager just finished doing this (he was 17) and he had support sailing with him the whole way. Many people are saying she doesn't have the experience to tackle such a daunting task. I don't know for sure. From what I've read she has been doing this for many years including sailing solo for the last 4 years or so. But is this enough experience for such a major task? I can't say. But if she does end up embarking on this adventure I certainly will root for her and hope she accomplishes her goal. I do think it's great to have big goals in life and to pursue them with all your heart.

I'm sure you have heard about the finding of Jaycee Lee Dugard after 18 years. Amazing. I'm so glad she's finally been found. What a horrifying experience she has lived through. I'm just glad she finally got out of there and that the people that took her and have held her this long have been taken into custody. They deserve all the justice system has to offer. Simply disgusting. I hope she can return to a fairly normal life soon.

One more little note...it's STILL raining. Even Grace is complaining about it raining so much now. We're up to 2 1/4" so far over the last two days.

First Day of First Grade

Grace had her first day of first grade today. Of course it was only a "half" day which translates to around 3 hours. Since our school district is low on funds (okay lacking funds) they have reduced the school day as much as they can in order to pay the teachers as little as possible and try and save money that way. So a normal full day is around 6 hours with them getting home around 2:20 in the afternoon. That's fine for a family like us that has a parent home when she gets off the bus, but for the average family I would consider that a hardship. You have to find after-school care for 3-4 hours possibly.

I know most families have to pay for some type of after-school care but it just seems to me that this is a long time to have to get child care each day. I know I didn't get out of school too recently but I remember getting out of school around 3:30 I think every day (honestly can't remember that far back either...maybe I am getting old???) By the time you're either home or at after-school care it would be close to 4 and if your parents get off work early maybe you'd only have to get an hours worth of after-school care. She gets out of school at 2 and is home before 2:30. If you get home at 5 that would be 2 and a half hours (I'm not saying you the person reading this can't add, I'm just spelling it all out :-).) I don't think most people are really home by 5 each day. Julie can be some days if she gets out of work on time and doesn't hit a lot of traffic. If it's the winter and we even have snow flurries, forget it; she won't be home until probably two hours after she leaves work. Just think if we had Grace in after-school care and Julie couldn't get there for a couple of hours. It's like watching the checkout people at the grocery store when they're scanning in your food. Just watch the amount of the total bill going up and up and up. (I hate spending money at the grocery store.)

So anyway she had her first day of school and we of course had to buy a bunch of supplies for her to take to school with her. We had them all stuffed into her backpack to take to school today. When she got off the bus her backpack looked just as full. That's because it was. She didn't take her stuff out yet. She brought it all back home. I don't know if she wasn't paying attention at school and didn't hear that she was supposed to do this or maybe just didn't or if she will just be doing it tomorrow. She said that some people took the stuff out of their bags. Maybe they were listening or maybe they were the one's that weren't listening. Who knows. Hopefully we'll find out tomorrow as hopefully she won't come home with all that stuff again.

She hasn't said how school was yet as she's been playing all afternoon with her friend. They don't have the same teacher but at least they are on the same bus and can sit by each other every day. There was some worry today because her friend didn't come home on the bus. Grace says she saw her outside when school was over but then she disappeared. Her Dad was waiting for her at the bus stop but she didn't come home so he made some phone calls and turns out she stayed at school for after-school care because she will be using that in the future...just not today. The school wanted to be safe, not sorry. I think that's good, but maybe the paperwork they have should better specify when she needs to go there so they are sure where she needs to be each day. I don't know.

Julie and I will try and get Grace to tell us how her first day was at dinner. She's honestly quite vague about everything school related. Without specific questions it's simply a vague answer like "alright" or "okay," nothing with much emotion that's for sure. But at the same time, tomorrow will be a much better day to try and judge how she likes first grade as it will be her first full day. In my opinion - her first true day of school. Sorry for not having a picture like we did last year. I did take one before she got on the bus though and I can post that later.

If you read my entry yesterday, you know about this ALCAT test I took. You should read the comment I got. It helps explain better what it's all about. Thanks "yenvy"! That helped me understand more what's going on. The results actually use the words you say, intolerance, etc. but it still didn't really hit home until you posted your comment. Thanks again!

Today is a rainy day - we've had an inch and a quarter already and I see more rain on the radar coming this way. This will be good for the grass and our plants. It was so nice going to bed last night...I just love the sound of rain hitting the roof when I'm going to sleep.

You're probably wondering why I'm blogging in the middle of the day. Okay...you probably didn't even notice the time but I point it out because Grace is playing with her friend, Riley is sleeping, dinner is already made and the dishwasher and washing machine are running (towels on Wednesdays.) So I had a few minutes to sit and relax DURING THE DAY! WOW! I know it's surprising, but hey I'm just as surprised.