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Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Sunday, March 20, 2011
How I Spent My Weekend
For many of you experienced Internet users, the terms SQL, MySQL, DNS, LINUX, FTP, domains, webhosts, and many other strange and unusual acronyms make perfect sense. For all I know, I just wrote poetry to you. As for myself, I spent my weekend figuring out what the heck this all means so that I can make our dear little blog here into a real live grown-up website!
I waded through many websites. I googled acronyms. I read what I can only guess must have been English, but didnt' understand one bit of it...bandwidth, uplink, backup, POP, RDBMS, GUI...ok, I understood the 'and's' and a few other random verbs. And if there were numbers....
After many hours and much research learning this new and completely foreign language, I felt I was ready to make my move. The first thing that happened was a bit anti-climatic. I signed myself up, and now I have to wait for them to do something. Who knows what? I looked up the phrase they used, and about half way through found myself laughing like a maniac. My husband thought I was reading a funny blog, or watching a funny baby on YouTube...but no, I was in a technologically induced hysteria. I couldn't stop laughing. It all seemed so funny all of a sudden.
There I was standing on top of what I perceived to be 'Understanding'. What I was really standing on...somewhat precariously I might add, was the tip of a Very Big Iceberg.
I closed the computer. I decided to finish up later. When my head is ready for more of these new-fangled connections. I think I may have overheated my myelin...there may have been smoke.
I'm hoping to have us all moved into our new spot later this week. It'll be the same address, with some fun new pages, and crap. Crap. That's about as technical as I can get this minute:)
I waded through many websites. I googled acronyms. I read what I can only guess must have been English, but didnt' understand one bit of it...bandwidth, uplink, backup, POP, RDBMS, GUI...ok, I understood the 'and's' and a few other random verbs. And if there were numbers....
After many hours and much research learning this new and completely foreign language, I felt I was ready to make my move. The first thing that happened was a bit anti-climatic. I signed myself up, and now I have to wait for them to do something. Who knows what? I looked up the phrase they used, and about half way through found myself laughing like a maniac. My husband thought I was reading a funny blog, or watching a funny baby on YouTube...but no, I was in a technologically induced hysteria. I couldn't stop laughing. It all seemed so funny all of a sudden.
There I was standing on top of what I perceived to be 'Understanding'. What I was really standing on...somewhat precariously I might add, was the tip of a Very Big Iceberg.
I closed the computer. I decided to finish up later. When my head is ready for more of these new-fangled connections. I think I may have overheated my myelin...there may have been smoke.
I'm hoping to have us all moved into our new spot later this week. It'll be the same address, with some fun new pages, and crap. Crap. That's about as technical as I can get this minute:)
Friday, March 18, 2011
Deciding what's for dinner
Now it's Friday. I take the sweet 16 to the store with me. She is full of helpful suggestions, spaghetti, tortellini, pancakes, sandwiches, cereal, hot dogs, fish sticks.....her list was endless. WE could go out to eat she suggests, or get take out.
The problem was me, I did not feel like any of those. Who knows why, I just didn't. We walked up and down the aisles hoping I would feel inspired. I could tell I was driving her nuts. But at 16, she is too cool to say so. Finally I say let's just get frozen pizza. She throws it in the cart and heads quickly for the checkout. Probably to avoid me changing my mind. So we are having pizza and salad tonight, not very original, but very easy. Unless of course I change my mind.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Leprechaun Traps
Okay, I know I am risking the scorn of a certain sister who disdains almost all holidays but I have to share this.
Apparently, unbeknownst to me until yesterday, there is a growing trend among children. A trend to build leprechaun traps. Miss 6 came home from kindergarten with a partially built one. Miss 7 came home irate because her teacher had promised her they would take time to build one and they didn't. And how on earth was she going to catch a leprechaun the night before St. Patrick's Day if she didn't have a trap? *gasp*
hmmm...
I told both girls they could work on their traps after dinner. After assuring Miss 4 she could also build one, the cutting and taping began. They were so involved they cried when I mentioned bedtime and I had to give them an extension.
Here's what they came up with:
We woke up this morning to three very happy girls, with hands full of "leprechaun gold," excitedly explaining to us what happened during the night. It was like Christmas!
So, maybe it has nothing to do with the actual history of St. Patrick's Day, and maybe we've started something that could get out of control in years to come, but this was really fun. Especially watching Miss 6, who doesn't believe in Santa Claus, but is completely immersed in leprechauns and is absolutely dying with belief that she is actually going to catch one.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! (Don't forget to put on some green so no one pinches you.)
Apparently, unbeknownst to me until yesterday, there is a growing trend among children. A trend to build leprechaun traps. Miss 6 came home from kindergarten with a partially built one. Miss 7 came home irate because her teacher had promised her they would take time to build one and they didn't. And how on earth was she going to catch a leprechaun the night before St. Patrick's Day if she didn't have a trap? *gasp*
hmmm...
I told both girls they could work on their traps after dinner. After assuring Miss 4 she could also build one, the cutting and taping began. They were so involved they cried when I mentioned bedtime and I had to give them an extension.
Here's what they came up with:
Notice the round golden balls.
After watching this flurry of activity my husband and I realized we needed to do something. We thought we could go pick up some gold coins to leave by the traps. Dear, sweet husband searched store after store, only to discover that you cannot actually buy gold coins anywhere the night before St. Patrick's Day, but luckily he is creative. He bought "gold nuggets."We woke up this morning to three very happy girls, with hands full of "leprechaun gold," excitedly explaining to us what happened during the night. It was like Christmas!
So, maybe it has nothing to do with the actual history of St. Patrick's Day, and maybe we've started something that could get out of control in years to come, but this was really fun. Especially watching Miss 6, who doesn't believe in Santa Claus, but is completely immersed in leprechauns and is absolutely dying with belief that she is actually going to catch one.
Happy St. Patrick's Day! (Don't forget to put on some green so no one pinches you.)
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Journey of a Chair
When we first moved into our house, in 2000, we didn't have enough furniture for there to be some in every room. Entire closets were completely empty...we just didn't have enough stuff to put in them. We had one couch, which was in our family room. We had beds. We had a kitchen table with chairs.
Quite a few neighbors came over to welcome us, and we had them sitting in our living room on kitchen chairs, a piano bench, and a lawn chair. I had determined that I was not going to fill that room until I had the means to do it right. I pictured a couch and two great chairs.
Our Bishop at the time had heard that we were furniture-less and offered us money to go buy a couch at the local thrift shop. No, thank you, we told him.
Fast forward to 2008....I now had a couch for the living room, and closets stuffed to capacity. What i didn't have was the 2 chairs I'd always dreamed would accompany my couch. we were broke, and so began perusing classifieds for 'previously owned' chairs. (Sounds so much more sophisticated than, 'old crap') We finally found two beautiful wing back chairs in a lovely yellow and green striped material (Picture to the right shows original chair material and sleeping daughter...hopefully she doesn't mind). We had seen similar chairs retail for over $800 a piece and here were these being given away at $150 for both! We called, jumped in the car (ok, it was a Previa, but I hated that thing and don't like to admit to it) and drove about 20 minutes to the home of the lady with the chairs.
Her taste in furniture was....interesting. Her home was....well, expensively done is one way of nicely saying she had no taste and spent a LOT of money proving it...:) She thought the chairs were old and grandmotherly. We bought them. Blair packed them into the Blue Bean and we carted them home. They looked great!
In 2009, in the early hours of a Sunday morning, our son Timothy cut his lip and climbed onto a chair. We were still in bed, but could hear him happily playing in the living room. When we got up and went into the living room, it looked like a crime scene! The chairs, more one than the other, were COVERED in blood. A little blood and a lot of saliva go a very LONG way. (We did not take pictures)
Most of the blood came out, but the chairs were not designed to stand up to that sort of disaster and the material had now sustained water damage that no amount of cleaning would fix.
I decided to reupholster the chairs. Turns out, I loved it! New hobby I am crazy about! I only had time to do the worst chair quickly and the other one had to wait about 6 months. They look great and have a fringe around the bottom. Which the cat hates....or loves...either way, he has eaten/shredded/mutilated quite a bit of it and I just spent my morning replacing it. Of course, now the couch, it being 11 years later, is done. I'm dying to reupholster it, put it downstairs to replace the flood couch and buy a new couch for the living room. Of course, by the time I get all this done, something else will have happened to the chairs...and then there's the piano which has had most of the varnish chewed off of one side....
Quite a few neighbors came over to welcome us, and we had them sitting in our living room on kitchen chairs, a piano bench, and a lawn chair. I had determined that I was not going to fill that room until I had the means to do it right. I pictured a couch and two great chairs.
Our Bishop at the time had heard that we were furniture-less and offered us money to go buy a couch at the local thrift shop. No, thank you, we told him.
Her taste in furniture was....interesting. Her home was....well, expensively done is one way of nicely saying she had no taste and spent a LOT of money proving it...:) She thought the chairs were old and grandmotherly. We bought them. Blair packed them into the Blue Bean and we carted them home. They looked great!
In 2009, in the early hours of a Sunday morning, our son Timothy cut his lip and climbed onto a chair. We were still in bed, but could hear him happily playing in the living room. When we got up and went into the living room, it looked like a crime scene! The chairs, more one than the other, were COVERED in blood. A little blood and a lot of saliva go a very LONG way. (We did not take pictures)
Most of the blood came out, but the chairs were not designed to stand up to that sort of disaster and the material had now sustained water damage that no amount of cleaning would fix.
I decided to reupholster the chairs. Turns out, I loved it! New hobby I am crazy about! I only had time to do the worst chair quickly and the other one had to wait about 6 months. They look great and have a fringe around the bottom. Which the cat hates....or loves...either way, he has eaten/shredded/mutilated quite a bit of it and I just spent my morning replacing it. Of course, now the couch, it being 11 years later, is done. I'm dying to reupholster it, put it downstairs to replace the flood couch and buy a new couch for the living room. Of course, by the time I get all this done, something else will have happened to the chairs...and then there's the piano which has had most of the varnish chewed off of one side....Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Pretty Food
Yesterday in honor of pi day (yes, we know it was pi and not pie) two of us decided to follow the recommendation of a friend of ours and make a delicious dessert called Clafouti. We found it on her blog (http://fivetdsisters.blogspot.com/2011/03/liberal-arts-majors-imperfect-tribute.html?spref=fb).
We loved, loved, loved it so now we must pass on the recommendation to everyone we know.
I made mine with marionberries.
Admittedly, my picture doesn't do it justice. I baked this and then turned off the oven to go for a walk. When I got back, the berries were a tiny bit dark, so my dear husband tried to help it look better for the picture by adding a little whipped cream, but seriously it tasted really wonderful.
My sis made hers with peaches. When I doubled checked with her, before posting this, to ask if she liked it, she was very clear that she loved it.
Now that looks appetizing, doesn't it?
Yummy!
Trust us, Clafouti is worth trying.
And it's fun to say too. (kla-foo-TEE).
So, click the link, get the recipe, do a little baking, and enjoy. In the words of my little Miss 1, this is "pretty food."
Monday, March 14, 2011
Costco and Books
So, I was at Costco on Saturday, and there was this guy promoting his book. Normally, I would try to avoid eye contact in this situation, but I had a feeling I should meet this person. If you know me, you know I'm about following my instincts. I'm hardly ever wrong when I get a 'feeling' or 'prompting' about something.
So, I met him. His name is Jared Southwick, (a link to his website) and he wrote a book called 'Marysville'. Yesterday, I read it (I read very fast) and I LOVED that book! It was exciting, fast paced, and had a fun sense of humor. If you are in my bookclub and reading this...(HI Charlene!:) I choose this one, instead of my other pick. Go buy it at Costco. Seriously.
My other thought today is, Why Are There So Many Days Off Of School? I like my kids a lot, and I enjoy holidays, weekends, weeknights, summer breaks, spring breaks, and fall breaks. Are you seeing a pattern here? In addition to these days, we have Teacher Comp days, half days, partial days (not the same thing, I've been assured) early out days (again, not the same thing) and now we have the 'Snow Day'. Are you kidding me? Snow Day? In the history of my living in this fine state, I have never seen these people cancel school for weather. Ever. But here we are, home again, using up an unused 'Snow Day'. And I am here, with um, let me count...one...two...three, four, five...six..and the two in the play room..some downstairs..oh wait, there's the door.....ok three more plus the one asleep...and the baby....(me counting silently) for a grand total of.....SIXTEEN KIDS AT MY HOUSE!
I better go, I just heard a crash...
So, I met him. His name is Jared Southwick, (a link to his website) and he wrote a book called 'Marysville'. Yesterday, I read it (I read very fast) and I LOVED that book! It was exciting, fast paced, and had a fun sense of humor. If you are in my bookclub and reading this...(HI Charlene!:) I choose this one, instead of my other pick. Go buy it at Costco. Seriously.
My other thought today is, Why Are There So Many Days Off Of School? I like my kids a lot, and I enjoy holidays, weekends, weeknights, summer breaks, spring breaks, and fall breaks. Are you seeing a pattern here? In addition to these days, we have Teacher Comp days, half days, partial days (not the same thing, I've been assured) early out days (again, not the same thing) and now we have the 'Snow Day'. Are you kidding me? Snow Day? In the history of my living in this fine state, I have never seen these people cancel school for weather. Ever. But here we are, home again, using up an unused 'Snow Day'. And I am here, with um, let me count...one...two...three, four, five...six..and the two in the play room..some downstairs..oh wait, there's the door.....ok three more plus the one asleep...and the baby....(me counting silently) for a grand total of.....SIXTEEN KIDS AT MY HOUSE!
I better go, I just heard a crash...
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