Month: May 2010

When Weddings Give You Lemons….

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 31, 2010

…Make lemonade! haha. The main decor of Rachel’s wedding reception was fresh lemons, so needless to say, there has been an abundance of them around here. We’ve made lots of fresh lemonade, which is soooo delicious. And it’s a great activity for kids!

In case you’re curious, we just mix 1 cup of fresh lemon juice, 4 cups of water, and 2/3 cup of sugar (or a tiny bit less) in a pitcher.

We enjoy using the juicer my parents have. We might have to get one of these things for ourselves, because with it, the kids and I are able to whip up a gallon of lemonade in less than 5 minutes!

As a side note, I love when they stick raspberries on their fingers and then eat them. It’s just adorable!

(Chase’s eyes have been puffy and swollen here due to allergies. This has never happened to him before, so I’m guessing there’s something in bloom here that we’re not used to. We’ve given him Claritin and we did eye drops once, but those don’t seem to be doing much. Advice?)

Family Fun

Relaxation

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 30, 2010

After the Fernsten wedding festivities and all the rainy weather, we’ve enjoyed the California sun and just being lazy. Things have been going at a slower pace than they usually do back home, and it’s been a nice break.

Chase has played with a few new (temporary) friends:

We’ve hung out in swimsuits, even though the pool is still a little too cold.

And of course we had to hit up Howarth Park, because that is the best place ever, even since I was little.

I often don’t think to take pictures of things we’re doing, but I decide not to be too hard on myself after all, because maybe it means I’m just enjoying the moment (or I’m too busy cleaning up, disciplining, talking, etc.)! 🙂

Personal

Concepts of Time

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 28, 2010

Pictures of fun stuff is coming soon, when Joy transfers me some picts or when she gets back, until then I have lots of time to sit around and think about things, which is cool, b/c I usually don’t get so bored that I say.. hmm I should think. To illustrate that I’m including this great short little speech about TIME. It’s been animated by a great company who I’m starting to really like. Take some time to watch this sch-peel on time. Coming soon, the speech about motivation.

Ranting Tech

Facebook again ARG

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 26, 2010

Speaking of things that need constant upkeep… I just got this in the mail and I don’t have any details yet, but I’ll let you know if anything has been automatically changed for you again.

Hi Pace,
Facebook will roll out changes today that will make it easier for our users to understand and control their privacy settings. As this change will have an impact on our users, we wanted to let you, a valued advertising partner, know about it. Please note that this change will not affect your advertising campaigns and there is no action required on your part.  

Facebook is a company that moves quickly, constantly innovating and launching new products to improve the user experience. The feedback we heard from users was that in our efforts to innovate, some of our privacy settings h ad become confusing.   

We believe in listening to our users and taking their feedback into account whenever possible. We think the following changes address these concerns by providing users with more control over their privacy settings and making them more simple to use.  

Starting today, Facebook will:  
* Provide an easy-to-use “master” control that enables users to set who can see the content they share through Facebook. This enables users to choose, with just one click, the overall privacy level they’re comfortable with for the content they share on Facebook. Of course, users can still use all of the granular controls we’ve always offered, if they wish. 
* Significantly reduce the amount of information that must be visible to everyone on Facebook. Facebook will no longer require that users’ friends and connections are visible to everyone. Only Name, Profile Picture, Networks and Gender must be publicly available. Users can opt to make all other connections private.  
* Make it simple to control whether other applications and websites access any user information. While a majority of our users love Facebook apps and Facebook-enhanced websites, some may prefer not to share their information outside of Facebook. Users can now opt out with just one click. 

UPDATE: I didn’t read the post but I watched the video on the facebook blog, and it SEEMS like they figured it out. They created a “master switch” that will keep your settings for all previous content and future features, allow you to turn off applications/website access, and “simplified” it. I logged in and didn’t see the new master switch page, so comment if you see it and how easy it is. Here’s the official explanation. Guess they didn’t like “delete facebook profile” as being a google trend… nice reaction Facebook, maybe you aren’t as evil as I thought.

Tech

Ahh computers

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 26, 2010

I have a love hate relationship with computers. Mac or PC it doesn’t matter, they all break at some point, they all need fixing at some point, they all need upkeep. Saw this video that summed it up perfectly:

Personal

Positive Thinking

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 18, 2010

Joy, we need to get Chase doing this each morning.

Personal

Sunday BBQ

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 16, 2010

With most of you who are usually over for family dinner… just wanted to remind you what your choices have BOOM random edit, end post.

Tech

Moment Updated to 2.1

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 13, 2010

Well I’m debating on waiting till tomorrow or just hitting the update button now. I jumped over to the Sprint.com forums to see if anyone was asking when the 2.1 update would come, when all of a sudden I saw a post saying it was out. And there were links! Woo hoo. So I now have on my HD the supposed 2.1 Moment update, from the Sprint servers, and the update instructions, which look very similar to the 1.5.7 update, but dated May 14th. ANYWAY, most of you don’t care. But for the rest of you, this is SWEET! Watch for an official announcement tomorrow.

Family Fun

Wrapping Up the Joy School Year

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 9, 2010

We’re almost done with Joy School! It’s hard to believe it’s already going to be over. When I realized that this was the last time it would be at our house, I decided to take some photos (since I haven’t taken ANY at our house in the past! SILLY!). So here are Rachel, Jaxon, Nolan, and Chase, playing on Chase’s top bunk during free play time.

Snack time, which is always entertaining and eventful:

The unit was on Imagination and Creativity, so we were focusing on creativity on this particular day. We had a few stories and songs, problem-solving situations, and lots of art. They loved the art projects! The clean-up wasn’t too bad with the “smocks” they wore (and the washable paint). It’s always good to have lots of artsy materials on hand for kids!

The Joy School program required a lot of prep at the very beginning, but after tha,t it was just a matter of reading over the lessons and getting things prepared for the day.

We had a bin of basic materials that we would pass around each week. It had a few posters along with crayons, scissors, and glue sticks for the kids. Below we have a tree that the kids would put an apple on when they arrived. Each of the apples have a photo of each kid taped on it:

A special helper would do the calendar and weather each day after we sang a special song for each one. For the calendar, we had fun September – May month signs (that Pace & I made), and we would reuse the numbers each month. (The Joy School program suggests to make different-themed numbers for each month, but I chose to simplify and just have basic numbers we could use all year)!

The weather chart is just a spinner type of wheel. They’d look out the window and decide what the weather was like.

One of the moms had made these little mats for the kids to sit on during lesson time. These mats were easy to fold up & transport in the bin.

This upcoming school year, I will send Chase to preschool, as will the other moms. But I am glad that I did Joy School for him this year, because otherwise I don’t know how I would have entertained him all the time!

Chase really acted up almost every time it was at our house, so it was extremely helpful to have Gretchen (or my mom, if she was in town) watch Charlotte for me! Even still, it was often pretty chaotic at our house, so I wouldn’t really recommend having more than 3-4 kids in a Joy School group. I actually think that four kids was the perfect number, because we each did a certain week in the month and rotated to take our turn again the next month.

Alright! Probably more info than anyone wanted, but I do highly recommend doing Joy School or some sort of preschool for your child because all the benefits are well worth the extra work!

McUpdate

Ahhh, Finished!

Post author By McAdmin
Post date May 9, 2010

A few months ago, we visited my cousins up in Farmington who have a similar floor plan to ours. We were amazed to find that they had finished half of their crawl space to be a play room for the kids. Brilliant! We sat in there and chatted a lot of the time, and just loved the idea. I could see the wheels turning in Pace’s head, and I just knew that we were going to have to copy the idea in our own house. When Pace had some extra website work come up, we figured this was our chance to make the “clubhouse” happen!

A contractor friend of ours was totally on board with it. Pace went ahead and cut a hole in the wall after letting the kids kick it and throw ninja stars at it. That night, he wanted to level out the very bumpy, uneven concrete floor. He got some fill dirt stuff that turned out to basically be manure…. Our house smelled BAD. So Gretchen helped scoop it back out of the space after we’d dumped it in there. Our garden was happy to accept the stinky offering.

We have some amazing family and friends who helped with the concrete (the concrete and paint were the only things we did ourselves, and it shows!). It definitely saved us some money on the project. Thanks to Jake, Bracken, Jim, Gretchen, and Tyler for your concrete work!

Rachel, Gretchen, and I tended the children, and these photos were just too cute to not post!

I took a few photos of the insulation on my phone only, but here we skip ahead to the drywalled, textured room– ready to paint! We bought a light sage green paint, but Pace decided after a little bit of painting that he hated the look, so we headed back and got some beige Kilz paint (called “Tahini”). We painted the outer accent wall the same brown color as the kitchen (“Toasted Pecan”). TMom & Jess took the kids to the bookstore so Pace, Gretchen and I could paint. Thanks, everyone! What would we do without our family?

…The finished product! We LOVE it! The room is 4.5 feet tall, so the kids can stand up just fine in there. They especially love running up and down the little ramp that goes into the room. We call this room the “Clubhouse” so the kids will think it’s cool/appealing to play in there. 🙂