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:
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Positive Thinking
Joy, we need to get Chase doing this each morning.
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Sunday BBQ
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.
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Moment Updated to 2.1
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.
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Wrapping Up the Joy School Year
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!
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Ahhh, Finished!
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. 🙂
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Yes please
We need one of these. Joy has a health problem, I think, ok maybe not, I made that up. Great for Christmas presents! Phone orders are no longer accepted due to the large amount of orders being placed. Visit the site to place your order. (if you open the page and wait 6 minutes you’ll get a $5 off pop up)
*Nathan told me about this first
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3D TVs = Bad
First off, seriously who demanded 3D tvs enough for companies to think we want them so bad? Exactly, no one. 3D tvs are being pushed out b/c they offer so many additional selling pieces. Interestingly enough Samsung came out with a huge list of warnings against 3D tvs. Most of them make complete sense, and I’ve experienced many during or after a 3D movie. So what do you think? Will you support 3D tvs or let them go the way of BetaMax?
Here’s half the report:
# Some viewers may experience an epileptic seizure or stroke when exposed to certain flashing images or lights contained in certain television pictures or video games. If you or any of your family has a history of epilepsy or stroke, please consult with a medical specialist before using the 3D function.
# If you experience any of the following symptoms, immediately stop watching 3D pictures and consult a medical specialist: (1) altered vision; (2) lightheadedness; (3) dizziness; (4) involuntary movements such as eye or muscle twitching; (5) confusion; (6) nausea; (7) loss of awareness; (8) convulsions; (9) cramps; and/or (10) disorientation. Parents should monitor and ask their children about the above symptoms as children and teenagers may be more likely to experience these symptoms than adults.
# Viewing in 3D mode may also cause motion sickness, perceptual after effects, disorientation, eye strain, and decreased postural stability. It is recommended that users take frequent breaks to lessen the likelihood of these effects. If you have any of the above symptoms, immediately discontinue use of this device and do not resume until the symptoms have subsided.
# We do not recommend watching 3D if you are in bad physical condition, need sleep or have been drinking alcohol.
So facebook is a cool useful place to gather friends and share info, but what happens when that company that has all your info starts whoring you and your friends out to the highest bidder? Well you have to login and change your privacy settings again b/c they automatically set it up for you to make them money. Seeing how all of you will want to do this, here’s step by step instructions.
See this thing… now think evil… now click learn more
That takes you to this list (your privacy settings, also accessible via your account drop down list)
Click edit settings across from “What your friends can share about you”
Uncheck all the ones you want (I unchecked all of them b/c I don’t want any unsavvy friends sharing any of my info with urbank.com)
Hit save, and go back to the list, now click on edit settings across from “Instant Personalization”
This is the awesome one, it is automatically checked and it says Can we make partners and let them automatically access your public info, even if you’re not logged in? Pretty please, they are our “partners” oh and they pay us money… So uncheck that, and then click the STUPID confirm button, they want to make you understand you are screwing them by withholding this cool feature.
There that’s it! Now you’re again safe from stupid automatic privacy settings changing in Facebook.
Here’s a video running through all that, go fullscreen.
I am feeling a little bit bewildered about the changes that will occur this summer. With 2 sisters getting married, you can imagine there’s a lot of drama, chaos, sadness, happiness, uneasiness, and excitement in the air. Things are going to change…
We won’t have sister bonding time nearly as often.
Or Sunday evenings filled with food, chatter, and ninja star throwing.
But one thing that I know will stay the same is the length our giraffe-like necks! Some things never change.
