My, How You Lose Track of Things...

James pushed a button on the keyboard, and now the computer refuses to acknowledge that Linux exists. Because of that, I didn't want to put my pictures on the computer. I hate Windows but put up with it because it lets Jonathan get paid (what idiot designs a website that only works with IE? Payroll, apparently...). And now I can't share all my pictures because, well, I don't have the camera, anymore. That one's a rather involved story that I will not get into, here. We'll just leave it at "we don't have the camera, anymore." Sooooo, here's what I've gleaned off my cell phone.

First off, we moved in March. It was kind of sudden and what was in our price range and fit our requirements landed us in the next ward over. It's an odd adjustment, after nearly 7 years, but we're coming around. Mind you, they're making a new ward in just 2 days, so we might be adjusting again, soon.
Moving meant driving the kids to school every day, too. Not fun, but at least they got to finish out the school year before they had to change that, too. Joseph's birthday was the first day of Summer Break, and it was a good one. We had chocolate cupcakes, presents, and lots of fun inventing a new game called "Warf!" I'm still not sure what the rules are, but they kids still ask for it.



Determined to make the summer both fun and something Jonathan can participate in, too, we have our Calendar O' Summer Fun! We've been to the library's special reading club activities, including meeting some police dogs. We've played at the park. We've even gotten to go on some trips. This is the wheel from the Mormon grist mill in the Marktplatz in Fredricksburg.


We also got to see the new Orion space capsule as it passed through on the way to New Mexico for testing. Joseph got to look at the model of the emergency launch abort system that the tests are for.



Much less fun was Joseph's MRI. Our pediatrician noticed that our boy's got a serious noggin on him--like, nearly adult-sized, and he's just barely 5--and wanted to see if there's anything odd going on in there. This was a real... adventure. It took a half-dozen tries and an extra three hours to get it done because the first two sedatives didn't take and he woke up part-way through the first scan. Why the sedatives? Have you ever tried to get a 5-year-old to lie perfectly still inside a buzzing metal tube for 30 minutes?

That's about it. Here's a bonus picture, to tide you over until the next post, of a roadside dive on the way to Fredricksburg. If I'd had a drink in my mouth, at the time, I'd have snorted it right out my nose.

Flashback

Our old computer died right before Conference and the new one came with Windows. We decided to try it out, having been using Linux for the last 8? 9? years, and while it is useful for many things (mostly watching Netflix) it's a pain to use because I can't find anything. I'm also not too sure I want to put my pictures on here and because of that all the pictures I've taken in the last month and a half are still firmly on the camera card. I've decided to bypass Windows, though, and just stick them straight on here because I'm tired of not being able to post stuff.

~Easter~

We pulled out the colors and dippers and aprons for egg dying, but this year we got to try out a cool kit for putting metallic foil on your eggs. It was super sticky but the kids had a great time. The eggs turned out really pretty, too. (As a note of warning, when peeling the eggs, afterward, you have to be sure to rinse everything, including your hands, or you'll end up eating foil.)

James did a great job finding eggs, he just didn't want any. We managed to convince him to put the first one in his bucket, but he'd get upset if you tried to give him any more.


The bigger kids were expert egg hunters, though, and had a great time looking around for new additions to their growing hoards.


As a side-note, I am amazed by how small my tomato plants are in this picture. They've reached jungle proportions, by now.

~Playing with Doorknobs~

I tried to get one with his hand on the knob, but he was being too sneaky to get caught with photographic evidence.

~The End of Kindergarten~

(round one)

The school year is winding down. Elena has made a ton of friends, discovered that boys can be really weird, become one of the librarian's best customers, fallen in love with Magic Treehouse books, rocked the Read-a-Thon with 1204 pages in just 12 days, become a Marathon Kids finisher, studied the anatomy and life cycles of ladybugs and butterflies, learned some basic Spanish, and figured out multiplication. She's getting ready for next week's field day(s), right now, so be on the lookout for more on that.

~Look, Ma! No Fingers!~

There's no picture here because, well, there's nothing to see. And that makes me very happy, indeed. About a month ago, we realized that we hadn't seen Joseph sucking his fingers in a while. He wasn't nodding off with fingers in his mouth, he wasn't sucking them at random moments in the day, and he wasn't using them to feel better after some injury or disappointment. Even better, the skin had dried up and wasn't peeling off, anymore. Hooray!

Onward

Nothing seriously exciting has happened, 'round these parts, but life does continue onward with it's little ups and downs. Here's a sampler of what we've had going on.

Joseph took the over-sized basketball jersey out of his PJ cubby and used it to make what he calls "mine supertape." The supercape helps him fly, apparently, so there's been much jumping off of chairs and the couch. He has also worn said supercape to the dinner table. Twice. Daddy giggles when he does this.

Elena, in a effort to prove she's ready for Harry Potter, picked up Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. She says it's a very silly book. She's also trying to get through Aterix and Obelix and the Normans, but it's been slow going because she keeps asking us to explain the puns.

I vacuumed my PC's processor fan, today. That's a first for me. It's working better now, though, and we'll give it a few more days before deciding if greater measures need to be taken before Conference, this weekend. The mirowave, however, isn't looking any better. The broccoli that whirred away for nearly 15 minutes, in total, and yet was still frozen (!) seems to indicate that I'll have a shopping trip in the somewhat-near future.

We got to ride the MetroRail, last Monday. Honestly, the most stressful part of the whole outing was keeping James under control. That boy has sooooo much energy and prefers to expend it by either a) climbing stuff, or b) running in circles, neither of which is recommended on a crowded commuter train. Other than the Squid-Child, who can wriggle and contort in the most amazing ways when he wants to get loose, our ride was great. People were polite and cheerful, the train was smooth and quiet, the bigger kids had paper pop-up toy versions of MetroRail trains, and the stations were well-designed for efficiency (if not always comfort).

Spring break was a Grand Success with three batches of cookies (and a batch of brownies), the school's playground available during the middle of the day, green pancakes for St. Patrick's, a whole afternoon at Mueller Lake Park, and a pile of movies from the library.

I knit two more pairs of socks, one for Elena and one for James. I've got enough yarn left on both balls for at least another two pair, though one would have to be pretty small.

We finally got to watch UP with the kids. We let them stay up late (since it was Spring Break and all) and it was so much fun watching them watch the movie. They were happy, sad, scared and excited in all the right places. Joseph would get nervous when the dogs came on and even cuddled up next to Jonathan when things got a bit intense.

I'm sure there's more but I can't think of what, right now. I'll try to be back here soon.

New and Freaky With a Side of Hope

My mouse broke. It actually broke several months ago and I glued the piece back into place, but I really don't want to keep gluing it, now that it's loose again. So I got a new mouse, tonight. It's optical. It's also so much more sensitive than the old one that I can't get my arrow onto anything to click.

The mouse is awesome, but the real reason for going to the store was to test car seats. Again. This was Target, though, and not BabiesRUs. They don't let you test the seats in your car at Target. Even so, I think I might have found a winning combination.

Here's the infant seat we've got our eye on. It's the Baby Trend Flex-Loc and it's only 16" wide.
This is the most promising car seat. It's the Cosco "high-backed booster" and is 17" wide.

The reason the car seat looks so promising is that there is a ~1" overlap where the lip of the infant seat slides over the edge of the car seat's seat, effectively making all of the car seats 16" wide. The back seat of my car is ~48" wide. Follow the math and you'll see the light begin to dawn.

Target also sells this, the Cosco Pronto booster, but it wasn't in our store so I didn't get to test (or measure) it tonight. It's main bonus feature is that it starts at 30lbs and 34" (it fits Elena) but I don't know if the arm rests will flip up to make room for the infant seat.
We're going to see if we can have a discussion with a store manager to test the car seats out. If the manager lets us, and they fit, that's a $200 sale and a very grateful customer. Frances, you know people, right? Can you help?

Catching Up

We' re back! The computer has been fixed and updated, but so much has happened in the last week. First of all, I'd ordered a new Macbook (my first call from Visa Fraud Alert!) for Jonathan so that he could write papers in the library at school. That showed up on Tuesday and we've been having a blast playing with it ever since. That's Elena playing her faviorite Build-a-Bear game.


I also decided to start showing Elena how to spell her name. She loves singing the ABC song and I showed her all the letters on our whiteboard, then wrote her name out. She wanted to try it too, and this was the result. That's the "a" on top of the "n." Still, a pretty good job for her first try.


Joseph has been enjoying the newly cleaned floor and hall--maybe a little more than he ought to. I wanted to see how he'd do on the stairs, but he was a little too tired to really give it a go. Our biggest trouble now is that he zooms over to the dinning area and eats cheerios that fell on the floor at breakfast.


As for the Days Not Pictured, the kids and I went to the Botanical Gardens on Wednesday, and visited Gwamma and Popa afterward to play with the cats and get the computer fixed. All four of us went to CROP Walk on Saturday. It was cold and blustery but the pancakes helped and the music was really fun (go Rick!). Poor Joseph had the hardest time falling asleep and while the blanket covered most of him, his chin got a bit sun-and-wind burned during his nap.