Valentines Day

So Jenny is a bit of a holiday fan. She loves holidays and tries to get into them as much as she can. Doesn’t matter the holiday really, as long as there is some kind of theme that she can follow. Obviously it would be difficult to really do much for say, Remembrance Day… She often does crafts with the kids, sometimes trying to incorporate a teaching aspect to the craft. For instance last years thanks giving tree. She made a little tree and a bunch of paper leaves for the tree. We would write down on a leaf what we were thankful for that day and hang it on the tree. She also tries to make the days dinner special by making foods or choosing foods with colors that fit the theme of the holiday.

This year Valentines Day fell on a Sunday. Often we go over to Jen’s parents place for Sunday dinner after church. Wanting to add her touch to the meal she offered to take on the task of preparing the dinner. Since it was more than just us for dinner she went all out this year. She spent quite a bit of time planning and preparing the meal, down to little details like hart shaped ice cubes. In order for any food to qualify for the meal it either had to have some red color in it or be shaped into a heart. Our biggest problem was transporting everything to her parents place, but despite Jen’s lofty ambition it all came out quite well and it was a lot of fun.

For starters; Home-made Tomato Soup and Strawberry Spinach Salad with a Red Wine Vinegar Dressing.

Main course; Meat Loaf (heart shaped), Double Baked Potatoes (arranged in heart shapes) and Roasted Red Pepper.

Desert; Home-made Strawberry Ice Cream in a Chocolate Bowl.

To Drink; Cranberry/Gingerale with heart shaped ice cubes.

Décor; (combination of Jen and her mom) Red flowers, red vases, and a vase filled with cinnamon hearts with paper flowers in it.

And of course what would any family event be without a fabulous home video by our own in house producer/editor.

Talking Cards

So while looking for a card for my mothers birthday I came across these great cards from Blue Mountain. They technically are only available for the paying customers but you can sign up for a “free” temporary membership and try it out. The cards are really just a very basically animated character, the awesome part is that you can get them to say whatever you want them to. Just type in the words and pick one of a few voices and voila! instant talking card.

This card I sent to my mom. It was my first crack at it, but playing with punctuation a little bit you could tweek the speech a bit more.

This card I sent to Jenny for Valentines day. For those of you that don’t know I have abnormally long arms. Supposedly your arm span is supposed to be the same as your height, or close to it. I am about 5’10”ish but my arm span is more like 6’2”ish so it’s a bit of a standing joke that incorporated nicely into this card.

Beware The Sly One

This week Jen had a pretty frustrating thing happen to her. She had responded to the e-mail that you see below thinking it was from Yahoo. 
She had actually received two e-mails like this, this being the second of the two. She ignored the first but when this one said that her account would be frozen within 24 hours if she didn’t respond she replied with all the info they requested. Nothing happened right away but last week Thursday it all happened at once. The perpetrator, we’ll call Bob, took over her account and created a new password, changes the security questions, created a yahoo account that was nearly identical to hers (just swapped two letters of hers), and forwarded all incoming traffic from her account to that new account. Bob then proceeded to send a distress e-mail to all the people in her contact list from her account. Many of you were the recipients, myself included.

Jen ended up spending a big part of her Thursday fielding many phone calls from many concerned, or confused, friends/relatives. At the same time she did her best to spread the word that Bob had compromised her account. Yahoo was useless, they have no phone number that you can call, just e-mail addresses that you can send a message to and hope for a response within 24 hours.

In her attempts to find out her password it appeared that Jen had temporarily frozen her account. I though I would just check to see what would happen if someone responded so I responded to Bob. Well Bob responded back, it looked like Bob had unfrozen Jens account and was keeping it alive. I decided to keep a dialogue going with Bob to perhaps buy more time, get Bob to divulge information or something. In this continued dialogue is when I noticed that Bob had set up the second account and that was how Bob kept the communication open even though I think Jen’s account was frozen.

Our two main concerns were to make sure no one we knew got scammed and to try to get the account back. We felt like we contacted everyone we could think of so we felt like no one should be caught by Bob. With respect to the account however, Jen had several hundred e-mails that she was just in the process of starting to organize as a type of journal or legacy about her and those of her family that she writes. This is the kind of stuff you can’t replace. Well Saturday night an idea of divine origin came to me, I remembered it from a movie and though it might work here. Below is the full dialogue between Bob and I. 

From: Jenny Smith

Sent: Friday, January 15

Subject: In Need of Support

I Hope you get this on time ? Sorry I didn't inform you about my trip to the UK, I'm presently in Royal Victoria Dock, England U.K.I am having some difficulties.

I misplaced my bag containing valuable things on my way to the hotel.I feel so ashamed,At the moment my passport and other belongings are been retained by the hotel management pending the time when payment is made.

I will like you to help me with a loan of  $3,470.43  to pay my hotel bills and return home.I promise to pay  back upon my return; Let me know if you can be of any assistance right away. Email me A.S.A.P.Thank-you so much.

Regards

Jenny

From: Luke Smith

To: Jenny Smith

Sent: Fri, January 15

Jenny,

I would be happy to help you, just let me know how I can get the money to you right away.

Luke

From: Jenny Smith

Sent: Fri, January 15

I appreciate your concern!I was told by the hotel management that you can send me the Funds via Western Union Money Transfer.It should be sent in my name and to address below which belongs to the hotel, Be rest assured I will refund the money upon my return.

Name:  Jenny Smith

Address: 2 Festoon Way,  Royal Victoria Dock, London,  United Kingdom

As soon you get it done send me the Transfer details: (Money Transfer Control Number), I would appreciate it if you could get it done right away.I would be counting on you. I promise to refund the money upon my return.Thank-you so much.

From: Jenny Smith

Sent: Sat, January 16

I hope you got my the email I sent to you yesterday. It took time for me to respond as I have to plead with to the security guard at the library to allow me use the computer.

Would you be able to help me out of this mess today?. Email me so I can know the situation of things. I would look forward to your email.Please be quick, I am so embarrassed with this unfortunate incidence.

Jenny

From: Luke Smith

Sent: Sat, January 16

I didn't get your e-mail yesterday. I can send you the money using RBC, you know the account information. I think you should just be able to go into a bank there and they should be able to help you.

From: Jenny Smith

Sent: Sat, January 16

I appreciate your concern! It is a good Idea but as it is I do not have any money to get to the bank.I was told by the hotel management that you can send me the Funds via Western Union Money Transfer. They have an outlet a street away from the hotel,and that would be much easier for me to pick it up.

     It should be sent in my name and to address below which belongs to the hotel, Be rest assured I will refund the money upon my return.

Name:  Jenny Smith

Address: 2 Festoon Way,  Royal Victoria Dock, London,  United Kingdom

As soon you get it done send me the Transfer details: (Money Transfer Control Number), I would appreciate it if you could get it done right away.I would be counting on you. I promise to refund the money upon my return.Thank-you so much.

From: Luke Smith

Sent: Sat, January 16

I can't use western union. You know my history there. Can't you get to an RBC? Otherwise isn't there some other way for me to send the money?

From: Luke Smith

Sent: Sat, January 16

Jenny,

Forget the e-mail that I previously sent. I will just suck it up and go into Western Union tomorrow. I should have the transaction ready when they open tomorrow. That will be in about 9 hours from now. Or about 4pm UK time. Do me a favor though. It always makes me a little nervous sending financial information, especially for larger amounts, by e-mail. Someone could intercept the e-mail and that would be bad.

Let's do this instead. I can instead save a draft e-mail in your account. Send me your password to your yahoo account as soon as you get this e-mail. After I make it to Western Union tomorrow I will log into your account and create an e-mail that has all of the information in it. I will just save it as a draft. You can then log into the account, I should have it done like I said by 4pm, and open up the draft and all the information will be there. That way no e-mail needs to be sent for someone to intercept.

Just send the password to this e-mail address. I will check it often to make sure we don't waste any more time. I'll be glad when all this is over and you get back home you can tell me all about your trip then.

Luke

From: Jenny Smith

Sent: Sun, January 17

Subject: Password!!!

Alright, this sounds like a good idea, as regards to what you discussed with me I have deleted all our previous emails so there would not be any trace of me expecting money from any one.

 So you can just save the draft. I would check it about that time tomorrow.I must also thank you for all the efforts you have put in. My email jenrae26@yahoo.ca  password is "rainfall".

 Jenny

As you can see the plan worked. Sunday morning I was able to use the password to get into her account, change the forwarding address, change the password and change the security questions. The order was actually important, and I lucked out, because they actually send an e-mail to the forward address when you change the password to confirm that you did it. Jen has since gotten all the e-mails she wanted from the account a closed the account. Yahoo actually did respond and gave Jen a number to call but when she phoned they were again completely useless. Had this plan not worked she would have never gotten the account back.

To summarize here are some suggestions to avoid falling victim to Bob in the future. Bob will try to induce some kind of panic to provoke a quick and perhaps irrational response on your part. Beware the sly one! 

Tooth Fairy Already?

Hayden loves to play with his cousin Scott and Hayden calls Scott his best friend. It wasn't always so with the two of them. Not so long ago when they were a bit younger they didn't play very well together. Their time together required a lot of adult supervision (or intervention) and we would often wonder if they would ever just go and play. We'll they do see a lot of each other, nearly every week, so they have had a lot of time to work out their issues with one another. Now they do play, most of the time, without any mediation from the grown ups. Mostly I think it was just an age related issue.

One of the Days that we were at Jen's parents place over the holidays Hayden had a collision with Scott. Scott's head and Hayden's mouth came into contact when the boys were running around in the basement tackling, running into, bouncing off of, and general being a couple of boys with the toys down there. Usually one would expect a fat lip but it really just hit his tooth. I didn't think much of it and Hayden usually recovers from bonks (yes that is the technical term) quickly, but after he didn't settle down we took a closer look. He was actually bleeding around the tooth from him gums. Alli has banged both of her front teeth and they both discolored a little bit from the impacts. Hayden's event was quite different and we though this might loose his tooth. Since he is only just 3 he would probably be wearing that gap for a few years before the new tooth grew in. The picture below was taken a couple of days after the incident. His gum was bruised and his tooth was a little tender but looks like it is going to stay in there. Sorry Hayden, your going to have to wait a little bit more for the Tooth Fairy to come.

Rough housing

So, on occasion I like to do a little bit of rough housing with my kids. They often enjoy it as well, except of course for the times when someone gets hurt. That is just part of it though and the hurt individual is never out of the game for very long. Yesterday I was playing around with both Alli and Hayden. I was kneeling on the ground and the two of them were "attacking" me with their fists and I was fending myself off with little jabs to both of them. Alli realised that using her fists was having little effect on me so she switched to her feet. She started kicking me from behind. Since I quickly realized that she was in fact doing more damage I turned to her to tell her she was breaking the unspoken rule. Clearly no feet allowed. Hayden seeing that I had turned my attention to my rear assault quickly followed with a frontal attack also using his feet. He was much more effective with his attack placing a well aimed kick to my groin. As I crumpled up into a little feeble ball on the ground he continued to kick me while I was down. Eventually the two of them stopped and I was able to recover. Clearly I need to teach the two of them the unspoken rules of rough housing. Someone got hurt but that is just part of the game, it's not often me though. I have to say though I am proud of my little two who were able to take on their dad and beat him.