Slugs

This summer we ventured out to BC to visit my parents place in Chilliwack. They are not there that often due to dads monthly work rotation in and out of Russia and mom setting up base closer to him in the UK. This August though we decided to try to meet up in Chilliwack, Estelle and her kids also made the long trek up. On our first full day there we went for a really nice hike to Bridal falls.

The hike is pretty short but you are in the beautiful BC forest. It was raining that day, though since the trees were so big and dense you didn't really get wet, and so the slugs were out. My mom has a brother that had made BC his home long ago while everyone else stayed in Calgary. One of the few memories I have of a visit to BC while I was a kid was of enormous slugs. The kids had a great time collecting every slug they could see and gathering them on their lovely slug home on a stump. I am certain all the slugs were ecstatic to see one another.

First Day

Yesterday was my first day at my new job. As a treat Alli made this crafty chocolate tipped pencil for me to take. I have to be honest, it is an exciting and proud moment for me to display my kids paraphernalia, especially when I can recollect doing similar things as a kid. For example what kid didn't make their father some sort of clay cup or dish for Fathers Day? I will be consuming the chocolate tip but the rest of the pencil will be displayed.

Crafty Alli

This is Alli's first painting. It was an acrylic paint by number from her birthday. I think it is awesome.

Happy Birthday Alli

Alli, being our oldest, gets to experience a lot of things first out of our kids. That means she gets to set the standard for her siblings and plough the path. Setting the standard may be fun but ploughing can't be too much fun. She gets to make the mistakes and train her parents. Then she gets to disseminate this information to the younger ones. Jen and I are both second children so we don't have the experience to draw on. One thing for sure, she is getting big fast. This year was another great birthday. She had a kid party which went pretty well but being a July baby, attendance is always a problem. I remember always having that problem as a kid, not the most fun but we did have a few kids make it despite it being summer holidays. We also had a fun family celebration, and again grandma sent her home with enough things to keep he occupied for some time. Alli has been into crafty things recently and loves to make cards or other things for friends and family. Grandma thought it prudent to expand her craft collection, and boy did it expand. Once we got home Alli just felt like laying it all out on her craft table so she could soak it all in.

And as I have mentioned on several occasions my favourite part is the video Jen puts together. And since I love it so much I feel like sharing. Happy birthday Alli.

Fathers Day 2011

Yesterday was fathers day and it was a great day. I got to sleep in, well as much as you can with 9am church. Jenny made a lovely breakfast of blueberry scones. We then were off to church where they handed out Dad’s root beer with a medal on it that said “Top Pop”. I think it was a clever hit. Then home to a little nap and a nice lunch of bread, cheeses, crackers, bruschetta and salad. Next off to Jenny’s parents for a family meal. Busy day but really nice.

Jen had the idea of preparing a clever video for her dad of the grandkids being interviewed about him. I love Jenny’s videos, I am also probably a little biased since they usually contain my kids. This one is quite entertaining, I was in tears laughing so hard. So I though I would share, enjoy…

Relocating H2O

It is a custom in this frozen place to relocate newly fallen frozen H2O (aka snow) from the sidewalks and driveways to the grassy areas. This allows people and vehicles to use the areas without the fear of falling, slipping or getting stuck. I hope yesterday was the last time I will have to do this until the fall.

On Friday it was relatively warm and the existing snow melted, we though spring was here finally… Well, not quite yet. Calgary is known for it’s bazar weather so this should really come as no surprise, however, Calgary also isn’t known for it’s large snow falls. We really don’t usually get that much snow, this year has been an exception. Yesterdays snow fall was quite a large one.

 

Smoking

Jenny and I have been spending some time recently painting a rental property of my dad’s that he bought 4 years ago. When he first bought it there was a “cat lady” who lived in the one side of the place. By “cat lady” I mean an older lady who lives with her cats and who’s house has a continuous haze of smoke hanging above your head. We decided to no longer allow smoking in the place and so decided we needed to repaint the place, among other things. Last week I was painting the ceilings with a paint that is meant to lock in the smoke stains, it is a flat white color and I though I would snap a picture to share. If this doesn’t speak for the effects of smoking I don’t know what does.

Hayden Turns 4

Hayden's birthday was low key last year. His birthday fell right after Halloween’s busyness and just before Adalia’s arrival. We had a nice family dinner at the Grandparents house, celebrated with his uncle Derek who’s birthday is just 3 days earlier. The theme this year was Dinosaurs! Hayden has grown to really like typical boy things, despite the constant attempts by his sister to turn him into a little girl. He is into cars, transformers and dinosaurs. Jenny ventured to make a lovely dinosaur cake.

The party was low key but the presents were abundant! A little cash for the little man from the great grandparents and about 30 dinosaurs and accessories from the grandparents.  Grandma couldn’t decide that to buy when she went shopping so she got it all. Big ones, small ones, ones that move and ones that make noise. We don't have a picture of them all but you will just have to believe me.

 

And of course, as is the tradition, the birthday movie.

Halloween 2010

I am going back a bit and writing about some things that happened in the fall that I never posted about. Halloween 2010 fell on a Sunday again but that didn’t stop us from celebrating it a day early. We had a ward trunk or treat on Saturday that we went to and got all dressed up for. Since Jenny was quite far along in her pregnancy we looked for a dress up idea that we could incorporate the pregnancy bump in. She had found some ideas but we decided on the skeleton family theme. People seemed to love it, and think it was creepy all at the same time. We got a few odd looks as we drove to the party. I have to say I liked it a lot better than last years costume. Last year I could hardly see, was hot and stuffy and kept tripping over kids including my own.

Halloween is a special holiday in our home and requires us go all out. Since the actual holiday fell on Sunday we had a family dinner with the Halloween theme. It included spider web soup, skeleton punch and stuffed pumpkin.

Last year we won the award in our ward for best family costume. This year we won it again. Jenny spends hours making costumes and this year was no different. We though we would go easy, since Jenny was almost 8 months pregnant, but it turned out to be almost as time consuming as last year. Fortunately this year was quite warm so we were able to walk around in just our costumes to collect our treats, really it is always a shame when you have to hide all that work behind layers or cold weather gear.

I don't know what we will come up with next year but I guess I will let you know.

New Person

So I was trying to think of something to blog about and Jenny reminded me that I never did post anything about our new addition. I was feeling like it was a bit late and that pictures of her, and her in person, have made it around to pretty well everyone. But just in case you missed it here are a couple of pictures taken by my fabulous photographer cousin Heidi. Love the hats. Adalia has been a great baby, she is calm and quiet and Alli and Hayden love her. She also seems like a cuddly baby which Jenny loves. She has a lot more hair than either of the two kids had but she does look like bits of Alli and Hayden when they were born. We are glad to have her in our family.

 

 

Valentines

This year was a bit more low key that last year. In fact I wasn’t really home for very long on Valentines day. I was out in the evening helping long time friends of ours move into their new house. However I though ahead this year and prepared something for Jenny. Nathanael had sent me a comical comparison between a potato and a rose that I though I would eventually use for Jenny. I wasn’t quite sure how to twist it so that it came across right. This year I figured I would venture to use it for Valentines.

First the letter with the quote, well kind of a quote but I had to re-word and sensor it.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Surprised at the potato? Well here is some symbolism that may make you think differently;

Potato Vs. Roses

Roses only last like a couple weeks, and that's if you leave them in water. They really only exist to be pretty, so that's like saying "my love for you is transitory and based solely on your appearance"

but a potato! Potato’s last forever, in fact, not only will they not rot, they actually grow even if you just leave them in the sack. That part alone makes it a good symbol but there's more!

There are so many ways to enjoy a potato! You can even make a battery with it! That's like saying "I have many ways in which I show my love for you". Potatoes may be ugly, but they're still awesome so that's like saying "it doesn't matter at all what you look like, I'll still love you".

I then carved a potato into a flower and put in a box with some chocolates. Here is the picture but the potato looks a bit weathered since this picture was taken a few days later. See I do have some creativity in me!

Talking Babies

We took a video of Alli, when she was just a few months old, of he “talking”. Adalia is now at about the same age and to us she makes the same sounds Alli did over 6 years ago. It is quite cute and though I would share the two videos.

Alli Talking

Adalia Talking

And Just for fun something that Adalia does a lot.

Fun In The Snow

Yesterday we decided that since it was such a nice day we should get out and have some fun outdoors. We went with Nathanael Becky and their kids and Lizzy and Elli. It was sunny when we were leaving Calgary but started to turn grey and windy and we were driving out to the Kananaskis. We thought about heading back but decided to press on. It started snowing, but since it was so warn it was actually really pleasant and beautiful. There was a nice cover of fresh snow over everything making it brilliant white. The warmth made the snow perfect for snow men too. All in all it was a great day in Canada.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christmas Lights

I though I would finally share the video of my Christmas lights that I set up this year. There was a competition in our neighbourhood which sparked the interest in the first place. Though we didn’t win the competition it was still fun to have the house light up. It takes hours to do something like this, I had no idea but thought I would share a bit of the work required. I bought the controllers from Light-O-Rama as well as the software program that runs the light programs and music. We had actually bought the lights last year after Christmas when they are the cheapest. The controllers came in the summer, which I then put together. The lights I put up in November just before a cold snap which was fortunate. There are about 3500 lights and two light controllers with 16 channels each. There is also over 500’ of extension cord to run to all the different channels. Gives me a new appreciation for other set ups that I see on the internet. Finally the programming takes about 4-6 hours per minute of music. That is the hard part, trying to think of how you want the lights to move so that it goes with the music and isn’t too repetitive. Anyways enjoy the video. It’s not very good quality because it was quite cold when I recorded it and my camera didn’t really like it. Oh also there is an FM transmitter to allow people to listen to the music in their vehicles, you can see the station on the board.

Adalia’s Blessing

We got to bless Adalia a couple of weeks ago and though I would share a couple of pictures. Dad was up from Utah for a conference so we though we would take advantage of the opportunity and have the blessing that week. Of course Jens dad, brother and grandpa were all in the circle too. It is always a special time to bless your own baby, they are a gift from God and it is nice to be worthy to use his priesthood to give the child a name. Adalia’s name means “God is my refuge” which is why we chose it. As most people close to use know we didn’t expect to have any more children after Hayden. We had a girl and a boy and though our life was busy and full, but God saw fit to encourage us to have another child. After a bit of coaxing on his part we consented, but we knew this would be a challenge. He name reminds us to rely on the Lord in our trials.

Here is a picture of her in her blessing dress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was the same dress we used for Alli over 6 years ago.

Just for fun he is a picture of each of them on their blessing day.

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.