You know you want one too!

My brother Eric (who has not started his own blog but SHOULD) sent me a link to the coolest table ever and told me that I needed one. It's a periodic coffee table; a coffee table with a periodic table inlaid in the top including samples of every element encased in resin. I won't lie-- I am nerdy enough to think it's awesome. I would love to buy one, but they cost $9500 and I don't have that kind of money laying around. And let's face it, as awesome as this table is (and it is pretty awesome) if I had $10,000 to spend on something frivolous I would probably rather have something from here.

Boy or girl?

I've noticed that when we go out, people assume that Kalena is a boy more often than they assume she is a girl. I would attribute this to the fact that lots of times we have her dressed in yellow or green or white, but it has happened when she's wearing pink too. This made me wonder a few things. The first is: do I just think this because I only notice when people are wrong? Secondly, if it isn't just me, and people really do assume boy more than girl, does this happen to every body (or every baby) or just me? Also, why do people assume she's a boy? Is it because Laura is right, and all babies look like little old men?

It doesn't bother me when people assume she's a boy. It does catch me off guard sometimes though. To me, she just looks like Kalena and sometimes I feel like that should be obvious to everyone. Oh well. What do you think?

Wherein I blatantly steal blog ideas

Before you read this, go read this post at Kirsta's. I'll wait.

Back? Ok. As I was reading this I thought- hmmmm. It's never seemed to me like I have to know that many numbers. So I wondered how many I actually know.

Here's the list I came up with:

Brian's cell phone
My cell phone
My work cell phone
My work office phone (people do not call me nearly often enough to warrant my having 3 phone numbers, but such is life I guess.)
Our address
My parents' address
My office building's address
My parents' house phone
My dad's office phone
Kari's cell phone
My social security number
Birthdays (month day and year) for all my immediate family
My driver id number for my work truck
My debit card number
4 different random letter/number combination passwords with no meaning associated to them
Pi to 5 decimal places
The number of elements in the periodic table. HA HA, just kidding.

This isn't a complete list, I'm sure I could come up many many more (including how many letters are in the alphabet-- it's 26 if you're still wondering Kirsta.)

There are a few I should have memorized but don't:

Any of our license plate numbers
The number of elements in the periodic table. HA HA, just kidding again. (Come on people, I'm not that nerdy.)

As I was thinking up all the numbers I have memorized, I came up with several that I know but won't ever need again. Despite not having used them, in some cases for YEARS, these numbers stick in my head anyway. Here are some of those:

The Colorado license plate we had on the Camry
My cell phone number from when I lived in Denver
The old phone number of a guy I dated in high school. His family even moved while we were dating and got a new phone number but the one I still know is the OLD one. It's probably been close to 10 years since I've needed that.
Birthdays for people I haven't talked to in years.
My address from when I lived at the 4400 apartments
The combination for a lock I'm not sure I have anymore
The number of miles on a truck I drove in high school. Not the exact number, but still-- WHY DO I KNOW THIS?

So I have a bunch of numbers memorized, but I don't feel like it's that many. Why do you suppose this is? I have a theory. When I was in college I had LOTS of stuff I had to have memorized-- numbers, equations, rules about how molecules bond. It was crazy. Now that I'm out of college, I don't have to remember that stuff (and trust me, I don't) so what I have memorized now is a relatively small amount of stuff. So Kirsta, just become an engineer, and by the time you're done it won't seem like you need to know so many numbers!




And now here's a couple of pictures for those of you who stuck around to read all this.

Hanging out with dad

Brian decided Kalena is old enough to learn to use the computer. She's very interested here:


But she's willing to look up long enough to smile for the camera.

Now if only her arms were long enough to reach the keyboard...

Answers

For those of you who played the game, it's time for the answers! To everyone who was impressed with my dad for knowing every quote, I'm here to tell you he CHEATED. I don't think he's read ANY of these books. Dad-- confirm or deny? Anyway, here you go.

1) Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen

I was surprised that nobody got this one. Has nobody read Pride and Prejudice? (Or watched the BBC version with Colin Firth like 1,000 times? No? Just me?) If you haven't read it, you should. (And if you haven't seen the Colin Firth version, come on over! But be forewarned, it's 5 hours long. Totally worth it though.)

2) The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Elizabeth George Speare

Congrats to Amy and Ally for getting this one! I love this book; I've read it a ton of times.

3) Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver

The lovely Kates got this one. (How come your link doesn't go anywhere miss Katie?) I've read this book multiple times, but I'm not sure I would have guessed it from the first line...

4) A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett

Nobody? I think I read this for the first time when I was like 8. It's a great book for girls that age.

5) Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley

My mom pointed out that this could have been one of many Arthurian type novels, but this happens to be the only one I've read.

6) Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

If you've ever read Atlas Shrugged, this opening line would be a dead giveaway. Amy and Katie got this one. Katie actually read my copy of this book while I read her copy of The Fountainhead, another excellent book.

7) Ender's Game, Orson Scott Card

Katie got this one too (sheesh, we really do have similar taste in books.) Amy, Brandon is right; you should read this book!

8) Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

I was not surprised that no one knew this one. It's quite depressing, but still a great book.

9) Twilight, Stephanie Meyer

Katie, Katie, April, and Ally all got this one. Big surprise, everyone's read Twilight;)

10) Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier

Another giveaway first line if you've read the book. And if you haven't read it, it is worth reading, definitely.

So there you have it! This makes me want to re-read all these books. I need more time for reading. *sigh*

Let's make it official

I think I'm officially a Texan. Now, I know you're thinking to yourself: Wait! Her driver's license says Texas, she's lived here for 2 1/2 years, she owns a house here, she drives a truck and she works in the oilfield! What could possibly make her a Texan if that stuff doesn't? (And I know you are thinking this because the details of my life are of utmost importance to you. Otherwise why would you read my blog? You think I believe you just come here to see pictures of Kalena? Riiiight. You keep telling yourself that.) Well, I will tell you. A couple weeks ago I went and bought myself a pair of these:

Ariat Fatbaby boots.

And now? I wear them to work. Every day. (Not with my pants tucked into them though, I just liked that picture because you can see what they look like.) Because my office is the kind of place where dressed up means you wear khakis with your polo shirt instead of jeans.

Why these instead of just regular shoes? I'll tell you why. It's because I'm lazy and not a big fan of wearing shoes. I take my shoes off as soon as I get home and don't put them on again unless I'm leaving. Since I'm lazy, I don't want to have to tie and untie shoes every time I put them on or take them off. I wear flip-flops a lot of the time, but they're obviously not winter shoes, and despite how causal my office is, flip-flops are not office shoes. So for far too long now I've been wearing a pair of slip on sketchers tennis shoes. I really should have thrown them out like 3 years ago, (which gives you an idea how long I've been wearing them) but I never did because they were just so easy! It became one of those vicious cycles where I kept thinking I'd throw them out when I got a new pair of shoes to replace them, but instead I never got new shoes because I had those ones.

Anyway, now I have the boots and (Kari will be happy to know) I've thrown away the sketchers and life is good.


*picture from here

More of me being a nerd

I don't know how I've lived for so long with no photo edit software! I was irritated the other night at microsoft photo editor because there's no fix for red eye and pretty much all my pictures have red eye. Sooooo, I decided to see what I could find online for free. Turns out there's a lot out there! I picked one (photoscape) and downloaded it and started playing around. The only problem now is that I'm going to feel like I need to edit all my pictures before I do anything with them! Check out what you can do with this stuff:

Practical edits-- from this:

to this:



Fancy edits-- from this:
to this:
Fun edits-- from this:


to this:
I'm going to spend way to much time doing this, I can already tell.

3 Months

As of yesterday, Kalena is 3 months old. She is keen on getting mobile these days. She rolls over back to front regularly now (she did it first at 4 weeks and then not again for awhile.) Once she's on her belly she's stuck though, which is pretty funny. She tries to move on her stomach, but she mostly ends up just stiffening her little legs out behind her and going nowhere. Anyway, Kari requested more pictures of her, so here they are.

As a reminder, here's what she looked like the week we brought her home from the hospital.



And here she is now. Just chillin' in the bumbo.



Trying to find out how delicious that pillow is.



Apparently the camera is pretty terrifying.



I just thought that onesie was too cute.

The cousins in June. Kalena was about 3 weeks old here.


The cousins in Hawaii. She's about 2 months old here. From the looks of things, she thought Patrick needed to know who's boss.



Here's another picture of her in Hawaii that I stole from Kirsta's blog. Love the expression.

And there you have it. 3 months already. Crazy.

I'm not sure it's gonna work like that...

The other day (or night really) Brian took Kalena back up to her room after her 1:30 am feeding. When he came back down I asked if he had the baby monitor with him. He said yes, held it up so I could see it, turned it on....and then turned it back off and fell asleep. I guess that's one way to get a good night's sleep:)

Time for a game

Ok kids, I want to play a game here, but this will only be fun if you all play along. Here's how it works. I'm going to list the first line from 10 of my favorite books. Then YOU guess the book and author in your comments! I tried not to list anything too obscure, so hopefully you guys will know at least some of these. No fair using google though! Then next Friday I'll tell you the answers, and you can see what you got right. And if anyone else wants to do this I promise to play along. I can't guarantee any right answers, but I will try. Just as a note, I used the first line from the first chapter; I skipped any prologue or preface if there was one. Anyway, here goes.

1) "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

2) "On a morning in mid-April, 1687, the brigantine Dolphin left the open sea, sailed briskly across the Sound to the wide mouth of the Connecticut River and into Saybrook Harbor."

3) "Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened."

4) "Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares."

5) "Even in high summer, Tintagel was a haunted place; Igraine, Lady of Duke Gorlois, looked out over the sea from the headland."

6) "Who is John Galt?"

7) "I've watched through his eyes, I've listened through his ears, and I tell you he's the one."

8) "When Caroline Meeber boarded the afternoon train for Chicago, her total outfit consisted of a small trunk, a cheap imitation alligator-skin satchel, a small lunch in a paper box, and a yellow leather snap purse, containing her ticket, a scrap of paper with her sister's address in Van Buren Street, and four dollars in money."

9) "My mother drove me to the airport with the windows rolled down."

10) "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."


Guess away! (pretty please?)

Friday

Ok, here it is. Last vacation description post! On Friday we went home, so you'd think I wouldn't have anything to say. You'd be wrong. We were all on red-eye flights, so nobody's flight left until 9 pm. Which meant we still had pretty much all day to do stuff. We went to the condo pool in the morning and I took Kalena in the water for the first time. That lasted about 2 seconds. She was not a fan of the water. But she fell asleep as soon as I took her back out so maybe she would have done better if she weren't tired? Who knows. Anyway, here we are at the pool.


Patrick, on the other hand, was a big fan of the water. Here he with Brian in the pool.


Here are Kari and Jonathan out by the pool. Now, if only I could get rid of the pregnancy stretch marks I would look just like Kari! Oh wait....no I wouldn't. Dang.



On our way to the airport in Honolulu we stopped at Pali Point.


Where bees are a problem, apparently? I didn't see any.


It's the windiest place on the island, as evidenced by Kari's hair.


Kirsta, Joe, Patrick, and a view.


And finally, the airport. Kari and Jonathan were on one flight to Phoenix, Brian, Kalena, and I were on a different flight to Phoenix, but we should have been there at the same time so we planned on meeting up for breakfast. We should have known better. Kari and Jonathan's flight left right when it should have. Ours got loaded right when it should have and then sat on the runway. For an HOUR. Ugh. It's bad enough that it's a 6 hour flight, without adding an hour to that. So we made it to Phoenix just in time to board our flight to Houston. And when we got off the plane in Houston we came out to a flat tire. Fun, fun, fun. Anyway, here I am with Kalena asleep in the airport. (See the plane behind me?!) I'm not sure why this picture is so weird looking. I think it's probably the huge tinted window I'm sitting in front of, but I'm not sure.


And there it is. Our vacation. Now I'll have to come up with other stuff to write about.

Thursday

Someday I'll finish writing these Hawaii posts, I promise. Anyway, on Thursday we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. For those of you who don't know, the Polynesian Cultural Center is a non-profit run by the church. Most of the employees are students at BYU Hawaii. Here's Kari at the entrance:


There are different areas representing different countries. Each area has its own performances, demonstrations, and such. Here are some pictures of different countries doing sample performances.





I have like a million pictures of different performances, so I'm trying to keep it to a minimum here. Here is one of our favorite demonstrations; watching this guy climb that tree!


Since there were so many of us there we had our own guide, which was pretty awesome. He took us around to the various demonstrations and always had reserved seats for us in the front. After we saw all the presentations, we went to the luau dinner. Here are Kari and Jonathan before the dinner.


Kirsta, Joe, and Patrick before the dinner:


Brian, Kalena, and me before dinner:

Dinner was excellent and afterward we went to the night show. It was a busy day, but very entertaining. If you ever go to Oahu, the Polynesian Cultural Center is definitely worth going to! (If you ever go to Maui, let me know and I will tell you the things that are NOT worth going to.) Only one more day of the vacation to post about, so it's almost over :)

Wasting time

Make yourself a wordle, it's lots of fun! Here's mine:

Just go to wordle.net

It's that time of year...

Football season! I am a football fan. I like it all, professional, college, watching on tv, and going to games. I don't know exactly how this came about. My parents started taking us to BYU games when we were pretty young, but I didn't care all that much at the time. I only went to the big games in high school, unlike many of my classmates who attended every game. I started watching more football in college, although I didn't go to a single Mines football game in 4 years. Even though I had friends on the team. And the games were free. (What kind of football team is so bad they don't charge to get into the game? Even my high school football games cost $5.) Anyway, I think it started as a Saturday morning thing, I would watch college football because nothing else was on. Somehow that has evolved into watching as many NFL games as possible and following several college football teams.

Football is the only sport we watch around here. Neither of us like basketball, and baseball on tv? BORING. (Although I do enjoy going to baseball games.) So football it is. And Brian is always nice enough to explain any rules or penalties I don't understand, so the more we watch, the more I know what's going on. These days I know more about football than I ever thought I'd care to know. For any of you football fans here in Midland, come on over, the game is always on, and there is nothing like watching football in 65 inches of HD beauty. Ahhhhh.




P.S. In case you didn't notice, I posted a link to the Dallas Cowboys schedule over there on the side. Because everybody needs that info.

More baby stuff

A couple of days ago, Kalena started trying to sit up. And when she couldn't, she'd get really mad. It was sort of funny to watch at first; she'd lift her head and then strain her whole torso trying to get off her back. After awhile it got a little tiring keeping her sitting up all the time. She didn't just want to be propped up or in a car seat, she wanted to be UP. So we went down to Toys R Us and got her a bumbo. And she's a fan.


By the way, I'm aware that you're only supposed to use the bumbo on the floor. It's up on the couch to get a better picture.

Also, we didn't get pink just because she's a girl. Toys R Us only had pink. I actually wanted an aqua one. So much for gender neutral this time.

Wednesday

On Wednesday we went to Pearl Harbor. But don't worry, we took every possible wrong turn before we made it there. Ah, nothing like following someone who doesn't know where they're going. Anyway, we did make it there eventually. Once we got there we had to load up Brian and Joe like pack horses because you can't take any sort of bag into the memorial. Between the two of them they had diapers, wipes, bottles, formula, and who knows what else. Good thing they both had big pockets! We wondered if they would let us bring in our sling, because the sign said you couldn't bring in anything that allowed concealment. Luckily they did let us bring it. It was a good thing too because Kalena slept in it for most of the day. (Of course.) Here's the memorial built over the USS Arizona.


Here are Kalena and Patrick both asleep on the memorial.


The dedication.


The name wall inside the memorial.


Close up of the name wall.


Brian with my dad (and Kalena sleeping.)


After Pearl Harbor we went to the International Market and shopped for souvenirs and had some delicious dinner. Here's my mom with Kirsta and Patrick at the entrance to the International Market.


And here is Kalena wearing one of the souvenirs we bought for her.


And that was Wednesday! And writing this all out day by day is making me realize just how much we did while we were in Hawaii; no wonder it went so fast.

Lazy

Not me (well, yes me, but that's not what I'm talking about right now.) Kalena. Kalena has gotten lazy about nursing. She is of the opinion that nursing is just WAY too much effort anymore and wouldn't we please just give her a bottle because otherwise she's going to cry when I try to nurse her even though she's hungry because this is NOT WHAT SHE WANTS! I think this is most likely a result of her being bottle fed all day while I'm at work, and really, what can I do about that? Right, nothing.

It's too bad though, because I wanted to breastfeed for at least 6 months or so, but I'm not sure that's going to happen. Even though I'm pumping at work, my body is not doing such a spectacular job keeping up the supply. And the less Kalena nurses, the worse that problem gets. My body wasn't even doing a great job with supply during the first 6 weeks when all she did was nurse, but that's another story altogether.

Anyway, it makes me a little sad. And speaking of sad, Kalena is getting too big for all her cute newborn clothes:( In fact, I got out an adorable little footed sleeper the other day that she hadn't ever worn and it's to small! I managed to get it on her, but then she started crying because she couldn't straighten out her little legs. (It was sort of funny to see her try though.) So I took it off and now it will have to be put away until baby number 2. Whenever that may be. Well, now I'm pretty sure I've gotten off topic, so I'm going to quit writing. Until later anyway. There will always be more later.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we went to the Dole Plantation.


Kalena did some more sleeping while we were there.


We took a little tour on this train.


Kalena woke up for the tour, but she wasn't so sure about the whole business of riding on a train.



Eric, Amy, & Espen on the left, Kirsta, Joe, & Patrick on the right.


Did you ever wonder if there are varieties of pineapple like there are apples? Yeah, we didn't either until we got there and saw them all. Here's a teeny tiny pineapple.


Later that night we went to the BYU Hawaii campus and played some water polo. Well, some people played, the rest of us were in charge of keeping score. Here's Brian looking good in some water polo gear.



General madness during the game.