Christmas Time

Grace and Caleb recently got new Christmas t-shirts. They also received new Crocs in the mail from Grandma. You have to pry the Crocs off of their feet. They love them!

Quilting Power

I love the design of Mary's most recent quilting project. Behold!

Blessings of Children

"Mom, Dad, I need to go potty," Caleb yells from the next room.

I look at the clock. It is 3:30 AM.

I pull myself out of bed and drag my swollen, sprained ankle into the children's bedroom. I take Caleb to the bathroom and help him get a drink of water. I tuck him in and limp back to my bed. I fall into it hoping for sleep. All I hear is Caleb coughing up a lung in the next room. There are few things worse than wanting to help a sick child but knowing that the illness must run its course. I mutter a short prayer for him and close my eyes to the beckoning sleep.

"Mom, Dad, I need to go potty."

I look at the clock. It is 3:37 AM. He cannot need to go again. His coughing is keeping him up. I go get him and his blankets and stumble out to Mary's rocking recliner. I cover us up and rock. Caleb calms down and the coughing soon abates. I recline the chair and elevate my feet.

I love to rock with my children. I love for them to fall asleep on my chest. They don't do that any more since they are so big. But that's not true tonight. Caleb snuggles in and falls asleep. I might have been snoring before he was.

When Caleb gets up around 7:00 AM, I realized we both got some of the rest we needed. He slept through the rest of the night without coughing and I got enough sleep to sludge through another day at work. But more than that, I got to hold onto my little boy. I loved it.

Some people may say that being a dad is hard work. Others might think I am crazy for calling a lack of sleep a blessing. But it is great. I'll trade a night's sleep to hold onto my children for a little longer.

HP5 Teaser Trailer

Oliver has given all the details on his blog. If you are a HP fan, then you need to check this out.

And Speaking of Technology...

I just wanted to comment about beta.blogger.com.

For the most part I like the interface. But, I do have one complaint about loading pictures to the site. I have loaded all the pictures on this site the same way. When I click on some of them, they go to a larger version of the picture. When I click on others, that does not happen. Can someone out there explain why?

Also, tonight I tried to load a bitmap file, but it only came out as being black with no picture. It doesn't look that way on my computer. Do they only support certain types of bitmap images?

Just wondering.

Technical Expertise

I am not a gadget guy. I like electronics well enough, but I don't need the latest toy. I do fine with minimal cellphone use and don't need a pager/Blackberry. I try to learn how to take care of technology and want to come up with a list of things to do when confronted by wonky technology. (A shout out to Steve on the word choice.)

After talking with friends, there are four steps most people take:

1) Restart.
2) Percussive maintenance.
3) Call support.
4) Read the manual.

The problem with this list is that #3 is usually the 50th thing I want to do and #4 is the 100th. So what are all the other steps in between?

Little Movie Man

Caleb loves to watch movies. Cars the Movie just came out on DVD two weeks ago and I think he has only watched it 6,329 times already. He quotes lines and uses them at the right time. Today at church we were coming back from the car and Caleb said, "Let's race."

As I was catching up to him I said, "Hey, you come back here."

Then Caleb pulls out, "Not today, old man, I know all your tricks."

I was dying laughing at this point. Unfortunately, I could not come up with, "Not all my tricks rookie." Had I said that and run past him, we may have died laughing, though it was funny enough without the extra line.

Tangent: I am not a movie critic, but I cannot wait for the next Pixar movie, Ratatouille. I know little about the story, but the animation is going to be amazing. One look at the trailer will let you know how much better their animation is than anyone else. Sure, I don't love the fact that the trailer has a "Little Mermaid" moment, but there are funny lines in it.

Caleb can quote those lines too; "Let it go Dad!"

Child's Prayer

I love to hear my children pray. I love the fun things and the impossibly sweet things they say. I love the innocence and belief that goes into their prayers.

When I hear Grace say, "Heavenly Father, I want to bless you." I love her simple faith. Grace wants God to be blessed as much as anyone else. I love that she expresses it in her prayer.

When she says, "Bless all the states, even Bethlehem" I want to smile because she has much to learn. But I know the geography will come and I am glad that she knows where Jesus was born.

When she says, "Bless Robert and bless the cemetery where he is buried." I feel her love for her brother. Grace prays for Robert in heaven and his body on earth. She loves him and is still letting that love grow.

I love the prayers of children.

Anti-Ankle Asphyxiation Association

When Caleb was taking pictures the other morning, he caught one image that I have to share. Behold: Most people would not believe that this was one of the most important pictures. It is because it illustrates one of the little things I love about Mary.

Everyone has theories about what is important in life. One of Mary's is that her feet need to breathe while she sleeps. When it comes time for her feet to breathe, she pulls them out from under the covers. After they have had sufficient air, she can quickly warm them up by putting her feet on me. I have told her that I am not sure about the need for the cold feet.

She has yet to be persuaded otherwise.

Pictures of the Children

This is a picture of Grace wearing her favorite outfit. She drew a picture of herself wearing this outfit for her school journal.
This is Grace's basketball outfit. Once you put on sweats you are an athlete. I love the way children think about life. If she has a witch's hat, she is a witch. Boots make you a cowgirl. A beautiful dress makes you a princess. Here is our basketball player: Caleb has an orange shirt. I thought you should see it. I tried to get a picture of him standing still. I would not say that I was successful. He was goofing around the whole time. Mary believes he may be the class clown at preschool because he is always trying to get the other children to laugh. Hopefully you will laugh as he is making crazy faces. Caleb loves this lunch box. Bev gave it to him with a puzzle in it. He loves to carry it around and is so happy that he has a Thomas lunch box. He told me I needed to take a picture of it, so here it is.

While You Were Sleeping...

...Caleb found the digital camera. Here is his artwork.

Its All Relative

Grace and Caleb share a lot in common, though that is not an interesting observation. It is an assumption for most brothers and sisters. What really intrigues is their differences. Recently, I have been reminded of a fundamental difference between the two of them; how they play.

Grace is imaginative. Grace could play with her baby for hours on end. Baby needs to be fed, put to bed, and taken to ballet class. If Grace had a ream of paper, she could color for hours on end. Artwork flows when the markers are out. But set her down in front of almost any toy and not much will happen. The only toys she sometimes plays with are Fisher-Price Little People. That is it. We have other toys but they never hold her attention.

Caleb, on the other hand, loves toys. Give him some cars or trains and he can play for days. Set up some toys on the floor and he is ready to play. He even plays with Grace's Sweet Street and might be entertained by her My Little Ponies. He is a toy kid.

Caleb can create plenty of adventures for himself with a simple toy. Grace will do the same with paper or baby. It is one of their striking differences.

On the Way Home from Dan and Rebecca's

From the backseat comes Caleb's voice, "Mom, Dad doesn't know where he is going."

Mary says, "Its okay Caleb, Dad know how to get us home."

Caleb says, "Nun-uh Mom, we're lost."

Mary replies, "Don't worry Caleb. Dad is smart and can get us home."

"Wicked smaht," I chime in.

"Mom, Dad's smart but I'm smarter," Grace qualifies.

Of Hobbits and Genetics

Caleb ate breakfast today. Okay, he ate a lot of breakfast. At 8:30 am, he had eaten two bowls of Cocoa Puffs and one bowl of Trix.

I had a meeting and missed breakfast. When I returned we were talking and he said, "Dad, I want second breakfast."

Mom, seeing that it was 10:30 am, said, "Why don't we have a little lunch?"

Caleb replied, "No, I want SECOND breakfast."

I went and poured him a bowl of Trix. Then another bowl. And finally one more bowl. He ate it all.

Final tally: 4 bowls of Trix and 2 bowls of Cocoa Puffs.

How can he eat all that food? Where does that gene come from? It cannot be me, right?

Marketing for Little People

Grace and Caleb love Fisher-Price's Little People. A few of these toys came with claymation videos and Caleb likes to watch them. Caleb calls them "Eddie and Freddie" movies. (One of the characters, Eddie, has a pet frog named Freddie.)

The other day, Caleb was riding a toy bike made by Fisher-Price. He pointed to the Fisher Price logo and said, "Mom, what does that say?"

Mary looked at it and said, "It says Fisher-Price."

Caleb studied it for a second and said, "No, it doesn't. It says Eddie and Freddie, Mom."

Measured and Found Wanting (Updated)

Every measurement is prone to error. The error may be sufficiently small so it is meaningless, but it still exists. What if the error is not so much in the measurement but in the labeling choice of the manufacturer?

Take Mary's Dove shampoo. Dove sells a 25.4 ounce bottle of moisturizing shampoo. Doesn't this seem like an odd size? Why not a whole number? A metric conversion seems the culprit, since 25.4 ounces corresponds to approximately 750 ml. Then why does Dove label this shampoo bottle as 751 ml?

(Cheat sheet: 25.4 ounces = 751.168 ml and 750 ml = 25.36 ounces)

If you manufacture one 750 ml bottle in the EU and one 25.4 ounce bottle in the US, is there truly a 1 ml difference? If there isn't or you cannot adequately measure that difference, then why label them differently? Fill them both with 750 ml, or 25.4 ounces, and label accordingly. Does it really help to pander to costumers by labeling (and presumably filling) in both measurement systems?

I cannot imagine anyone looking at a shampoo bottle and thinking that Dove filled this bottle in English units and that is the deciding factor in the buying decision. Who buys something based on the perceived measurement system of the labeled unit?

Update: Dove is owned by Unilever, a Dutch company. I have a 25.4 ounce bottle of Pert Plus. Pert Plus is part of an American company, Proctor and Gamble. The Pert Plus bottle is labeled: 25.4 fl oz (1 pint 9.4 fl oz) (750 ml).

Something is going on here.

That's All Folks

Soccer has recently finished for Grace. She had a good year. There is a lot to learn but she has figured out how to kick the ball and she even scored a goal. It was a real success for her. Thought you might like to see a picture taken earlier in the year.

A Child's Work is Never Done

Halloween Pictures

We forgot to take pictures before we went trick-or-treating. Fortunately, Mary took some pictures before we went to the ward Halloween party. Grace the vet and Caleb the policeman had a great Halloween!