April 2007 archive
Pedometers
I’ve never mentioned it, but Julie gave me a pedometer for Christmas, and it has been a fun toy. I discovered that I travel about 47 inches per step when jogging and about 28 inches per step when walking. I also learned that I walk/jog/sprint about 4 miles when I play Ultimate Frisbee at lunch time, and that if I walk to work, I take about 2664 steps from my front door to my desk. That’s about 1.18 miles if you are following along and doing the math. Cool stuff to know (and I didn’t have to carry around an expensive battery-devouring GPS to find it all out).
This week Isaac got a pedometer from a box of cereal. He loves wearing it around. He puts it on and starts running around the house and then checking how many steps he’s taken. It’s amazing how quickly he can get up into the hundreds just bouncing from couch to couch. I wonder how accurate his free pedometer is, but if the idea was to get kids to exercise more, it’s working for him. Not that he had much trouble with that before.
This evening we hiked the Camas Lily Loop at Lacamas Park. The Lilies were in bloom and the fields of purple were beautiful (forgot the camera, sorry). Ily and I carried Reece and Micah, respectively, in our mei tais. That’s the longest I’ve worn one with a heavier kiddo and it was surprisingly comfortable. Isaac walked the whole way without too much complaining.
When we got home we compared pedometers. Mine said 7338 steps, and his 7863. That’s about 3 and a quarter miles going by my stride length. Not a bad hike! One of our step counts must be off though, otherwise his stride length is only two inches shorter than mine. Carrying a 40 pound load probably affected my stride, but I don’t know if it shortened it that much. Hmm, maybe we should have brought that GPS along.
Posted by Bryan on April 30, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
Updates
We have had a lot going on so I figured I need to write it all down so I won’t forget it. So here are some updates.
Update on the stove… Well, since the mouse adventure in February (did I mention it all happened on and around my birthday?), our oven has not been heating correctly. I had some sad burnt bread with doughy middles, some not fully cooked cookies, undercooked pizzas, and other things fail to cook correctly before I realized that hey, the oven isn’t heating right. After using a thermometer that belonged to an expensive repair man, we decided that the oven was consistently within about 75 degrees of the correct temp it was set for. So it should be within about 10 to 20 degrees of the temp it is set for, not 75. After finding out the repair for a new temperature gage on our 13 year old gas stove would cost $380 + tax, we opted for a new stove instead. So the new stove should get here this week. Until then, I have a great excuse to eat out more.
Update on the floor. We found a dip in the flooring behind our dishwasher last week which has had me worried. The current dishwasher is not leaking we deduced, it just came from the night the babysitter flooded the kitchen with the liquid dish soap (very funny story, but with this sad part to add to it). It got under the floor, then made it warp, but we think it is dry now and doesn’t have to be dealt with immediately. It will do for now and no one will die from the dip in the floor. We will need to replace the sub-floor eventually (and then replace the flooring on top of it), but Bryan would rather a new car first (or at least more reliable) . I would rather tile floors. We’ll see who wins… or what dies first.
Update on Reece, he took 3 consecutive steps (unassisted!) when he was in the childcare at our fitness club. Of course it was when we weren’t looking! I witnessed one step myself at the park on Wednesday though… He will be up and going any day now. He is ten months old, this is much too early for him to be walking!
Update on Micah… He wore underwear today. He wore 3 pairs… if you get my drift, but he did wear them. He did notice that it feels yucky to have pee all over yourself so maybe we will only have a few days of that. He is excited to make peanut butter popcorn, which is what I promised him if he actually peed in the potty. I think he will figure it out soon. Peanut butter popcorn is a huge motivator for him.
Update on Isaac… he read Green Eggs and Ham all by himself today. It was awesome! He has been working on it and this was the first time he made it all the way thru.
Update on Bryan… still very handsome and he even found time to mow the lawn this week. Plus he got out tools and figured out how to look under our dishwasher and investigate possible leakage problems. What a man I have!
Update on me… I lost another pound! That makes about 10 since Christmas! Wahoo! Slow going, but it is still going!
Posted by Ily on April 29, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
A wart and a derby
So this month we noticed a funny growth on Isaac’s knee. I thought it was a scab at first and just figured he skinned his knee, not an uncommon thing for a boy his age. Two weeks later I noticed it was still there and a different size. So I begin to examine it and see that it isn’t black like a scab, but red and it has regularly spaced black dots in it and some black lines too. It looks like a funny beetle has taken residence under his skin or something. So we have Dr. Murdock look at it (grandpa), and he says to go visit a dermatologist because he doesn’t know what it is. We all have gruesome visions of skin cancer, or leprosy, and our little boy dying young because of it all at this point.
So I make an appointment and we get this great guy at the dermatology office who sees Isaac. His name was Corey and he was a PA, not a doctor, and he was totally wonderful with Isaac and the other boys I had in tow. And he knew his skin problems. He examined the spot for a bit and said, “well, it looks like a wart.” He gave us a list of things we could do like ignore it (and he might get more) or remove it with a zillion different options for that. I said remove it. I asked what the fastest remedy was and he said freezing it. So he went to get the liquid nitrogen and came back and Isaac freaked out. It was this little bottle with a nozzle and it was shiny and he just plain didn’t like it. he actually said “ I like my wart! Leave it alone!” So we decided to ask him what he wanted. The doctor suggested putting “beetlejuice” on it and then it would go away on it’s own (the beetlejuice really was something derived from a beetle). So Isaac liked that idea better. So now the beetle-look-alike wart is happily being eaten away by beetlejuice and we have our nightmares of skin cancer laid to rest.
The next news to blog about is that we had our Tri-ward Pinewood Derby tonight. I am cub committee chair and we did not have a Cubmaster who would be in town anytime soon and I was dreading the whole thought of doing it all by myself. I am so glad the other wards asked if we would like to join in. Wow, it was great and I had hardly anything to do for it! For the first time in years, I actually enjoyed something that I had to help out with. For the year that I was activities committee as the chairperson, I had a miserable time worrying about all the details and never enjoyed the parties I threw. This time was different. Oh what a blessing it was to tag along on the other 2 wards’ shirt-tails and just enjoy myself at the event. We had 44 boys total racing and they set up one of those tracks that has the lazer that hooks up to a computer and records who won and what the times were and everything. It was cool. Our whole family went and enjoyed ourselves until it was bedtime and we left to put the little tikes to bed. I came back to watch the end at almost 9 (an hour after I left and they had just started racing when we skipped out) and was amazed that they actually were done and everyone had cleaned up and most people were gone. I thought it would take forever to get all those 44 boys raced 8 times. Wow, the miracles that computers can make possible. What a cool track set up!
Posted by Ily on April 26, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
What I've Been Working On, April '07
The technology that my group at HP has been working was announced back in October. Now the first product using that technology has been announced. Check it out, they’ve done some fun stuff with the website. Well, as fun as an office copy machine can be, which really is probably more than you’d expect. No really. There’s a little boxing video game and everything. Turn your speakers down before you click if you are at work.
Posted by Bryan on April 11, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 1 comment
I love you Craigslist!
Have I mentioned how much I love Craigslist? Wow, it is awesome. This weekend I did some cleaning up around the house and made obsolete two pieces of furniture by doing some reorganization. So the two pieces of furniture in question were 1) a baby changing table, and 2) a small bookshelf. When they are sitting in the hallway or in the middle of a room that you actually like to use, it gets really annoying.
My neighbor has talked about wanting to have a garage sale and so I thought maybe I would do one with her. But that involves sitting around all day waiting for people to come you and just maybe they will buy something, or maybe not. And to add to that, I have to figure out what in the world to do with the furniture and stuff I would be selling until the actual garage sale. Which could be in April, or May, Or June, or maybe at the end of the summer…
So I think to myself, I will try craigslist. Maybe I can get rid of these things this week that way. Well, I posted the furniture in question at 1:15 and both pieces care now gone! It took less than 3 hours. Wahoo! My sewing room is now free again of all unwanted furniture!
Somebody ought to pay that Craig guy millions of dollars. Or at least give him an ice cream cone for being so smart and cool!
Posted by Ily on April 9, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 2 comments
March '07 Pictures
I just posted about 50 pictures from the last month and a half or so. And now I’m tired. Hopefully the pictures and captions sum up what we’ve been up to. Go check them out.
Posted by Bryan on April 8, 2007 | Filed under: Family News | 0 comments
