Thursday, March 24, 2011

latest photos of the little guy

No we're not real big football fans, but we are fans of cousins, piano, and showing off those handsome little legs any way we can.










Thanks Becca for the photos!

Monday, March 21, 2011

late blogging

Falling asleep at 7 pm. has its problems, like when you wake up your husband is ready for bed. Sigh. Anyway, due to Stephen's insistence that midnight is a time to be asleep I blog. First a clarification: that blog post about Internet volunteerism was written by Stephen not me. Yes I nap, I talk wtih family and friends, I care for my child and laugh at him when he runs from me naked because he doesn't want his diaper on, but I do not volunteer on the Internet when I can hardly get the motivation to work on my thesis.
My thesis, by the way, is going well. I have eight interviews and three more people who said they'd let me interview them. I'm shooting for 13-15 interviews so the end of interviews is in sight. My amazing mother-in-law is wonderful and comes over to our apartment or let's me come over to her house so that I can transcribe my interviews without little hands adding their own conversation to my interviews. Transcribing is annoyingly long and tiresome, especially when I have to listen to myself ask really dumb questions.
Why do I not work on my thesis when Stephen is home? Well, I'm a slacker and it seems that when Stephen is home I simply want to be with him and tell myself that I'll work on my thesis when Christian is napping. Ha!
So Christian's newest thing is knives. He's actually liked them for sometime but in the past two months he's had a growth spurt and is able to reach up onto the kitchen counter. Thus, if we do not put the knives at least four inches from the edge of the counter it seems he is able to know exactly where they are and grab his mighty sword. (by the way one wouldn't think he'd be able to grab it when you look at his height, but his feet are really long so he gets quite a bit of height quickly when he stands on his tiptoes). It freaks us out to death. He has gone for knives in dishwashers for months right away, I'm not sure how he knows exactly what is the most dangerous thing to go for, but he does. Sometimes I wonder where he gets it and then I see Stephen throwing and catching knives in our kitchen and I stop wondering.

Friday, March 18, 2011

words words words

So Kumquat is one of the strong silent type, well he's actually not that silent, but as of yet doesn't say too many words. Here are his chosen few:

Jesus (je-ja) He has since forgotten this one, but learned it when I kept pointing to the Jesus painting we have in his room over and over again after hearing a baby a month younger than him saying it at church. He said this around Christmas time, and my father and Stephen are witness to it.

Ball (Bahl) He has not forgotten this word and it replaced Jesus for a while. We're hoping this is not an indicator of a future career in basketball over religion. After a while he remembered Jesus, but our heathen has since forgotten again.

Grandpa (Bah-Pah) It's true, he loves his Grandpa more than he loves his parents at the moment and will shout this over and over even when we simply pull up in the driveway.

Opa (O-a) The same week he started saying Bah-Pah he also started Opa. This kid loves his grandads.

Outside (da-da) We're not sure if this means to leave (such as he sees his dad leave all the time and thus associates the door with dad, or outside.

Mama (mamamamamamama) He might have been saying this for a while but he'd only do it when he was complaining which makes me wonder what he thinks a mother is. Today I think he finally said it to call for me.

anyone in the mood for Philly Cheese Steaks?

It's true, Stephen has accepted the offer to UPenn so we're headed out to Philadelphia come August. Thankfully we have at least two friends out there: Jenny and Brent. Also, we're not super far from family with Carl and Susan an hour and a half away and Nathan and Robin 5 hours. So if any of you are itching to see the city of brotherly love, wait till we're out there. I know, it's not as cool as London, but it probably fits better in everyone's budget.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Internet volunteerism

I thought I'd write a quick post about some of the different online volunteer options I've dealt with. I like internet projects because they allow me to use the spare minutes in between events to do something worthwhile and beneficial. For whatever it's worth:

Project Gutenberg: Project Gutenberg is a non-profit that is placing out-of-copyrighted materials online for free. Volunteers upload books and proofread the texts to correct them for any errors. I use Project Gutenberg a lot, so much that I don't really buy any pre-1930 books anymore. http://www.gutenberg.org/

Wikipedia: If nothing else, Wikipedia editing is fun because of the nerdy Wikicommunity that has grown up around it. It has its own hierarchy, alliances, awards, etc. In the spirit of Project Gutenberg, I like Wikipedia simply because it's one of the most effective mechanisms for disseminating knowledge.

Mormon Texts Project: The MTP was a project founded by my friend Ben Crowder, and is systematically uploading and proofing out-of-copyright early Mormon works onto Project Gutenberg. Right now I'm working on John Taylor's On the Mediation and the Atonement, some of the books we've completed thus far include A Rational Theology by John Widstoe, Succession in the Presidency by B.H. Roberts, and The Great Apostasy by James Talmage. http://bencrowder.net/category/mormon-texts-project/

Galazy Zoo: GalazyZoo is a project that is trying to map out the universe. Volunteers are trained in how to identify and categorize galaxies that have been photographed using the Sloan telescope; they then upload their observations into a database. http://www.galaxyzoo.org/

Monday, March 7, 2011

Stephen finally came home last Thursday (yes he had been in the airport as of my last post, but to fly to DC to stay with the awesomes Carl and Susan before he went up to visit UPenn.) In honor of him being home and because I've been wanting to do this post for a while I have one more youtube video for you.

As a preface, the first time I saw this was at a conference as a LDS missionary. What a motivation to bear one another's burdens: to do anything and everything because of the face of the other.



http://www.teamhoyt.com/about/index.html