12.07.2009
At about 8 am we pulled into Celeste court and surprised my mom. Then we hurried and got ready for church where we surprised my dad. It was a fun Father's day treat. Almost as fun was answering the phone when my sisters called... "What are YOU doing there?"
Fortunately, we had a beautiful drive through the black hills.
Unfortunately, we got in too late to see the fireworks at Mr. Rushmore.
Fortunately, there was such dense fog nobody saw them and we didn't end up wasting our entire day waiting to see nothing
Unfortunately, all that dense fog was a storm and it poured and we were sleeping in tents and one of the tents flooded.
Fortunatel,y the tent that didn't flood slept as many as 9.
Unfortunately, we had 11 (including a pack 'n' play)
Fortunately, Pearl talks in her sleep and "berries, yeah I like berries" will never be forgotten.
One of the highlights of the trip was going to Bear Country. Abby rode in the car with us, and, because we went through the park at about a mile an hour, she was driving with Greg when a bear stood on our car!!!
It was a very fun summer!
6.15.2009
In the past few years, I have helped my family (several times) "try" and recover lost files. I have also lost things a couple of times on my own box. The biggest disaster was my dad's hard drive about a year and a half ago. He had all of his digital pictures on it (not backed up) and the drive decided it was finished. Well, needless to say he paid about $1,500 to get the pictures back and some of them were damaged. I personally have TONS of pictures, videos, etc on my drives and I was trying to back them all up via DVD and then have a copy at my house, my parents house. I also had them on an external drive, my iPod, and then favorites on Picasa. Well... needless to say... 30+ GB of pictures sure does use a lot of DVD's and hard drive space... especially with 10x redundancy!
I attended a Ruby Users group meeting at Mozy a couple of months ago and then decided to look them up. This was about the time they were advertising hard with their commercials. I thought "Unlimited space for 5 bucks, impossible." I decided to give it a try for a month to see if it was true. Well, I am now backing up about 500 GB for 5 dollars a month... yes, that's right 5 dollars a month.
Features I love:
- Unlimited (yes, unlimited) space
- You have a Mozy drive that contains all the files that are on the Mozy server
- Quick restore
- Can be scheduled (for the middle of the night)
- You can throttle the speed of the uploads
- Well, lets face it indexing that many files takes some time...
- Mozy can take up a good chunk of CPU and memory during a backup.
My parents have already used Mozy a few times to backup accidentally deleted files. Mozy keeps deleted files for 30 days... so you have a bit of time just in case.
Anyways, this link will give you a 10% discount on the service. I would give it a try. That 1500 bucks would have paid for about 25 years of the service... well worth it in my mind.
6.10.2009
Mona is congested and has thrush... good thing she has Pearl to take care of her. Pearl doesn't just play doctor, she plays "Dr. Berry", our family doctor.
Yes, you're seeing it right... they're wearing the same clothes. The sad thing is, I think Mona will grow out of them first! Pearl makes all sorts of strange discoveries while Mom is busy nursing Mona... how to open the back door, where Mom keeps the marshmallows and, today, that she fits in Mona's clothes.
6.06.2009
Aunt Andrea took Pearl to the Zoo. Pearl had so much fun. She was talking for days about different animals, the animal playground, and anything she could remember.
Note to Andrea: Pearl wants to know when you're going to take her out again! 
5.05.2009
Ramona was born at 7:20 pm on Sunday, March 29th. According to Navajo legend, she revels in nudity and is bonny, blithe, happy and gay (If you've never been to Grandma Daines' house. don't expect that to make sense). She was 8 lbs and 19 inches long.
For now, she mostly goes by Mona. Also, Pearl is no longer "Baby Pearl." Sad but true, life goes on and now we have Baby Mona. The "baby" in front of their names helps people distinguish between them and all the grandma's with whom they share names. If you feel you need to youthanize Pearl's name still, call her "Pearly." That's what we do.
Pearl adores her sister! She was kind of in shock when she first got to the hospital, but it didn't take long for her to warm up. While I was being transferred to recovery, Mona was getting her bath and all that stuff. Pearl went to watch then came back to my room. The whole time she kept saying she wanted to go back and see her sister. She's pretty gentle with her and very helpful. I think having my parents here for the first two weeks was helpful not only to me, but for Pearl. She got loads of attention!
Pearl talks all the time about how much she doesn't like sharing (for example, she's good and asks for jelly beans and I give them to her and then she informs me "I not has to share my jelly beans! It my jelly beans" However, she often follows a statement like that with "I share my room with Mona. I share my toys (pronounced toes) with Mona." I wish I could write the way Pearl speaks. She has the greatest intonations and she annunciates every letter so well. We love listening to her.
Mona sleeps fantastic!!! The first night she did 8 hrs, the second night was pretty horrid, apparently that's when their digestive system kicks in and can cause some indigestion. Other than that though, she goes to bed around 10, sometime as late as 11. and rarely wakes up earlier than 4:30, but usually not until after 6 am. Kind of nice.
Before any moms get to jealous, let me tell you, she is just making up for how disgusting she is. I don't know how she's gained so much weight already (10 lbs at 5 weeks), because she doesn't seem to keep much down. I have nearly 30 burp cloths and still have to do a baby load at least twice a week or we're using dish towels and wash cloths with her. She always smells like sour milk, even though I am always wiping up her sticky face, neck and hands and changing her clothes (good thing we have lots). It's so bad some days I think I would rather have a baby who slept less than one who spit up this much. Not that I have a choice or would give up my Mona. I spent a fortune on some pills that may or may not help yesterday, so we'll see.
Labor and delivery were amazing! Greg and I took hypnobirthing classes, and they helped us to look forward to labor and delivery rather than view it as a necessary evil. Hypnobirthers believe in going into deep relaxation and having pain-free births. Those who get an epidural are probably the only ones who truly experience a pain-free birth, but it was pretty remarkable to come close to that through relaxation. One of the affirmations I was supposed to repeat to myself was: "I will turn my birthing over to my baby and my body." That gave me the giggles, but it really worked! While it was not exactly pain-free, I can honestly say it was not that bad. It was really different to not be so consumed by pain (Pearl was induced that it was just so intense and unlike anything that my body had ever done, that it was not that great an experience) that I could focus on nothing else.
I had been having braxton hicks for nearly 4 days at pretty regular intervals, but when I woke up Sunday morning I had my first real contraction. I knew it because it was all in my back, just like the with Pearl. The picture is of me at about 10 am, a few hours into labor. My body took lots of breaks while laboring, so I kept doubting I was actually in labor, which is why by the time I actually got to the hospital I was dialated to a 6.5 and having 60 sec contractions, 90 sec apart. It went pretty fast from there, and probably would've gone even faster had my water broke earlier. She was born about an hour and a half after I was admitted.
The whole process felt instinctive and natural. The most amazing part of all was delivery. I know it generally goes much faster the second time, but I really didn't think it would go from 45 min. of pushing with pearl, to just a few minutes of relaxed breathing for Ramona. Instead of "pushing" her out, I did these things called "J" breaths and she pretty much just slid out. I swear it's true. I had been skeptical of the hypnobirther's delivery method, but when I did my first "J" breath (hard to explain how that works), I got this huge silly grin, IN THE MIDDLE OF DELIVERY, because I knew Ramona would be here any second and that it was going to be easy! My body recovered quickly too! I had my doubts and reservations, but I LOVE the hypnobirthing method.
3.28.2009
3.22.2009
Well, I laid my scooter down the second day I had it. Great. Luckily I had my helmet, gloves, jacket, jeans, and everything. The ugly part was that I did a face plant into the road... 
So here is the story: I usually go a certain route to work. I altered it to take a few side roads with the scooter. It worked great going to work. I followed a friend home on his scooter (he just lives a couple of blocks away) and then I took a semi ghetto road home that crosses some rail road tracks and what not. Well, right after I cross the tracks and dodge some pot holes I start going into a pretty sharp turn. I slowed down to about 15 mph (a 25 road) and then once the car in front of me was on the turn I noticed that there was gravel half way into the road. I tried slowing even further and taking a wider turn. There were cars in the other lane so I couldn't cross into the oncoming traffic to get around it. So I started slowing down thinking I was on my front brakes... well checking after it was my back breaks! So, long story short my bike swung around and literally threw me into the ground. I had a helmet on with a face mask. My chin hit first, then my face shield, nose and mouth/tooth hit the ground. I broke the fall partially with my hand, but I also got road rash on my stomach, knee and ankle.
So I jumped up, looked at my bike, then got on and started riding. A police man had just pulled someone over and waved me over. He said he could check me out. He thought someone had hit me. I pulled over and thought he would just check me out after he finished with the speeder. About 2 min later a fire truck and ambulance come around the corner. They pull me in the truck and check me out. Nothing was really wrong, so they let me go.
When I got home Pearl came running to give me a hug and stopped right in the tracks. I was pretty late for dinner and so Lizzy was a bit upset. It didn't help when she found out I had actually laid my bike
down. She wasn't too excited about the bike in the first place.
The bike is ok (for the most part). Just a few scratches and the tail light broke off. I fixed the tail light, and the rest of the damage should only cost around $150 to fix. The thing I was most worried about was my tooth. It hit the gravel hard. If you take a close look you will see that it actually cracked my tooth a little and left some gravel in my tooth. My teeth were VERY sensitive for several days after. The dentist buffed the gravel out the next day and he said that I could loose the tooth, but it looked good and I should leave it to see what happens. He said it was unlikely that it would die.
This was all really great timing too... Three days before Ramona's birthday! Yea! Now I'll be ugly in the pictures.
3.18.2009
Well, I've been dying to get a moped. Mostly because:
1. We've only had 1 car for 5 years
2. It get's 90 miles to the gallon
3. It's only 1000 dollars!
I bought it from a friend for $1100 and it has under 1000 miles on it, it is in perfect condition. It also came with a helmet, leather gloves, an extra face mask, a cover, a net for carrying things, and some cleaning stuff for wiping it down. It is a milano, which has the BEST pickup. They usually go for about $1900 new. He just bought it like 4-5 months ago from a close friend or family so... I am pretty happy with the deal.