In January of 2012

It's January 2013 and I have done very little blogging this past year. I have done very little blog-reading as well. I guess you could say I fell off the blog horse, so to speak. I have only made 2 resolutions for 2013. The first one is to run a 5k in under 25 minutes, but that has little to do with this post, so we'll leave it at that. My other resolution is to finish all my previous unfinished projects. There are many and they vary in medium, size and scope. I am going to tackle my first project tonight, right now. Yes! That project is to get this blog up-to-date (or at least up to our trip to New England, then Brett can plug in all the stuff he has in store for that). That means the posts will be mostly full of pictures, with very little verbiage, and some might be many, many pictures long. It's mostly for the benefit of family and friends that are far away and may actually care about seeing these pictures. It's also just in case one day our kids get to read this blog and might see something of their childhoods documented. I don't excel at keeping histories of any kind - personal, family, church (least favorite part of my calling when I was Primary secretary) - so a sporadic blog is about as good as it gets. So, without further ado, here is January of 2012.

In January of 2012.....

Parker started eating solids and he's been on a roll with them ever since. That kid can out eat almost any of us.

 

 Adie celebrated her 5th birthday with her preschool friends.

 

She also celebrated by having a day to do whatever she wanted, like doing crafts with her non-crafty Mom, and going to a movie with Dad.

 

Adie and I had some friends over to celebrate our birthdays by eating a lop-sided (but delicious) cake. 

 

 Yay for January 2012!

Going for it on 4th

Sabrina and I are having a disagreement about what to do on 4th down. Given these facts:

4th down

Ball on opponents 2 yard line

Down by 10

Under 3 minutes left in the game

Also, assume you'll probably need to get the onside kick because your defense hasn't forced many three and outs

The question is, do you go for a touchdown, knowing that you then only have to get a field goal? Or, do you kick the field goal, knowing that you need points on 2 possesions and that you are much more likely to get the field goal than the touchdown? There are some strong opinions around here about this. What do you think?

Living in Arizona, oh yea

All you people living in snow could be here too. (Truth be told, I miss snow, but I love this time of year here).

Getting my money's worth

Yea, so this isn't a blog post about our trip. Sabrina has said I can't blog about that until we blog about the rest of the year. Otherwise, we'll never blog about the first half of 2012.

Anyway, on to a discussion of my psyche. I'm the sort of person who is easily suckered in by the concept of "value". Meaning that if I can buy a little bag of M&Ms for $0.85, and a big bag for $3.00 which has more than 5 times as much as the little bag, of course I should buy the big bag. And of course, I don't waste any of the M&Ms. However, I don't know that I should be doing that all the time...

I signed up for Audible a couple of months ago in an effort to continue to expand my consumption of books. I've not been reading as much as I would like, so I thought audio books would be a good way to go. Because I'm buying a digital copy (or more accurately, I'm buying a license to a digital copy), I really have nothing to resell if I decide I don't like what I've bought. That makes me quite picky about what I get.

Then, of course, there's the consideration of cost. I certainly don't want to buy any book that I can potentially get somewhere else cheaper. Audible has a fixed fee structure that you sign up for (1 credit per month). Because of the fixed fee, I can get books that would normally cost more than my monthly fee. That incentivises me to try to get the most expensive book I can. Then there's also the concern about being able to listen to it multiple times. I'd like a book that I don't just listen to once and never again. However, there's always borrowing from the library. However, most of the books I'd like to listen to are on CD. That works while I'm in my car, it doesn't work elsewhere I'd like to listen to it.

In some ways, attempting to get the best deal makes me unhappy with the service I willingly signed up for. I want to get the most possible for my fee. Because it's a fixed fee, I feel I need to get everything I can for it. It's like going to an all-you-can-eat meat place. I'm usually there for a couple hours because I feel the need to "get my money's worth". I've done endless shrimp the past few years at Red Lobster, and out ate everyone in our group. I paid for it, and so I'm going to get everything I can. In the past, I have left restaurants not satisfied, but overly full. I left Disney World sore and hungry because we were on the go the entire day to "get our money's worth". I drove a rental car nearly 2000 miles on vacation because we could with the flat fee. It's all about making the relative cost as small as possible.

Anyway, I'm probably not going to change. I still hate finding out a month after I buy something that it went down in price. I still buy candy in bulk when possible. I really want to make sure I stretch the dollar whenever I can. However, I am open to suggestions for good audiobooks.

Halloween

Just a quick post because everyone has done it, our kids are cute. They had fun costumes. I think Sabrina did her best work this year. Also, I couldn't get Parker to look at the camera, he was too enthralled with the idea of candy. He's a pumpkin if you couldn't tell. Also, Chase as Bob the Builder put his hat backwards the whole night. He kept insisting that's how Bob has it.

The trip of a lifetime (or at least trip of my kid's lifetime to date)

To no one's surprise who knows us, Sabrina and I like to travel. We recently traveled to the tune of more than 4,500 miles in the air and 2,000 miles on the ground. My brother lives in Boston and we took a trip out to visit him and his family.

They were gracious enough to host us (and provide us with good food) for several days before we headed out on the longest vacation I've ever been on (not including my exchange program in high school). I have driven further on a trip before, and flown further on a trip before, but never spent so many days just enjoying time with my family.

 Sabrina and I referred to this trip as "the sampler". We got to do a lot of different things, visit a lot of different places, but for the most part, didn't spend nearly as much time as we could have at those places.

 Over the next few weeks (as we unwind and are able to write up some of these) we'll be posting about each day of the trip. For the mean time though, you can see where we went in the map below. The green markers are either places we visited, places we stayed, or places I put in to make the path behave itself.

Update, here's the picture I was going for. Sorry for those who didn't get it the first time

So it's been a while...

Dear Blog,

Yea, I know we really haven't hung out much lately. Kind of sad, isn't it? We were such good friends for a period of time. I know that I had a lot of fun as I tried to make you look your best. It always gave me a chance to play in Photoshop. I was always looking for a way to make you stand out.

Then of course, there was the posts themselves. It was always exciting penning (still sounds better than typing) a new post in hopes of driving lots of comments. Sabrina was always the best at riling others up. She knew how to write about topics that got lots of page counts. I was really excited when we passed some of our good friends for number of followers. It was also fun to see where people were located at. I sometimes wondered if any of my old friends were hitting the blog when I would see people consistently checking the blog from random places across the country.

Somehow though, the novelty wore off. You just weren't cool any more. Don't worry though, I didn't two-time on you with Facebook. It never was my kind of place to go. I stayed true in my heart to you dear blog.

Now however, some of my friends are hooking back up with their blogs. Maybe it's getting cool again to write about stuff on blogs. Facebook is fading a bit (and I'm still mad I didn't short Facebook, I knew it was way overvalued). Others seem interested in starting up the blog communication network again, and I guess I'd best get back on the bandwagon. You might see me around these parts a little more frequently dear blog. Life's busy, but I suppose I can make time for you. I'm not promising anything, but perhaps there are still a few people out there who will come and read the good word.

Missed you,
Brett