Surgery

Yeah... I'm getting tired of going to hospitals, waiting during surgeries, and making ICU visits.  People, stop getting sick!  :)

My dad had triple bypass surgery today.  All went well.  (Thank goodness!)  He's in ICU now, mostly sleeping.  We even got a good snore out of him today. :)  haha  They hope to move him to his own room (and out of ICU) either tomorrow or Monday (depending on the doctor).  He's a tough man, though.  He'll pull through.

This wait didn't seem as scary as Jess' surgery, though.  Perhaps because my mom, all my siblings, and BJ were there, all playing games.  A good game of Settlers of Catan--Cities and Knights (with a few interuptions) takes up a huge chunk of long surgery waiting time.  All in all, I'm glad we were able to be here with my mom to take her mind off things, and I'm even more grateful that the surgery went really well.

Mapping out LDS missions

Hey everyone,

On a spur-of-the-moment decision, I decided to create an overlay on Google Maps that shows every LDS mission. If you served an LDS mission and think you know the current mission boundaries, do me a favor and go to http://tinyurl.com/ldsmissionmaps. On the left, you should see "LDS Mission Maps", and near it an "Edit" button. Click that, and you should see some shape-drawing tools appear on the map itself. If your mission's not on the list, find it and draw a shape around it, then list its name. (Preferably the standard name in English, as in "Spain Malaga Mission", with the country first.)

Oh, and don't be afraid to change the color so that it stands out from its neighbors!

Thanks!

Idaho Baby Shower!

I promised several people that I would post info about baby showers as they were planned. This weekend we're making a last-minute, emergency trip to Idaho. So is my sister, Jalin. We decided that since the both of us being in Idaho at the same time is rare, she'd throw me a baby shower. So, sorry about the last-minute invite. There wasn't much choice. Also, spread the word! I know this late there is no way I'll get everyone.

So, details.

Date: Saturday, March 28
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: Karla Ashton's home. (She's BJ's aunt)
Address: 921 Limestone Drive, Idaho Falls, ID 83404

Directions (or Google Map):
Head south on Holmes Ave. go past 17th St. and past Home Depot. Turn left at the stoplight on 25th Street. Go past Community Park and take your first right onto Ridgecrest Drive. Take your first right again onto Limestone Dr. and then turn right into the culdesac. It is the first house on the left.

Come! It'll be fun!

The trip back from Oregon

The trip out from Burns, Oregon is every bit as long as the trip in. Damian had brought a couple portable screens to hook up to a DVD player for the long trip, but unfortunately the DVD player didn't like to work in Grandma's car. I was a bit worried that Lexi and Parker would get squirmy, but they seemed to entertain themselves pretty well.

I cite the following video as proof.

Enamored by this 37-second preview? The full-length 40-minute song will be soon coming to a record store near you, so start saving your nickels!

The trip up to Oregon

Last weekend, Tianna and I went up to Hines, Oregon for our nephew's baptism. You've probably never heard of Hines, Oregon, so let me give you a brief description. It's a small suburb of a small town two hours from any other sort of civilzation. The town itself seems to be doing well enough off, but I really have to wonder what inspired someone to move there in the first place. But anyway, that's not the point.

Tianna and I drove up to Twin Falls on Thursday night in order to split up a 10-hour drive. Friday, we met her parents, her brother Damian, and his kids Lexi (6) and Parker (4), and drove the rest of the way up. About an hour outside Boise, the road to Hines becomes quite windy, and since Tianna gets car-sick easily, she wanted to be in the front at that point. That meant I got to drive. I don't actually mind driving much, so it worked out fine.

There are some pretty vistas scattered sparesly along the drive, but for the most part it's a whole lot of sagebrush and scrub oak, and not much else. When we were about an hour from our destination, the kids started asking "Are we there yet?" about every five minutes, so we needed a distraction.

BJ: "Let's play the Alphabet Game!"

Everyone else: "... uh... right. The Alphabet Game in the middle of nowhere."

Now, I should point out that Tianna's family plays a variant of the Alphabet Game in which the letter you're looking for must be the first letter of the word you find, (with an exception granted for a few of the more difficult letters.) As if the game wasn't hard enough already.

BJ: "No, I'm serious. ... A as in Air!"

That started one of the more creative rounds of the Alphabet Game that I've ever played. It was a collaborative sort of thing; we all played as a team. S was for snow, J was for Juniper (though I'm not convinced we actually saw any Junipers, but I don't know enough to be able to say, so we went with it), and at one point the curve of the road ahead was suggested for the letter 'Z'. (Unfortunately, it was curved the wrong way; it was more like an 'S' than a 'Z'.)

So the next time you're in a car in the middle of nowhere with a couple of restless kids, just play the Alphabet Game!

Electronics Hospital

So... I'm not exactly sure what happened to electronics at my house the past couple of days, but it's apparently the season for all of them to die without reason.

It started with my phone. I accidentally splashed some water on it, wiped it up, and didn't really think twice about it. A few hours later I looked down and my screen was dead. Like, it'd light up, but I couldn't see anything. There was no text on the screen. I tried turning it off and back on... nothing. I whined a bit to BJ and Jess, then moved on with life and kind of forgot about it. A few hours later I noticed that the time was back on the outside screen, but it looked like a VHS with poor traction. It was staticky and the time was split on the different sides. Weird... but getting better! Another hour or two later I looked at it again and it was all better! Huzzay!

Later that evening I decided to make dinner and keep myself entertained by listening to Harry Potter. I have it all on my work laptop (no more room on my mac!) so I plugged that into the stereo and was listening while I cooked when it suddenly stopped. Confused, I went over and opened it (it doesn't turn off when you shut the top) and it started playing again. K, weird. But whatever. Then it turned off again. I decided I might be taxing it too hard, so I started closing everything else, but half of them wouldn't close. I gave up and went back to dinner. Later I asked BJ to try restarting it. He chose restart, all the programs closed, and you know how for a few seconds, you only see the wallpaper? Well, it froze there. Even better? Harry Potter started playing! K... weird. Really, really weird. So BJ forced it to shut down, then turned it back on. 2 hours later, I had finally typed in my password, and it still hadn't finished turning on. So I forced it to shut down and tried again. It got to the login screen a lot faster this time, but still went super slow opening Windows. 2-3 hours after I tried restarting it again, it finally opened to the Windows screen. By then I was ready for bed, so I closed it and waited till morning.

Morning came, and there was an error message that we couldn't get to go away. I started whining to Michael about it, and he offered to help, but wanted to know what kind of harddrive I had. It took awhile to get the start window open, then click Control Panel. Then BJ and I went on a walk (it really helps my mood to walk in the mornings and truly enjoy Spring) and came back to find that the Control Panel had finally opened. Michael finally gave up waiting on me trying to finish the instructions and just came over.

Since I had nothing to do work-wise (there was some stuff I was doing online, but I had to keep getting help from others' so I had to wait until they returned my calls), I went out and trimmed the rosebushes. Then I made pot pie for lunch and fed Michael in exchange for working on my computer. Then I just did various other projects I had been wanting to do. It was great.

Michael ran diagnostics on my laptop and found that part of the harddrive was corrupted. He repaired it, ran the diagnostics again, and it was fine. So we rebooted... and it still took hours. He then let me borrow a case to put my harddrive on so that I can use it as an external harddrive on another computer and get all of my files off before the harddrive fails. And then I get the joy of working with the Helpless Desk to get my laptop all better. [sigh] This doesn't sound like it's gonna be all that fun.

Despite all this, I still had a great day. I ended up making banana bread as well, and we went to our Elders Quorum game night and got free pizza. I was in a great mood. We got back and BJ plopped down on the couch and we heard a loud noise. Investigating, we discovered the cause. My phone had been close to dying, but I needed to keep it close in case people called for work, so I had plugged it in next to the couch and let my phone charge there. Well, it didn't fully charge, but I kept using it, so I left the charger there so I could charge it in between uses. The cord was draped onto the couch, and when BJ plopped down, he sat on the cord which, in turn, yanked the plug out of the wall, pulling the cord out of the plug! So now my phone is almost dead and I have no phone charger. So if you try to call me and it goes straight to voicemail, that's probably why. Sorry!

I'm scared to think what's gonna happen next...

Purpose of LDS Temples

The LDS church has made a short video about the purpose of LDS temples. I've embedded it below. You can also view it at the Mormon Messages YouTube channel. You can also point any friends you have that would be interested at the Mormon Messages YouTube channel. "Each week, Mormon Messages provides short video segments about the Church's basic beliefs, as well as inspiring stories and messages of hope."

Baby Saving

Ok, so this is gonna be my last Couponing post on here, because I know a lot of you don't care at all. So I've started another blog called Provo Penny Pincher that you can keep up on if you're actually interested. And since y'all don't really care, I'm just going to post the picture and the total savings/spent. If you want to see the details, you can see it in it's fullest here.

I decided that this one was worth spending more than my typical $2-3 total for, because it's for diapers, and I figure I'll need them soon enough, so I might as well stock up now when I can get them for dirt cheap. I find that I'm stocking up on a lot of baby stuff now when I can get it for free (more to come later) or cheap. Sure, we'll have to move it all, but still. I think the price is worth it. What do you think?


Grand Total: $10.50; Grand Savings: $66.33

A whole chicken!

BJ and I are part of a dinner group and in charge of dinner this past week. Being brave, I cooked a whole chicken! I have to say, cutting a whole chicken into pieces isn't my favorite pasttime in the world. Really? You want me to pull the bone out of the socket then cut through the cartilage?! Ewwww... But BJ stood by me through most of it, helped me figure out things like where the shoulder bone actually was, and to tell me that I could do it. And I did!

You can see the recipe and my pictures along the way here. (Btw, that link is to a cooking blog that Jalin and I set up. It was going to be all cool and have a weekly menu and recipes... but after we set it up, we found out that we were too busy/lazy. So I scrapped that idea and have just been posting recipes and pictures for the meals that I do make.)

I don't care what the calendar says...

At my house, it's Spring!

24 week picture

I don't feel that big...