A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family
We had bought this little tent, when Ethan was little, and I saw it in the garage today and decided to get it out to inspect it. I remember part of it being broken but I couldn’t remember which part or how bad, so I had the boys put it up in the living room. Adam instantly wanted to hang out in it.
He loved that it’s just his size.
I’ve been feeling it’s about time for a car seat upgrade. The car seats that we have had Chloe and Lydia in are at least 9 or 10 years old. Chloe is old enough and heavy enough for a booster seat now and Adam is out of leg room sitting rear facing and he is rather squished in the infant seat. So we went out today and bought Chloe a booster seat, and bought new car seats for Adam and Lydia.
Adam was really excited to check out the new seat while it was in the house and we were adjusting straps.
Here is the arrangement of the van with the old car seats. In case you can’t tell, that’s two forward facing seats, with the infant seat in between on the front row.
Here’s a view of the van with all the new seats.
The kids were all so excited to sit in their new seats that we decided to have movie night in the car. We put on “Emperors New Groove” and went for a drive, so they could ride in their new car seats.
Several months ago my girl scout juniors decided that for a take action project, they wanted to save pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald house. Then when cookie time came around the troop as a whole decided that we would sell gift of caring cookies for the Ronald McDonald house as well. Today we took the juniors to the Ronald McDonald house to deliver the pop tabs and 150 something boxes of cookies that were donated.
After getting his laundry started, Ronald McDonald himself took us on a tour of the place. It is basically a place for families who have sick hospitalized children, to stay so they don’t have to spend a fortune staying in a hotel while their child is in the hospital. So at the Ronald McDonald house there are hotel like bedrooms, only they don’t have tvs in them. They have a big movie room on the main floor with lots of bean bags and chairs so they can have movie nights. There is a workout room, and a laundry room. There is a big play room, and an outside play area for kids. I thought the play house was awesome:
We ended our tour in the kitchen, which was so awesome. I love all the counter space and the stove top. Groups volunteer to come in to help make meals for the families that are staying at the Ronald McDonald house, but they also have a couple of stoves and microwaves that the families can use to make their own food if they want something different than what is being made.
So if you are a person that is concerned with security on your electronic devices, I do NOT recommend the Kindle for you.
Kyle got me a Kindle for Mother’s day a few years ago because I had complained about missing my Palm Zire. My Palm kept me on track with all of the household tasks, and since it’s death I have struggled with being on top of everything and remembering when it’s time to do things. He thought that maybe I could use the Kindle to keep me on track instead. For a long time I used the Kindle without putting any kind of password on it. I downloaded some calendar apps, and some task manager apps, and some free games and free books. As soon as the kids saw the games they started taking the Kindle and hiding with it to play them. This became troublesome. They even bought a couple of things through my Amazon account, which caught me by surprise when I saw the email order confirmation. After this episode Kyle helped me make sure that I had one click purchasing and in app purchasing turned off, so that any purchase made from the Kindle would require me to log in to my Amazon account. None of the kids would admit to having the Kindle, and they wouldn’t return it when I noticed it missing and asked for it, so eventually Kyle put a password on it for me. This seemed to deter them for a little while, but then they started trying to guess the password, to get into it anyway. Well here is where the real problems began. On other devices, such as the iPad, or the Nook, if you enter the wrong password five or six times, it locks the device and tells you to try again after 5-10 minutes or so. If you KEEP putting in the wrong password, it locks it for even longer. The Kindle doesn’t do that. Entering the wrong password five or six times you will be given the option to reset the Kindle to factory default settings. In the hands of kids who don’t know how to read, or that just don’t know what that message means, this is not a good option. In short, my children wiped out my Kindle multiple times. I was able to recover my books, and apps, because they were stored in a cloud on my Amazon account, but all information stored IN the apps, was lost forever. Every event in the calendar, every task, I had a good years worth of information in a medical tracker app….all of it GONE. Kyle called Amazon customer service to complain about this feature and find out if there was any other way to get my information back, but there isn’t. So Kyle and I did some further testing. I got all my apps and books back on, and I added a few things to the task list, then we used the cable to back up the Kindle to my computer. Then we wiped the Kindle again, re-downloaded the file from my computer and checked the task list. Nothing had transferred, so it’s pointless to try to back up the device like that. So we ended up just taking the password off. The kids went back to taking it to play games, but at least they couldn’t buy stuff, or so we thought. Somehow, even with one click purchasing and in-app purchasing turned off, Tyra was able to purchase four videos for the Kindle! This is the last straw. Kyle called Amazon and complained about it and they ended up refunding my card and removing those videos from the Kindle, and we have decided to remove the apps and games from the device, turn off the wifi, and make it an electronic library for home school uses. As for a device for me, we are going to give the Google Nexus a try.
Before tonight, I could say that I had never been pulled over. I have been in the car when Kyle was pulled over, once. I have been in the car when my dad was pulled over, I think a couple of times. But I have never been pulled over when I was the driver, until tonight. 🙁
I drove to Salt Lake tonight to pick Kyle up from the airport after his business trip to Florida. After picking him up we started heading home, but stopped to pick up some laundry soap first. As we were getting closer to home, I saw those red and blue flashing lights behind me. But being late at night it was hard to tell if they were directly behind me, or behind another vehicle. I also had that thought that maybe they needed to pass me, so I pulled over. They pulled over behind me. The officer got out and came over to the passenger side window. So I opened it, and he asked how we were doing tonight, and then proceeded to let us know that the driver’s side tail light was out. That was it. After he wished us a good night and started heading back to his car, and I thanked him for scaring me, we were back on the road to finish the drive home. Now I can never claim that I have never been pulled over, again.