Blair Bears: November 2007

30 November 2007

Busy day yesterday

We took Amelia to get her monthly Synagis shot yesterday. They weigh her butt-naked to get just the right dosage; she is now 10 lbs 3 oz, which is almost 2 lbs more than last month.

As you can see, Elizabeth really likes Gummy Bears. Daddy got her a whole bowl full for dessert at Golden Corral. We then went to the drive-in and saw Enchanted.

Once I realized that different projects had different size batches (I'd been used to the 1900 Census which was consistantly 50 names per batch) I decided to change my 12 days of Christmas goal to 600 names, which reflects my original intention of 12 batches of 50 names each.
Now that I've gotten back into it I can tell that's going to be easily acconplished even if I get out of the habit a couple more times before Christmas. I just hit 300 names since starting my goal. That's 3650 since I first started last Fall. I'd really like to hit 5000 by the end of the year if I can do it without neglecting the girls too much.

28 November 2007

Hurrray!

I emailed support and within a few hours they emailed me back with a solution that actually worked! Back to indexing!

Waaaaaaaaaaah!

My Family Search Indexing program isn't working!

25 November 2007

Snow Video

Hope this works!

"Snowed In"

By west Texas standards, anyway! Church was cancelled and everything! We didn't get outside until noon, so it had mostly melted, but Elizabeth sure had fun.

Amelia, not so much. She just burrowed into Mommy and went to sleep.

The slide was really fast and there was a pile of snow to land in instead of the usual sticky burrs!

Elizabeth touched the merry-go-round and said, "Hot!"

Bye for now! We'll have more pics up on Shutterfly soon!

23 November 2007

It's really happening!

First of all, I got shipping confirmation on my Babycenter $20 off $20 order (Thanks, Katie!). Then I just got confirmation from Amazon that my Fisher-Price Amazing Animals Sing & Go Choo-Choo is on its way...for free! I am SO excited! I hope the other toys ship soon!

21 November 2007

Would you believe I found it on my own?

I'm sure Chad knows about the Amazon $250 toy deal because there are pages and pages of discussion about it on Slick Deals. Well, I just happened to be looking around and stumbled accross it. I already had a bunch of toys in my cart from looking yesterday. I wasn't entirely sure what I was doing and what qualified, but I went ahead and did it. Only got about $168 in toys, but it was actually what we were wanting to get the girls. Will be truly amazing if it goes through, especially since I didn't get the code from a forum!

Single mom today

James went on a transport this morning. Had to go into work at 6 am and didn't know where he was going. Sent me a text message with the startling news that this was his route!

View Larger Map

20 November 2007

See how she grows!

2 Months

3 Months

4 Months (today)

Want near-instant gratification?

So, it turns out that some of the information I gave you was specific
to the 1900 US Census

, which was the project I had always worked on.
That one always had 50 names per batch. Now there are a wide variety of projects and the size of the batches varies greatly!

One of the highest-priority projects of the moment is the West Virginia Vital Records project. There are 2-4 records per batch and you are only recording 6 pieces of information per record! So easy! Our Parkins ancestors are from West Virginia, so let's help get this database online. You can do a batch in under 5 minutes, close it out, and feel good that you did family history today!

19 November 2007

Elf Yourself

Here we are!

Have you used Google Checkout yet?

You can get $10 off your order at Buy.com when you use Google Checkout for the first time. They even list things that will be FREE but you don't have to use it on those if you'd rather just get $10 off something you might be getting someone for Christmas, for example.

12 Days of Christmas Challenge

I told y'all I would follow up with some things we all can do to move forward the great work of Family History. Well, what do you know about Family Search Indexing? Did you read this Ensign article?

Today I read about a mother of two little ones who just completed 10,004 names since January. I wish I could say that was me. I started last fall and have done 3350, almost all of which was before Amelia was born.

Well, I'm determined to do better! My 12 days of Christmas Challenge is to do 12 batches (usually 50 names per batch) between now and Christmas. A batch takes about a half hour, so it's really not that much. And there are lots more than 12 days before Christmas, so plenty of time for the bustle of the season.

After all, what are we celebrating? Our Savior, Jesus Christ. This is one little way we all can become "saviors on mount Zion" and really CELEBRATE Christmas. Believe me, it is easy. My mother in law would be the first to tell you she and computers do not mix and she is hooked!

Anyone else want to join in? Report your batches here and I will try to match it (on top of my 12). They really need Spanish indexers, hint, hint.

She makes messes SO much faster than I can clean

16 November 2007

I want to move to another temple district

Ancestry Insider posted this map compiling what is known and rumored about the rollout of the New Family Search. I am so jealous of those of you that are in green or yellow temple districts! As you can see, Lubbock is red. What is the New Family Search, you ask? You can click on the link to see the welcome page, but unless you are a member of the Church living in a green tenple district you won't be able to register and see (or do) anything else. Yellow temple disricts should be going online in the next 90 days, many by the end of the year.

So, what's the big deal? This is something President Hinckley has been mentioning in General Conference for a couple of years now and it's finally coming to pass! Of course I haven't seen it yet (Surely there's somewhere in the Albuquerque district close enough for James to commute!) but from what I've read it is a major breakthrough in helping Church members collaborate on family history and avoid duplicating ordinances. The reason they are rolling it out slowly is to make sure it is as good as it can possibly be, fixing problems as they arise before they can snowball. That's why everyone says the Wasatch Front (no dots) will be the very last to come onboard.

From what I understand, we'll be able to link up our family history in the way that Ancestral File was meant to do, but with all the lessons learned from that venture and the huge advances in technology since then making it very LIVING. Temple ordinances will be reserved through this website and updated automatically. I'm so excited to get going on this new era of family history and temple work. It will make it so much easier for extended family to stay on the same page and work together amd I'm really hoping that my siblings will have an easier time of benefiting from the research I've done and expanding on it. Maybe this'll be the way that we finally work together to clean up those half-finished cards that have been getting lost, burnt, and scattered across the country since 1998.

Let me know what you're hearing in your temple district (over the pulpit, through priesthood channels, or just gossip, I'm not picky) about the New Family Search. I plan to post soon about what I am doing to prepare and perhaps some suggestions y'all might want to follow to join in this great work of redeeming the dead!

The only way I like orange potatoes

Rosemary Mashed Potatoes and Yams with Garlic and Parmesan

Olivia's post about sweet potatoes reminded me how much I hate traditional sweet potato dishes. I finally found a recipe I do like. I made these several times last year before forgetting about them. I need to make them again because I think it might be a way to get veggies into Elizabeth.

14 November 2007

Tagged part 2

Christie tagged me so I hacked the blog and added myself as a poster so I could answer these.....
5 Things I was doing 10 years ago:
1. Going to the Special Editions of the Star Wars movies back to back to back with Bryan.
2. Dodging the missionary draft
3. Starting my 2nd degree
4. Helping raise Darren because my Dad was being sent to one warzone after another by the Army
5. My Mom got me hooked on the Buffy the Vampire Slayer tv show

5 Things on my to-do list today:
1. Sit around all day because I have to take one of my juveniles to a psych via teleconference with no scheduled appointment times but we'd better be there immediately waiting when the nurses call or there'll be frak to pay
2. Try to do the paperwork that I didn't get to do because of the transport I had to do yesterday.
3. Get fed up yet again with the incompetence coming from the new regime in Central Office and instead decide to spend my time on something worthwhile: finishing my proposal to start a Scout troop out here at work
4. Take occasional breaks to start learning the knots required for Scout ranks so I can complete another ticket item for my Wood Badge beads (the Scout troop proposal is the big item on my ticket)
5. Run away from work right at 5PM (fie on the phone calls for these “poor baby” juveniles because I was transporting other juveniles partway across Texas yesterday, if they really cared about their families they wouldn't have been terrorizing the state, besides, the state is giving them 50 free minutes a month on the pay phones!) so I can get the stuff ready for the Young Men to actually have a decent activity planned for Mutual's combined activity. Also figure out how to get to the Scout office 70 miles away to pick up the popcorn sales.

5 Foods I enjoy:
1. Chocolate Chip cookies, easy on the chocolate chips
2. Rouladen
3. pepperoni, pineapple, and bacon pizza
4. Wing Stop, wings and fries
5. IBC Root Beer and milk (separate or together, either is good)

5 Bad habits:
1. Spending way too much time on the computer
2. Procrastinating/ Starting projects and not finishing them
3. Getting angry about things I can’t control (like work)
4. Overeating
5. spoiling the girls. Elizabeth is our branch’s unofficial assistant organist now because I let her play on the organ, for example. Now she adds her own interpretations to the prelude music.

5 of my favorite toys:
1. computer
2. Battletech
3. lightsabers
4. costumes
5. anything that flies

5 People I tag:
I think I'm gonna end up being the one that extends the tags to outside of this circle.
1. Bryan
2. Katie (married to above)
3. Darren
4. Kenny
5. Matt

12 November 2007

Tagged

My sister Katie tagged me, so here it goes.....

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago:

1. Serving as a Spanish speaking missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the Seattle area.

2. Swiping everything we possibly could from our district leader's car on Thanksgiving morning (remember that, Childs?)

3. Struggling to deal with panic attacks and depression

4. Teaching in the shadow of the Space Needle

5. Trying to keep Childs under control the last couple months of her mission ;)

5 Things on my to-do list today:

1. Get all three of us dressed (um, yeah, 1 out of 3 is pretty bad)

2. Do dishes (did get one load done, but others are waiting)

3. Do laundry (got it started and James is continuing this evening, yay!)

4. Get Elizabeth down for a nap (um, yeah, didn't happen until 4 pm, she slept until 7 pm and I am NEVER getting to sleep tonight! Did I mention James has to go on a transport at 5:30 tomorrow morning?!)

5. Blog (Thank you, James, for holding Amelia so I can!)

5 Foods I enjoy:

1. Tomatoes, of course, have to be #1

2. Carne Asada (had some wonderful fajitas tonight that I made for James to take to Wood Badge...so glad he brought the leftovers home!)

3. Blue Bell Banana Split Ice Cream

4. Wing Stop Original Wings

5. Dark chocolate

5 Bad habits:

1. Spending way too much time on the computer

2. Not cleaning

3. Winging my Gospel Doctrine and Young Women lessons

4. Overeating