My Sunbeam

Ben started Sunbeams today (the class at church for 3 year olds). They move up a class at the beginning of the year. We had a blessing to go to the first week of January, then it was Stake Conference, so this was his first time. He LOVED it. Chris also moved up to the "big boy" nursery class. Our ward has an older nursery for all the kids who will be turning 3 during that year. He usually has a hard time going to nursery- mostly because it's an hour past naptime almost by the time he gets there. But this year, we go in the morning- his happy time of day. While getting ready this morning, we psyched him up for the big boy nursery - Ben told him all about what they do and how fun it was, and he went, NO PROBLEMS. (Me: Have fun in big boy nursery! Him: Okay.) We usually have to leave him crying and hope for the best. It was wonderful.

So, Ben got his turn in front of the camera this afternoon. I haven't taken enough pictures in the last while... I love how these came out. He's getting so grown up. What a kid.

Can't decide if I like the color or b/w version of this one the best. But they are equally cute, so I'll share both :)

Beautiful boy...

Jon is 6 months (+week or so) now. He has gotten so big and I finally got around to taking some new pictures. I've been taking one each month with his sock monkey to show how much he's grown, but this month it has been so gray and dreary that I haven't had as much good light. Add the fact that he and I have both had colds, and there ya have it. Better late than never though! 

This week he has been a little miserable. Now that his cold is about gone, he seems to be in a lot of teething pain. It seems like he's been teething for oh, two months now? But it's gotten worse, so hopefully that means the end is in sight. He's doing great sitting up and rolling around to get what he wants. He's been trying so hard to scoot (army crawl) but he's not quite there. We started him on cereal. I have a few bad pictures from those first attempts, but he wasn't really happy about it because he was sick. So I'm going to try again in the next day or two.

So without further ado-

I never got around to posting last month's sock monkey, so here are months five:

and six:
And because I gave him a bath and decided it was time for pictures... I have a few more besides the monkey shot. I couldn't decide which ones I liked the best, so here are "a few" of my favorites. I didn't get many good smiles, but I got a lot of funny faces he's been making lately trying to get those teeth in...

Don't you just want to kiss him and squish him?

How to: Google Reader

I've been meaning to start posting more often about things other than what we did this week or what pictures I took. One thing I thought I'd do is post a handy tip about blogging, photography, digital scrapbooking, etc... useful stuff that some of you are also interested in or might find useful.

So tip #1 : Using Google Reader

(This is for anyone that follows more than one blog)

If you are a blogger/blog reader/ blog stalker and you don't use Google Reader, you are missing out on a way handy tool. This is a must have. It's a feed reader, and not the only one out there, but in my opinion it's the best one to use. It's probably the most popular these days.

Reader allows you to keep track of new posts on the blogs that you read, putting this all at a glance in a simple format. It will keep track of what you have/ haven't read on each blog and allow you to organize your blogs in a way that works for you. Now I know a lot of people have a blog full of links to other blogs, or a sidebar that shows the most recent posts for each blog that they read. But this is better, I promise. Try it, you'll like it. Bottom line: It's a HUGE time-saver for blog surfers. It helps to makes your time online more productive.

I've written this little tutorial with screenshots and arrows pointing to where to click. Hopefully this will make it easy to understand and set up. 

It's super easy to get set up. If you have a google ID (blogger) you just use that to log in at http://reader.google.com

This is what that screen will look like the first time. After that, if you have it remember you (or already have google remembering you for gmail, blogger, etc) then it will just come up.

When you first log in, your screen will look like this. Click in the upper left the button that says  +Add a subscription then type or paste the url address in the box that somes up. Hit enter or click Add.

The blog will come up like this. If you want to be able to scroll through all the posts from a given blog in Reader--under the blog title in your preview pane, where it says Show: you can click all items, or to only see the new posts that you haven't read, click  x new items. This will be the selection for all of your blogs until you change it.

For a blog post to be marked as read, you just scroll down past it.

Once you have a subscription, you will see it like this in your browser. Your preview pane will show the most recent post first, and as you scroll down you can read the blog posts.

To organize your blogs, you can click on Feed settings below the blog title, and click on an existing folder or create a new one by clicking on the last option New folder. You won't have any folders until you have created one by putting a blog in it. The folders are actually more like tags than folders. You can tag something to be in more than one folder. For instance, I could put a photographer friends' blog in a folder called "Photography" and also "Favorites". 

All of your blogs will come up listed with the title that the blog owner has given the blog. If you want to rename that- maybe the titles bug you or are too long- or you just prefer to have them listed by name, you can click on Feed settings and click Rename subscription.

So once you have added all of your blogs, it will look a little somethin' like this when you log in. You will see all of your blog titles on the left and on the homepage you'll see previews of a few of the most recently updated ones in your preview pane.

If you click on the blog title on the left, it will bring that blog up in the preview pane. The blog title on the left bar will be bold if there are new posts and the number of new posts will be in parentheses. To have a post marked as read, you have to scroll completely down past the end of the post in the preview pane.

To see the whole blog, that's easy too. Just right click on the title at the top of the preview pane, and click Open link in new tab or Open link in new window, whichever you prefer. You will have to do this to comment on the post or see the blog's design/sidebars.

The one exception to all of this: Private blogs. They will not show new posts or allow you to read within Google Reader (someday hopefully they will add this feature). But, you can still add them to your list of blogs. The posts won't come up, but you can click on it on the left bar, then right click the header at the top and open the blog. This allows you to keep them on your radar as well. (Maybe set up a folder for Private blogs to check periodically for new posts).

I hope this helps. I know that a lot of times, either I don't know about something or it seems more complicated or intimidating than it is, so I don't try it. I've been using Google Reader forever, but when Dave first told me I should use it, it took me forever to actually do it, and I regretted not setting it up sooner, because it's awesome.

Please leave some feedback if you try this. Let me know if my instructions make sense or not, and if this was helpful. Let me know if you want to see more, and feel free to give suggestions for future tips :)

New header :)

This is a new favorite :) This is a picture from bedtime tonight. I found new jammies for them in all three sizes. They LOVED them. Even Jon, he was sitting there trying to look behind him to see what was there (they have capes!)

Another baby nephew!

Ethan Onil Izatt was born yesterday at 12:49 pm to Sam and Mariann and three proud big sisters. He weighed 8 lbs 4 oz. and was 20. 5 inches long. In May, there will be a total of four new baby boys in the family (all in less than a year). All four kids all having boys within that amount of time, crazy!!

Congratulations y'all!

So then AFTER Christmas...

the fun continued! The night after Christmas, we had everyone over again and this time we went game crazy. The kids watched a movie upstairs, then later when they all went to bed (a couple of them went home w/ grandma and the rest in various rooms upstairs) we played some more. It was XBOX night. We played Guitar Hero World Tour (band), Lips, and Scene It. It was crazy fun. Everyone really let loose once we got into Lips, and were pretty competitive with Scene It. Peggy and Jeanne are now addicted to Scene It, I think. I wish I had pics from the night, but I only got these ones of all the cute kids getting comfy for their movie....

Dave's Aunt Peggy stayed a couple night with us after Christmas, then we headed down to Tuscaloosa with her to visit Dave's grandparents. They were with us for Christmas, but we went down to have some more time visiting with them. The kids had a great time. Ben had a lot to tell Peggy, it was way cute to watch their conversations...

They live on a lake- it's such a beautiful place. The boys loved hiking around the yard, searching for pinecones, rocks, sticks, leaves.... and throwing them into the lake. hahaha... too much fun.

Then all their noise attracted the ducks and grandpa got them some bread to feed. They called all the ducks "Quack". They kept saying- "here Quack, here's some bread!" and "Quack! Come back!"  They loved the way their calls echoed around the lake, so it encouraged the yelling :) 

Oh, and the Quack thing- it's because we watch Peep and the Big Wide World, which I love as much as they do. It's so cute, and it's narrated by Joan Cusack- she's my favorite. The big purple one is a duck, and his name is Quack. The chick is Peep and the bird is Chirp. Peep is "just hatched", Chirp is pretty young and Quack is just kind of clueless- and they discover all kinds of things about why things are the way they are and how things work. It's really cute.

Jon just loves to be outside :)

A few more shots that I loved....

Happy boy with Daddy...

The boys and Aunt Peggy. They sure love her.

The night that we stayed, we got a couple of new games and played them until we were all too tired to think.  It was a really fun trip. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa, for having us! We had such a great time. Peg, we loved having you visit- you can come back anytime!

Discovery Center

Forgot to finish my vacation week... oops! Well, on the way home from the Smokies, we met Jeanne and Steve and family (Dave's sis+) in Murfreesboro, TN at the cooooolest children's museum. I highly recommend it, for those that are local- it's about an hour and a half from us. The kids loved loved everything. There were so many cool new things to discover and do.

Jon hanging out...

(I know, weird lighting, I should have edited these better)

Ben and Caleb playing on a real firetruck! They had the gear they could put on and everything- these two just wanted to drive it!

Oliver and Chris digging for fossils...

Fixing a car- this was the coolest and I think their favorite thing. There were all kinds of things to fix- wheels with lugnuts to unscrew, a velcro attached muffler, fluids to fill. It was very awesome. For this one they had to don the gear...

Jon was so cute playing with the wooden cars. He's still so little and just learning to sit up well, so it was kind of fun to see him sitting playing with big toys like that.

Okay, actually this might have been Ben's favorite. A market play area. He loves to play store. He was having fun ringing up everyone's produce.

Caleb just liked loading up the baskets and sending them down the belt by turning the big wheel.

Chris got in on that action...

He and Oliver had fun with it...

This was a cool shovel thing (no clue what that piece of equipment might be called) where you worked the "controls" and scooped up rocks with it.

A little reading area with a basket full of books. Chris was very interested in this. He loves to sit and look at books.

A treehouse...

Oliver just bein' cute as usual...

Chris wasn't feeling well on this trip, but this day he was feeling a lot better, especially later in the evening when he finally wanted to eat.

It wore Jon out... :)
Chris reading more books with "Apple Steve" (he calls them Apple Jeanne and Apple Steve... not sure why? My theory is that it's his version of uncle...)

They had a realllly cool water play area. We did that last. They got a little wet :)

It was the coolest place. I didn't get a picture of it, but there was this huge tube slide going from the second floor down to the first. So many fun things for them, we had a great day. 

We ended up with dinner at Fazoli's (mmm, breadsticks) since we don't have any local to us anymore and a stop at the Nestle Tollhouse bakery in Athens, which in my opinion should have been a whole lot yummier.... so no recommendation there!