Thanks, Johnny...

That kid is in trouble. Look what came in the mail today:



Let me help you out. That is our Wii and the cause of all the trouble. It is a little disc, similar to those used in a viewfinder toy, but this is for a Ben 10 watch. It's shaped like a disc, but it ain't no Wii disc, Johnny boy! Lucky for him, the repair was still free.

Update on the gremlin...

We bought a new DVD player last night for one of my birthday presents. When we got it hooked up, we realized that we could no longer change channels using this new dvd player. Not like we watch much tv with just our antenna's reception. Then we couldn't figure out how to get any channels. Just when I was ready to give up, Kyle pushed some buttons on the TV and we were able to program the channels and we discovered the floor was the ideal place for the antenna and now we get like 10 channels and not just 1!

I'm finally getting to backing up the pictures, but this morning it took me 2 hours to free up enough disk space for the process to work. I've got two CD-R's down, and about 20 to go. One time it said 4 days and 20 hours remaining to finish it's process. ??????? Then it jumped down to 6 minutes remaining. Whatever.

That's two positives, now here's one more negative. Last night I was putting my jeans away and the top of my ring snagged the top of the drawer and knocked my diamond right out of it's setting. I caught the diamond, but it chipped on the side. (It is a CZ, but still). I was able to get it back in, but I think a visit to the diamond doctor is in store.

The diamond falling out was the last straw at the end of a very long day. We are seriously wondering what's next...

We have an electronics gremlin...I thought bad things only came in threes??

Here's a list of what we have been dealing with, mostly in the past 5 days:

*Kyle's PDA (5 years old) only works if you bang it really hard on the table

*The internet stopped working. At first we thought the whole computer (5 years old) wouldn't work, but when I unplugged the internet, I could do things on the computer. Which is good, because I was turning on the computer to back up our photos since we've moved here. Luckily, after a couple hours of troubleshooting on my own and with our internet provider, here I am
online again.

*The VCR (1.5 years old) we have given up on. It works, per se. But the tracking is always off and static lines go through it constantly. We decided to graduate from the 90s and we aren't replacing it.

*The Wii (6 months old) won't read any discs. Luckily, it is still under warranty, so I sent it FedEx with a prepaid label and we should have it back in 2 weeks. This may have been Johnny's fault. He was trying to play a DVD in the Wii. Then it stopped working. Hmmm.

*The DVD player (1.5 years old...same machine as the VCR) stopped working. Right after the aforementioned Johnny tried to play a Wii game in the DVD player. Riiiight. No connection, I'm sure. Luckily, all it took was a few shakes (see the PDA entry) and it works again. Except.....

*Today the DVD player (yup, same one) decided to give up. You can still hear the sound, but there is no picture. You can push the button to switch to the VCR side and watch videos, but like I said, it's junk too. You can watch TV, but we only get one station on our antenna well enough to not hurt my eyes trying to see through the static.

So where does that leave us? Thankfully the computer works again. So we could watch some TV on the computer, but our internet is touchy. Sometimes it'll let ya. There aren't a lot of kids shows I know of on the internet. There are all those games online, but the computer chair is also my scrapbooking chair. I don't like to share! :D What's that? We could watch DVD's on our computer, you said? That reminds me:

*Last night we couldn't get our DVD rom to acknowledge the presence of the disc we put in.

*What about our portable DVD player? We left it in Utah when we were there last month. We're going back for Easter, so that's a month away.

And while we're at it, three more--

*Our external hard drive (8 months old) hasn't shown up on our computer for about a month. The light is on, the plugs are in, but we can't get it to work. Doesn't exist, according to our computer. We use it for storing shadow copies of our photos and we have all of our music we like to listen to saved on there. Moved it off the computer and onto this "handy" hard drive. Hah!

*Kyle's emailed me today to say that his cell phone battery doesn't keep it's charge. He bought it on our move 6 months ago. Hopefully this is under warranty and we can get a free replacement on this, too.

*Our digital piano (6 years old) has 2 or 3 more broken keys. We got two replaced about a year ago. Apparently, we qualify for a free total keyboard replacement...but there are no local repairmen.


What else? Please tell me our turn is over!

I love you too, Mommy!

So, Johnny has been coming up to me and saying, "I love you too, Mommy!" and he gives me a big hug and a kiss. Cute, right? Well, it's even funnier for those of us who know the I love you too story. When Kyle and I were first dating, I gave him a hug and said Thank you. But that's not what he heard. HE heard "I love you"!!! After some quick introspection, he replied, I love you too. Whoa.

Obviously, things still worked out, even with this huge oops. Actually, I didn't tell Kyle what I really said until we had been married for about 6 months! :D

Redeeming myself

OK. So that last entry was just some silly email that I got a kick out of. I love Kyle, and thought I'd redeem myself by praising him for what he did for me last Saturday. Bettie and I went to the Albuquerque temple with the Relief Society. Neither of us has gotten in the habit of going frequently because for me, I'm used to the temple being 3 hours away and being an all day affair, and for her (I think) because she is used to the temple being 5 minutes away and it feels like more of a burden to drive to now. (This temple is a 50 minute drive from our house.)

Anywho, we went bright and early and spent all day in Albuquerque, finally meeting up with our hubbies and kids at 6 pm at Bettie's brother's home, also in Albuquerque. We went out to lunch and Bettie introduced me to Mimi's Cafe's muffins. Yum! Then we went and got a pedicure. My second this year and my second one ever. Love the massage chair and the foot massage (although I am extremely ticklish in my feet) and the smooth heels. I hate nail polish, but toenail polish suits me just fine!

So, how does this story praise Kyle? He stayed home with the kids, fed them, changed them, got them to a baptism at the church all by himself. Normally, this is a feat in itself...but there's more. As my Dad says, Kyle likes to ruin it for other men: Kyle did laundry, did dishes, cleaned up our bedroom, vacuumed......

I REALLY need to have a girl's day out again! Thanks, my love!

Installing a Husband

INSTALLING A HUSBAND . . .

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Boyfriend 5.0 to Husband 1.0 and noticed a distinct slow down in overall system performance -- particularly in the flower and jewelry applications, which operated flawlessly under Boyfriend 5.0.In addition, Husband 1.0 uninstalled many other valuable programs, such as Romance 9.5 and Personal Attention 6.5 and then installed undesirable programs such as NFL 5.0, NBA 3.0, and Golf Clubs 4.1.Conversation 8.0 no longer runs, and Housecleaning 2.6 simply crashes the system. I've tried running Nagging 5.3 to fix these problems, but to no avail. What can I do?

Signed, Desperate



Dear Desperate:

First keep in mind, Boyfriend 5.0 is an Entertainment Package, while Husband 1.0 is an Operating System. Please enter the command: "I Thought You Loved Me.exe" and try to download Tears 6.2 and don't forget to install the Guilt 3.0 update. If that application works as designed, Husband 1.0 should then automatically run the applications Jewelry 2.0 and Flowers 3.5.But remember, overuse of the above application can cause Husband 1.0 to default to Grumpy Silence 2.5.Whatever you do, DO NOT install Mother-in-law 1.0 (it runs a virus in the background that will eventually seize control of all your system resources). Also, do not attempt to reinstall the Boyfriend 5.0 program. These are unsupported applications and will crash Husband 1.0 . In summary, Husband 1.0 is a great program, but it does have limited memory and cannot learn new applications quickly. You might consider buying additional software to improve memory and performance. We recommend Food 3.0 and Hot Lingerie 7.7.

Good Luck, Tech Support

Shoveling snow...

Bettie was complaining that I hadn't posted for awhile, so to grant her wish, here it is:

Lately I feel like I am shoveling snow during a blizzard. Gratefully, we haven't had enough snow to really need to shovel much. Not like Mom and Dad with the piles 5 feet high on the sides of their driveway from shoveling real snow. No, I am talking about my cluttered home. It's that great saying: Keeping your house clean when you have kids is like shoveling snow during a blizzard. It is pretty impossible. Especially with life lately: a weeklong road trip to Utah (with all the packing and unpacking and new acquisitions and all the mess that goes along with these), two birthdays, sick kids, and reading the Twilight books. :D When I read a good book, I like to read it til it's done and the house suffers. I get so frustrated at the mess that appears as soon as I turn my back on a room...so extremely frustrated. I think I have a clutter fairy living in my house that throws everything on the floor when I'm not looking!