Easter Fun

Mike and I decided that we wanted to dye Easter eggs this year. We had a lot of fun. And then we turned them in to deviled eggs, which are always yummy. Mike's eggs turned out very well. I tried to do a technique where I cracked the eggs and dyed them so that the eggs themselves would come out marbled. Unfortunately they didn't really marble. Here's pictures of our creation.

Big step for me

I was in Denver for the SRCD conference last week. I like academic conferences. It's a great chance to go hear what others are currently dong in the field. You can get a lot of information in a short time. Of course, you're also completely brain-dead by the time it's over. What I don't like though is all the people. I get extremely nervous around people I don't know and have quite a bit of anxiety when I'm in large groups of people. So even though conferences are a great opportunity to network, I find I really prefer to go to the talks and then hide in my hotel room. This year though I made a very concerted effort to talk to some of the big names in my field. And not only am I proud of myself for talking with people I don't know, it seems that the measures we've developed for my research were interesting to others. A lot of people felt that my ideas were relevant and headed the direction that the field needs to go. It's always nice when important people who actually matter think what you're doing and your approach to the field is intersting. Even more exciting was a conversation I had with a researcher at the University of New Orleans who is running a longitudinal study and wants to include our new measures in his upcoming data collection. So not only did he think it was interesting, but actually wants to use what we've spent the last two years developing. Kind of makes it feel worthwhile (both the years and the anxiety of talking to people).
Of course, even though all that was great, I was still glad to get home to Mike and Apollo and friends at home who don't scare me. =)

Why do techonological advances make my life more difficult

I have the latest version of Office on my laptop. That's what the University is currently running and so I get it for free. They've made a lot of changes and even though I do love that it keeps my references in a database for me, that's about the only thing I like at the moment. Last summer I submitted an abstract for a conference using the old version of Word. Now I'm trying to create the presentation for that conference. All I want to change is the labels on my graphs from my abstract submission. Just in case you didn't know, tables and graphs get a lot of attention at these conferences. Sometimes I think they're the only thing that gets paid any attention. By the end of the conference I walk through the poster sessions and if there's a bunch of words, but no table/graph then I have tendency to walk on. I'm just too brain-dead at that point to process what they wrote. Sad isn't it? However, this new version of Office won't let me change what I want. Nor will it let me make a new chart in Power Point. It links me to some internal excel file and then has crazy built in formulas that I can't seem to get rid of. Arggh!!!!! Not to mention that they're new way of selecting your graph format won't let me get rid of the internal axis lines. I can't have internal axis lines. Have they not read the APA manual? Grrr. I want my old version of Office back where you could click on the label and just type in the new name. Sigh.

Problem with getting appliances all at the same time

I think appliances are deliberately designed to have a certain life span. The problem with this is that if all appliances are from the same company and purchased at the same time then they can all die at the same time as well. As a result, on Valentine's Day, our oven died. The dishwasher had already been dying for a little while. The microwave followed shortly after the oven (when Mike tried to show his sister-in-law how it was starting to break and succeeded in completely breaking it). Just for good measure the garage door opener broke the next morning. All of this was preceded by our upstairs vacuum cleaner dying the week before.
Fortunately we hadn't already made plans for how to spend our tax return money. Now, after lots of shopping and Mike's haggling, we have a new range, a new microwave, and a new dishwasher. It's nice because they're all the modern stainless steel kind and it really updated the look of our kitchen. My favorite is our dishwasher splurge. We went up a level on the dishwasher and got the kind that is super quiet and can tell how much dirt is still in the water so that it only washes it as long as necessary and saves water and energy. Being kind to the planet always makes me happier. Plus I'm so happy when I unload the dishwasher and the dishes are actually clean. It's been the first time in my life that I've been excited to do the dishes and run the dishwasher. And as an extra bonus Mike's father came to visit and found a kit to fix our garage door opener and was able to fix our vacuum as well. For the time being all is well in the world of our appliances. We're going to enjoy it while it lasts.

A sad reminder

Mike, of course, is a sports fanatic. He actually watched part of the Pro Bowl on Sunday to get his last bit of football in until next season. As much as he likes watching though, he'd much rather be out playing sports, be active and be healthy. He's belonged to several different rec leagues over the years and will play anything. He's played for years on a Softball team from his old church and is good friends with several of the guys. Sunday morning we found out that one of the guys, who is about Mike's age, had a heart attack and died. He left behind a wife and two young children. It was tough because I think we have this idea that people who eat healthy and exercise a lot shouldn't have heart attacks and certainly shouldn't die from them at our age. The timing was interesting because Sunday we also had our picture taken at church. Our church has over 5000 people so we don't take church-directory-type pictures. A man from church though volunteered to take pictures of married couple. He is a professional photographer and his wife died unexpectedly. He found that he had lots of pictures, but not very many of the two of them together. So he wanted to honor his wife's memory by taking these photos for free and remind couples to treasure their time together. With Jimmy's death and these photos coming on the same day Mike and I feel very reminded that we need to treasure our moments together. It's sad way to be reminded of it though.

Apollo watches TV

Mike and I have noticed in this past year that periodically Apollo will watch TV. You can see his face looking up at the screen and watch him pay attention. Sometimes it's very brief, just like he wants to check out what we're watching. Sometimes though he'll pay attention for a longer period of time. We've even had the occasion where he didn't like something he saw on TV and started to bark or growl but it never lasts too long. Last night was different though.
Apollo doesn't like our new Wii. We're not sure if it's because we're not playing with him or if it's because we often look like we're throwing something but don't actually let go. Regardless, he gets fussy when we play. Last night I was making up some additional miis for our Wii. I was having fun making one to look like Mike's brother, Scott. Scott has every large, bushy eyebrows that pretty much form a unibrow. As I was trying large scary looking eyebrows on this mii Apollo started growling and barking at the TV. He was completely worked up and very upset. At first I laughed and thought it was the scary looking face but I could not get him to settle down. I finally had to change the screen so the large mii face wasn't there anymore to calm him down. When Mike came home we laughed about Apollo barking at Scott. However, when I showed Mike we picked a different mii and Apollo went berserk over that mii as well. So apparently there's something about the miis that Apollo doesn't like. For the rest of the evening though when we had the TV on Apollo would periodically walk up and check out the TV, almost like he was checking to make sure it was real people and not the miis. This weekend every one's coming over to our house to watch the Superbowl and play the Wii. It should be interesting to see how Apollo responds.

Jesus dies every year

So a few years ago while I was finishing my Masters but before I moved back to Texas I ended up taking care of three boys. It was an interesting experience to be a nanny and I really enjoyed it. It's always fun to learn how to parent on someone else's child. One thing I already knew is that children are very observant of what is said and done around them. That made me very picky about what I would play on the radio in the car. Since even country songs occasionally use inappropriate language or topics I just left the local Christian station on. I knew there wouldn't be anything on that channel that I would be embarrassed to have the boys tell their parents they had heard. The youngest boy, age 4, spent the most time in the car with me and probably heard the radio the most.

After I had been with them a few months we were in the car one day when Tucker's voice comes from the back seat. "You always listen to songs about Jesus. Why do you love Jesus so much?" I was a little caught off guard but said I loved Jesus because God loved me. He asked how I knew that. I then tried in very simple, 4-year-old terms to explain that God had sent Jesus to die for our sins because he loved us. I didn't get very far in to my explanation before Tucker interrupted me. "Oh, I know all about that. Every year at Easter Jesus dies and comes back to life." So there you have it from a 4 year old's point of view.