Google Reader

Each day I have about 20 blogs that I read. Most of these people post on a daily basis. I have come to love reading all these blogs and feel some attachment to these people as well. Happy for them when things are going right, sad when things are going wrong. To read all these blogs I had used Firefox to open them all in tabs. This worked well for me, but I was curious about Google Reader which Darryl uses all the time.

Darryl and I are quite a fan of most things Google. We both use gmail and love it. We've been able to convince a lot of our family and friends to start using gmail. Gmail also has a chat function that I use to talk to people. I now talk to Darryl's sister through g-mail all the time, where I rarely talked to her before. I talk to my mom and Tammy quite a lot as well. I'm also a fan of the Google documents, especially for work "stuff". Then I can have access to my work documents wherever there is internet. I also use google calendar (especially to keep up with my mom's work schedule), google maps ( i think it works the best of all the "map" programs). Darryl has been using Google reader for quite a while, so I have decided to try it for reading my blogs. So far so good. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Google reader, when you are on a site that you want to be updated on when there are any changes click the little orange button in the address bar. Then google reader will check when that site is updated and let you know when you go to the Google reader page. It's quite cool, now I only have to check one page to see who's posted new blog entries.

Just wondering if there is any tool you use to keep up with blogs? Bloglines? Or do you do it old school where you open the webpage to check if there is anything new?

Till Tomorrow

Jenn

Being Very Articulate

Lucas continues to learn new words everyday. Lately he has been trying some more difficult words and like to pronounce every syllable. So his penguin which I named Hugsie after the penguin toy from Friends, gets pronounced Hug-gu-z. Darryl and I love it and find it quite comical. The other word that he really articulates each syllable is Emma's best friend Jackson. Which comes out Yac-iy-son.

How I ever amused myself before Lucas I have no idea.

Till Tomorrow

Jenn

E-mail

I love e-mail. I use it all the time. I feel weird if I don't check my e-mail at least once a day. Sometimes on Saturday I don't receive any e-mails and I find it to be a little sad. E-mail has done some great things. I have a better relationship with my dad because of it. When I first moved out west my dad and I use to send e-mails to each other to stay in contact. I remember the first one I got from him I wasn't sure who it was. He signed it with one of his nicknames and it took me a couple of reads to figure out it was my dad. From those e-mails we became very close. Also I can stay in great contact with lots of my friends who live far away. I even prefer e-mail to the phone, then people can respond when they are ready to rather then immediately. I'm sure it also has to do with my geekness as well. Yesterday I had to step out of my comfort zone and call someone I had never met before and ask them to do something for the students. I would have much prefered to e-mail it.


That being said someone sent me an e-mail recently that made me feel like the size of an ant. I'm sure they didn't do it on purpose but the exaggeration they put in the e-mail played on my insecurities and now I'm feeling like I need to do something to help my problem. What is my problem you ask? You all know..... I am a horrible writer. I think I can write from the heart but, I can not write a professional document if my life depended on it. Spelling, grammar just not my forte. My question is how does someone get better at writing professional documents? Is it practice makes perfect or are there just people who are born to care religiously about these things? I don't want to become a perfectionist, if I did there would be no blog, because I'm sure my posts would never be good enough. But I would like to become a better, more professional writer.

Till tomorrow

Jenn

Words

Yesterday when Lucas and I went to the immunizations they asked how many words Lucas can say. I wasn't really sure so tonight Darryl and I (and kind of Alexis, although I'm sure we kind of annoyed her a bit) made a list of all the words Lucas knows. Here we go:

1. all done 2. Anna 3. banana
4. bird 5. bread 6. Broom
7. brush 8. bubbles 9. Bum
10. Bus 11. button 12. Bye
13. Car 14. cat 15. Choo-Choo
16. Clarke 17. clean 18. coke
19. cookie 20. Cool 21. cracker
22. cup 23. Dad 24. Dark
25. Doing 26. down 27. Dude
28. eight 29. elmo 30. Emma
31. Fan 32. farmer 33. five
34. fork 35. four 36. Go
37. Going 38. Gone 39. happy
40. hey 41. Home 42. Hot
43. juice 44. ju-jube 45. kitty
46. Lady 47. Light 48. Lighting
49. mad 50. Matt 51. milk
52. Mom 53. money 54. More
55. nine 56. nut 57. off
58. oma 59. on 60. opa
61. outside 62. Pat 63. Pee
64. Pepper 65. Pet 66. Please
67. Poo 68. Pop 69. Potty
70. puppy 71. rat 72. running
73. Sally 74. shake 75. Shauny
76. Shop 77. suckie 78. tea
79. Thank You 80. Tigger
81. Torin 82. tub 83. two
84. up 85. water 86. we will
87. what 88. Winne 89. Wow
90. Yucky 91. Yummy

If anyone knows any more please add them.

Till Tomorrow

Jenn

A Talker with A Big Belly

Lucas's vocabulary is really coming along. It's amazing how each day 3 new words come out of his mouth. Often they are words that only his parents understand, like eomo, is really Elmo, or S@#$ty is really Sally (the porshe). But still I can't believe how fast it is coming along. Yesterday he added pepper, please and cracker. Although I am so proud of him, it also makes me a little sad that he is growing up so fast. It is nice that he is starting to use his words a little more to communicate. Like now I know if he wants juice or milk, rather then offering them both and him choosing.



We also went tobaganning on Sunday, which was fun although exhausting. Lucas and I went on a very tiny hill but he didn't want to climb up the hill so I had to carry him and the crazy carpet up the hill. After 10 times I had enough of the "weeee" so we headed home and I was sure to have a nap that afternoon.



The other new funny thing he is doing is sticking out his big belly. It started this weekend while we were having dinner at Grandma and Pop's ( he is also saying Na,na, which isn't quite Grandma but we are living with it for now). He started bending his back and sticking out his belly. We'd say "big belly big belly" He'd laugh, we'd laugh. Maybe you had to be there. But it is funny.

Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Till tomorrow

Jenn

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad

Today is my Mom and Dad's 25th Wedding anniversary. We had them over for dinner the other night to celebrate and gave them a bottle of port to open after their next 25 years of marriage. When I went into the wine store to buy this bottle of port and told the retailer my story he commented on what a great achievement as many people do not make it to 25 years married. I certainly agree with him. With the divorce rate being so high it is a rarity in today’s day and age. So after dinner I asked them what it takes to make a marriage work for 25 years. Here's what they said works for them.

Their top thing was they were friends. They had many of the same interests, not everything in common but they genuinely enjoyed each other’s company and enjoy similar activities. They take golf trips in the summer and ski trips in the winter. They both love to shop for good deals and gamble their money in Las Vegas. They enjoy each other’s company and want that company around for many years to come.



The next thing they mentioned was growing together. I am proud to say that when my sister and I graduated from highschool and started college, my parents started university. At some point they both quit their jobs to pursue their university degrees. They always grew together and supported each other.

Last but not least the big thing they mentioned was communication. They talked about how mom never told Dad to quit a job, she may have hinted at it, but mostly just let him talk till he came to the right decision about it. They talked about how they love to laugh together and how humor often helped them get through things. Marriage is a lot of work (and I'm sure I caused lots of the work), but they chose to work at it and have realistic expectations about marriage and know that there will be ups and downs, you just have to communicate your way through them.


It was a great evening for me, great to hear about fun times at Grey Rocks. Fun times we had as kids going to Ontario place or the base ball games. It's fun to recall all the fun times we've had in life and what those things have taught us. They have been a great example for me on marriage, love and perseverance. They taught my sister and I how to behave as people and how to have fun. They taught us that education is so important but so is going on vacation.

I love you Mom and Dad. Happy Anniversary!

Jenn

Santa Claus and Emma are the Same

Lucas, Darryl and I are walking through Walmart a couple of days ago and Lucas starts to "ha-ha-ha" which is him panting like a dog. We ask him where the dog is because we don't see any around......

Driving home last night Lucas does the same thing "ha-ha-ha" *panting like a dog noise* It is quite dark outside and we are surprised that he sees a dog and cannot find it ourselves

Well today I figured out that with Lucas's limited communication skills what he is actually referring to is Santa Claus. Which we have been calling Ho Ho Ho! As Lucas could not say Santa Claus, but may be able to say ho-ho. He is not differentiating between the ha of a dog and the ho of Santa. I figured this out because he blatantly pointed to the picture of him sitting on Santa's knee from last year that his on our fridge and "ha-ha-ha"*panted like a dog*

If it makes Santa feel any better everyone thinks very highly of Emma.

Till Monday

Jenn

Babble Babble Babble

Well Lucas has become quite the little chatter box. It's funny becuase his aluguage has gone past saying the same sylable over and over again. To talk in sentences, that don't mean anything. He'll talk and talk as though he is making complete sense. Plus he says lots of constants as well, which is good but nothing is really words expect.....

car. He can now clearly say the word car. People in Tim Hortons this morning even knew what he was talking about.

I also taught him how to give high fives, which he thinks is quite fun. When he does something good, like helping me clean up, or fitting the right block into the right hole, we do high five. It's so fun to watch him grow up and smile.

Till Tommorrow

Jenn