I know everyone was on the edge of their seats waiting for another Tech Time with Tee...and I never want to disappoint my blog fans...so without further ado.... :-)
We use this great tool called CutePDF. It allows you to print any document to a pdf document. May not be as widely applicable as the Zoomit tool, but I've used it quite a bit here at work when I want to save word docs as pdfs to avoid people from editing them or if I have images that I need to save to a pdf as well.
Click on the link above and it will take you to the Cutepdf site. Then click on the link as shown below and it will install on your machine. It's super easy to get rid of if you no long need/want it and again the best part is it's FREE!
I'm finally going to update the blog...sorry things have been a bit busy around the ranch lately.
Our trip to New Mexico was a blast! It was so good to see Mitchell and spend some time with the family. Logan did great on the plane. He slept the whole way there (mainly because we didn't leave until 9:30 pm and that's past his bed time). We had to fight him a little on the way home, but not much maybe 3 mins and then he was sleeping again. He was such a trooper through the entire trip. It was another vacation jam-packed full of activities, which is fun, but also hard to find time to squeeze in naps. He would always fall asleep in the car, so instead of waking him up to go inside to eat, we just unbuckled the entire car seat and brought that inside. He slept through a couple meals that way.
Let's see...what did we do on the trip...the first day we went to the zoo. It was great. A ton of animals to see. We even got to see the lion perform for us...check it out...
Some other random shots...Me and Hitchell
Smile!
Family Picture Time!
Group shot!
The next day we wanted to go to a water park, except we couldn't find one that was open at this time of year. The weather was great, about 70 - 78 every day, but I guess not warm enough for New Mexico water parks. The other disappointing thing was our hotel pool was drained for some reason, so we couldn't even swim there. Boo! Very disappointing! So instead of a water park we found Hinkle's Family Fun Center. It has mini golf, laser tag, bumper cars, go-carts, arcade, etc. It was a ton of fun!
Logan's favorite thing to do at Hinkles....play in the car....
And of course he had to ride the Merry-go-round again...
Get your putters ready! It's mini golf time!
Bumper cars
Waitin' for Laser tag to start!
That night we went to the casino for dinner and the guys gambled a little. No big winners, but no big losers either....Mitchell was playing Blackjack and thought it would be a good idea to split 10's...only you Hitchell! :-) Mom and Logan got kicked out of the casino....I couldn't control the kid he was a gambling fool...no but seriously after we eat the security guard almost had an aneurysm when he saw us in the casino. We were just going to hang out while the guys gambled a little. It's not like I was going to gamble myself or anything, I hate gambling...but I guess no children on the gaming floor...so my mom, sister and I went next door and went bowling. It was still fun!
Then Tuesday morning before my brother Steven and sister Christie had to leave for home we went golfing! It was a blast!! I'm so ready for golf season, which starts this Thursday...please don't let it rain Thursday...
Jamie and Mitchell
Ok, I know Jamie's not going to be pumped that I'm posting this...but it's so funny! The video is turned sideways and I'm not sure how to fix that, but you'll get the drift... :-) Love you Jamie!
Logan had a BLAST golfing. He loved being able to drive the golf carts! He would run from one cart to the other and just play and play. He never got bored or crabby or tired the entire time. My mom didn't golf so she stayed with him at the carts.
Brian: "Should we just give up and buy him a race car now? The only thing he loves to do is drive!"
Tee: "Oh dear Lord...help me..."
Steven and Christie
Then after Steven and Christie had to leave we headed back to the bowling alley. It was fun and my Dad, Mitchell and BMeyer got drunk! Pretty funny to watch!!
Logan wanted to help Mom bowl....he did better then I would by myself.
Finally some random family shots...
Jamie picking her nose....She wasn't really, but it looks like it....sorry again Jamie...
This was from Old Albuquerque. There was tons of shops and things to look at. Very cool.
Mom, Dad and Mitchell.
Mitchell called on Saturday. He made it into Kuwait safely. Not sure when he actually leaves for Iraq, but I'm sure he'll let us know. I believe he had a chance to update his blog, so check that out for more info. It was great to see you little brother! Please be safe over there and we'll see you when you get back! Love you!
Other happenings at the ranch...we got our bees on Saturday. We got about 2000 bees to help pollinate the apple trees and garden. Hopefully they survive. Logan finally got one of his molars in on Saturday as well. He's had three very swollen teeth that we've been watching...and of course the one that comes in is the one we were not watching. We discovered it on Sunday, but I think it actually came in on Saturday. I just hope his other three come in soon....poor kids been struggling with these teeth for about two weeks now...
Anyways, sorry for the long post...I'll try to do a better job of updating the blog now that were home and don't have any vacation plans in the near future.
We leave tomorrow for Albuquerque NM to see my brother Mitchell before he leaves for over seas. Our flight leaves at 9:30 am....or so I thought...I logged on to NWA.com to checkin for our flight and change our seat assignments to see if we could get seats closer to the front of the plane (I hate siting on the plane after we've landed). But when I logged on this morning to checkin, it said "Cannot checkin until 24 hours before your flight departs." What? Our flight leaves at 9:30 am tomorrow, that's less then 24 hours away...yes 9:30 am is within 24 hours...9:30 pm is not, and 9:30 pm is when our flight leaves.
I'm SO FRUSTRATED!!!! I never do things like this! I'm normally so on the ball and am great at booking things like this and planning trips, etc. I have no other excuse except "Placenta Brain". How many times can I claim placenta brain before I've used up my quote for this pregnancy? Anyways, I started calling my family to let them know that our flight time was wrong and that I'm a moron. It really wasn't a big deal except that my parents were suppose to drive to El Paso to pick up my brother as soon as we got off the plane. So we immediately called my brother Steven and sister who were flying in from Milwaukee and New York respectively to see if they could rent the car and go pick Mitchell up. Luckily they were able to do that, but still already the trip isn't going as planned.
I'm mostly over it now, except for two things. One, there goes my life long goal of becoming a travel agent! :-) And two, if I've messed this up without knowing it, what else have I messed up that I don't know about yet?!!?!?!?
Last weekend we went to Wisconsin Dells with the Sherman's and it was a blast! It had been almost a year since we'd seen Jake and Layla Bean and it was so good to see everyone. We stayed at the Cedar Lodge and Settlement, we had a very nice two room cabin with a full kitchen and living room. There was a loft as well with two double beds in it. It would have been perfect for the kids if they were a little older, but as it was they both got to sleep with Mom and Dad for the weekend.
We got there late Thursday night, I say late, since if you ask my husband I'm the worst navigator ever and we couldn't find the place once we got into the Dells. But we just chillaxed on Thursday night and most of Friday. Brian thought it would be fun to bring our Wii along, and man was he right! We played Wii all Friday morning and pretty much all weekend. It was a blast! April had never played before and let me tell you her enjoyment levels were off the charts! :-) I know she's going to kill me for this, but this video of her playing tennis is so funny! Sorry Apes! :-)
Then Friday afternoon we headed to Mt. Olympus indoor water park and theme park for a couple hours. Logan and Layla had a blast! At first I think they were both like, "Holy crap what is this place?" But after about 10 min they were totally into it.
Some pictures from the water park
We didn't stay at the water park for too long, a couple hours or so. Then we headed over to the indoor theme park. They had an arcade there, so we played skeet ball for a while. Logan and Layla rode on the little Merry-Go-Round in the arcade and I think it was one of Logan's favorite things to do on our vacation. The video is hilarious!
I love this picture of Layla. She wasn't even doing anything wrong either. But I'm sure we'll make up a good story of something she was doing wrong to tell her some day.
Group shot
One of Layla's favorite things to do is push her baby's around in her stroller. So she thought it was great at the water park when she got to push Logan around in his stroller.
Bath time after the water park.
Saturday morning we colored Easter eggs with the kids. April had gotten a camo Easter egg coloring kit, so we put camo stickers on the kids faces. So cute!
After coloring eggs, April and I had "Mommy time" and went shopping and out to lunch, while the Dads napped with the kids. We all met up again in the afternoon at the Wisconsin Deer Park. It's a park where you can feed the deer and other animals there. We figured the kids would get a kick out of it and they totally did! Although they weren't impressed too much with the deer....they were more excited to just be outside and walking around...and Logan was MOST excited about all the rocks! I know I've mentioned this before, but he loves picking up rocks for some reason? And he thought the deer park was the greatest thing ever because they had so many rocks! In the picture below I can just imagine him thinking, "Deer? Screw the deer look at these rocks!"
And in this picture he's probably thinking, "Sweet no ones watching me, I can sneak away and get more rocks!" :-)
More pictures from the Deer Park. Me and this llama had a special bond...we're both preggers. I like to think she's smiling at me....even though I think she was really getting ready to spit at us....
The little munchins!
After the deer park we headed out for dinner at Moose Jaw Pizza place. They gave us super cool moose hats... :-)
Oh and I can't forget...the guys bought the kids their first fishing poles on the trip as well. I think it was really more so they could fish themselves, but they did teach the kids how to fish. No success catching anything though.
A few more random shots from this weekend.
This one is so cute. The kids were giving each other high fives and kisses all weekend long. It was so cute!
Thanks Jake, April and Layla for a great weekend! We can't wait to see you guys again and definitely can't wait until next year when we can do it again! :-)
Check out the family pictures we had taken a couple weeks ago! Aren't they great! I'm so happy with them. We had them taken by Michelle LeMonds. Her studio is out of her home in St. Michaels, MN. Her rate is $100 for an hour session, you can change clothes if you want and bring any props that you want in the pictures. And the best part is that the $100 includes a CD of the digital negatives and you can print them where ever you want. I'm so happy with her and the pictures! I would highly recommend her to anyone. Check out her blog for more of her work! :-)
Michelle LeMonds Moments In Time Photography 763.497.5072 www.MMLphotography.blogspot.com
Hi everyone...for those of you that don't know I'm a nerd! So I thought I would share with you one of the cool new nerd technologies that we've been using at work. It's called ZoomIt. It allows you to zoom in and out of your computer screen no matter what you're doing. The technology was developed by Microsoft and it's completely free to use and super easy to install on your machine. It's great if you're giving a Powerpoint presentation and need/want to zoom into a certain part of your slides. You teachers might find it valuable when giving lectures in class (at the very least the constant moving on the screen should help keep the students awake). And my fellow Corporate America drones might find it useful when doing presentations; you might even impress someone with it! :-)
Click on the link above to download it and begin using it. It's pretty straightforward to use, but here's a youtube video with some more features and instructions if your interested. Please contact me if you have questions about the tool. I hope you've enjoyed your first Tech Time with Tee session. I'll try to post more of these as I discover them. :-)
Couple photos from Logan's 1 year pictures last Friday. I haven't gotten all of them yet, just some samples. I'm very excited to see all of them. I'll post more once we get them all.
Logan learned how to give kisses last night. He's so funny! He gave me about 40 kisses this morning, one right after another. I told him when he was born I would give him 1 billion kisses throughout his lifetime....I think he's returning the favor now and trying to catch up! :-)
Meyer Baby 2.0 is great! We heard the heart tones yesterday which were about 150 bpm. Our dr. found the heart tones right away and we even heard a few kicks from the little one. I've been feeling the baby move a lot lately and he/she gets the hiccups almost everyday now. It's so reassuring to be able to feel the baby move! I love it! We've scheduled our ultrasound appointment for May 1st, so I'll have pictures soon!
Logan's appointment went well too. He's completely healthy! Weighting in at 22 lbs and 31 inches tall. I think his head was 45 cm, but I'm not sure on that one. He did great at the clinic waiting for the dr. We had my appt first and then his appt, so we were there for a total of 2 hours and he did great. Just playing with the toys and walking up and down the halls. Then afterward we met the Brown's at the school for open swim night. Logan had a BLAST! He loved the water! I'm so excited for our trip to the Dells next weekend with the Sherman's. I just know Logan is never going to want to come out of the pool!
April 1st and snow on the ground....will summer ever come?
