MIA (warning - this post is long)

I've been MIA for a while due to the "great computer crash of 2012!" A couple of weeks ago I was designing a newsletter for the young women's organization (of which I am the secretary for) at church. I was supposed to put this newsletter together long ago, but never could get motivated to do it for some reason. Well, on this particular day I had some motivation so I began the daunting process. I went to Google and started searching for LDS clip-art. I must've clicked on the wrong website because my computer instantly froze up. Dave tried to fix it with the knowledge that he has about viruses, but unfortunately wasn't successful. Some of our neighbors recommended a computer shop here in town. A few days later and $65 poorer, we got our computer back with the thought that it was fixed. We quickly realized that the virus had attacked our "My Documents Folder" and everything essentially was gone. After reinstalling a few of our programs, we realized that the computer still wasn't quite working right. After a few calls back to the computer shop we decided it was probably time to start shopping for a new computer. So, here I sit at our brand-new computer. It is fun to have a new computer, but I am grieving the loss of our old one!!! We spent so much time together over the years! Ha ha!

So, for an update...

We gave the whole potty training thing a try and didn't get very far. I followed all of the suggestions about making a big deal out of it and having him pick out his own "big boy underwear" and toilet and offering goodies for when he was successful, etc. etc., but I just don't think he is ready for it. He sort of became resistant to the whole process as well and I've seen from experience what that can do to children so I backed way off. We'll try it again later. He was NOT excited about sitting on the toilet for more than one second, so we got out the tablet and downloaded some fun apps for him to "play" with while he sat there. Here is a video of him jamming to his firetruck app.

Last Saturday Target held an event in honor of Read Across America. They read Dr. Seuss books to the children and gave away goodie bags. Since Dave works there we thought it would be fun to go check it out. After about 5 minutes we were all ready to leave. My experience in event planning made me very disappointed in this event. They could've made it so much fun for the kids, but instead sat in front of the kids and read book after book after book. You could barely hear the reader and they just weren't very entertaining. It was too bad, but we did get some free stuff out of it.

Miles is so sensitive to lack of sleep. I've never met a child quite like him. He definitely needs his nap and really is a different child without one. Because of this, his entire life I've been religious about giving him his nap(s) around the same time every single day. It makes for a much happier family (all parties involved). This year our church is at 1 p.m. which is nap-time. We've tried to figure out a good schedule for Sundays so that Miles can get a nap and we can make it to all of church, but so far we haven't found the perfect balance. Last Sunday Miles woke up later than normal so we tried to go to church with no nap. Never again! It was a nightmare. Afterwards we ended up in the car driving around so he could get a small nap before bedtime...and then ended up at Walmart to ride the mechanical horse. This video shows how happy he was to be alive!

Yesterday (Leap Day) was "free entrance to the Hogle Zoo day" and because of the aforementioned sensitivity to lack of sleep and the timing of snow storms entering our area, we didn't make it to the zoo. Sad sad! Miles and I have had a bad case of cabin fever lately though so I decided we still needed to go do something fun. So, after nap we ended up at the Provo Beach Resort. It is this great indoor facility that has lots to do ranging from surfing to a toddler play area, etc. The last time we were at the zoo Miles enjoyed riding the carousel and the Provo Beach Resort has a carousel so I knew he would enjoy it. He rode the carousel twice, helped me play a couple of arcade games, and played in the toddler area long enough to be bit by another toddler! Overall we had a blast. It is nice to do something different every once in a while!

So, in a nutshell (ha ha!) that is what we've been up to.