Aww, they do love each other!!

The kids have been playing together so well lately. They'll run all over the house pretending to be someone or something. Belle will sit in Ethan's room with him driving his Cars around his geotrax set. Ethan will play dolls in the dollhouse in Belle's room. They've wrestled on the couch, or took turns jumping off the couch into their bean bags (before they got yelled at).

So I thought it best to document it while it lasts. Who knows, they could be at each other's throats tomorrow.

Laying under the table eating pretzels


Enjoying all the costumes I got for 75% off around Halloween time.


I told Belle to act like a pirate, this is what I got.

Love Shutterfly

And you know what I love more than Shutterfly. Free stuff from Shutterfly (except for shipping of course)

Scripted Name Baby 5x7 folded card

For hundreds of thank you card designs, click here.

View the entire collection of cards.

ABC Drill Sargeant

Belle is sitting on an ABC poster and she's drilling her brother on the alphabet. He seems to be a willing participant, so I'll take it.

Saturday morning

Been playing with the ipod camera capabilities. It's convenient, but not always the best quality. Lighting is key. And I haven't figured out how to get HD videos. Oh and wondering if there is a way to record video horizonally. It looks a little weird vertical.

But here is some fun we had this morning. Yep, the kids jump off furniture over here.



This was from the Instagram app.

She's reading!!

I had forgotten about the collection of BOB books that we had. It occurred to me to maybe try them out again. She's doing awesome. She's read two of the books very easily, but gets stuck on a few words with the rest of the books. She's been very proud of herself!

Ah, my baby is growing up.

Droid!!

I've been playing with this wonderful Droid2 now for awhile, but had to give it up this week. It's been wonderful. You may remember me going to this party with Ariel hosted by the Queen of Free. I had been wanting a smart phone for awhile, but just haven't wanted to pony up the money. So this was a nice treat and let me get my feet wet a little.

There were all sorts of fun and useful things I found on the Droid. I think I used the VZ Navigator the most. It was nice since we don't have GPS in the car. I loved how it would find nearby restaurants by using our location. That was an especially useful app on a recent trip to IKEA.

I think Swype, might be my favorite app. I had originally thought that I wanted a Qwerty keyboard, but after discovering Swype, I never used it. It is so easy and SO intuitive. I wish I could get that app on my ipod touch.

Then there were the fun apps like Grocery IQ and of course the amazingly powerful time suck that is called Angry Birds. I was familiar with this app before the Droid, but its just so addicting that I had to have it on the phone too. The kids LOVED Talking Tom. I really didn't see what the big deal was, but man that app really entertained the kids. There was even a Talking Santa app for the Holiday season. One thing that I learned, that once I download kid apps, the device is no longer my own. The kids were always wanting to play on it.


The Droid even saved my rear one night when my internet service was down. I had several projects that needed emailed to their respective clients and the mobile hotspot that the Droid created save the day.

Only problems I had were getting videos off the phone. Seemed like I could never get a strong enough connection to get a large video uploaded to youtube or to an email. And the picture quality wasn't always the greatest, but definitely better than the pictures that come off my current phone.

Overall it was a great experience and when the day comes that I might get a smart phone, a Android phone will definitely be it. Thanks Verizon and Queen of Free for letting me have fun with this phone over the holidays.