Mark and Tara Settle Family Blog

Birthday Lunch

2010-03-11T13:38:00.006-05:00

Today Grace and I went out for a birthday lunch with some of my friends. We went to a Mexican Restaurant called La Parilla. It was really good. I ordered the Taco Loco. It was the biggest taco I have ever seen! I love how Grace's little hands are clasp as she tries to take a bite of it.

Then the restaurant sang "Happy Birthday" and brought us some yummy desserts. They also had me wear a sombrero. Then Grace wanted to wear it. She loved it. She did not want to take it off, but it was so heavy she couldn't keep her head up straight.

Grace gets ear tubes

2010-02-25T15:13:00.006-05:00

We got tubes put in Grace's ears on January 20th. She has had quite a few ear infections in her short little life, and had 2 back to back in the weeks before we had this done. Her first one was at 7 weeks old. We saw 2 different ENT doctors in the summer that suggested that we put them in if she didn't make it through the winter without getting any more. And then she got at least 3 this winter, so we decided it was time to stop giving her so many antibiotics and get the tubes.

She was so cute when we took her in. It was before 7am when we got there, but she was as happy as could be and was making friends with all of the hospital staff. She was still in her pajamas, but she wanted to go and explore the hospital while we waited.

She did really well. She did not even cry when I walked her up to the operating room door and handed her over to the nurse. She just went with her like she had know her forever. Then Mark went down to the cafeteria to get some breakfast and made it back to the room seconds before they brought her back to us. I think that the whole process was less than 15 minutes. So everything had been smooth and easy up to that point. But as they were bringing her back to us that all changed. I could hear her screaming as she came down to hall to the room. And she was not just crying; she was MAD! Mad like I have never seen her. The nurse said that is how they all wake up. Either extremely mad or throwing up. But mostly MAD. The nurse said that it is the anesthesia and it would wear off in about 3 hours. What? I have to listen to her scream like that for 3 hours? So we put her clothes back on and gave her her puppy and she still screamed. We put her in the car and she still screamed. We drove home and I told Mark that maybe we should stop and get her some M&M's (her favorite candy in the world). We stopped and got her some. I gave them to her. And she threw them on the FLOOR! Ok, we get it. She was mad and nothing was going to make her happy.

After one hour she finally stopped screaming and wanted her nany (candy). Thank goodness it did not take 3 hours.

Has anyone seen the ark?

2009-09-21T17:05:00.008-04:00

I am thinking that the Ark will float by any minute and I will wave and hopefully it will stop and let us on. Georgia is under water. Well at least my part of Georgia. I have had 13 inches in the last 18 hours at my house. That is from my rain gage. And it has been raining for the past week, so there is really no where for the rain to go. On the news it says we have had 17 inches. My backyard looks like a pond, and I know that I am lucky. A lot of people I know have a backyard that looks like a lake. And the not very exciting thing is that it is not finished raining. We are suppose to have a lot more tonight. They have already canceled school for tomorrow, but I am not telling the kids yet. Hee, hee!!!! I am kinda sly like that. Hopefully they will get to bed early. Here are some pictures of the rain and puddles. This one is Grace wearing a duck costume, thinking that it will help her swim if the water keeps rising.

I got this off of a friends Facebook (Stephanie Kjar). It is a neighborhood that a lot of our friends live in. It was so flooded that a lot of them could not drive in and they had to hike home.

This is a picture me standing of the little deck in the back yard. The french drain cannot keep up with the rain and so the water is running under the house into the crawl space. Notice we have lined part of the house with bags of sand. I am crossing my fingers that it slowed down some of the water that was going under the house.

This is off of another friends Facebook. This is Towne Lake Parkway. Up where I take Hallie to the orthodontist. It is the onramp to get onto I-575.

Little Monkey part 2

2009-09-01T16:45:00.003-04:00

Ok I just found a picture of Grace climbing before the age of 1. If you dont understand what I am talking about, see the previous post. Here she is at 9 months on the kitchen table.

Monkey For Sale

2009-09-01T09:06:00.006-04:00

None of my kids have every been climbers; until Grace. I dont know why such a sweet little laidback girl would want to climb like she does! This all started the day that she turned 1. After her birthday party she must have decided that she had been such a good baby for 1 year that now she needed to shock her parents. Here she is after her birthday party.
We did not help her get up there at all. I am now getting use to her climbing up on everything and it does not shock my too much anymore. Maybe it should. This morning as I am cleaning the kitchen this is what she is doing. (Notice that she is standing on my laptop! Mark would be thrilled.)You can see in one hand she has a note pad and in the other hand she has just taken a pencil out of the little basket. She knew exactly what she was going up there to get. So, I take the pencil and paper and put her at the table. I even go and get her a coloring book and the crayons and this is what she does.I am sure that some day I will walk in the kitchen and she will be on top of the fridge getting the play dough or something. Oh well, at least she is a good little girl. She has to do something bad or she would be perfect. (I case you were wondering she is not for sale.)

Playing the Wii

2009-08-25T11:25:00.003-04:00

We got a new Wii game last week that I think is pretty fun. That is saying a lot coming from me. I dont find the Wii as entertaining as the rest of my family, but this one has some really fun games. It is Sports Resort. It has frisby, archery, wakeboarding, sword fighting (my favorite, because it is like chopping up vegetables with a very sharp knife) and other games. Today Mark was taking a little break from work and we were playing wii. Grace is sitting on the couch thinking that she is playing too. She has a remote that is unplugged. She is pretty funny. Here is a video of her. But you have to watch it with your head turned because I cant figure out how to rotate something on here.

School Days

2009-08-11T08:22:00.004-04:00

The kids started school yesterday, so maybe I will have time to blog again. Hallie started 4th grade, Carter 2nd, and Jackson Kindergarten. They were all very excited and got up so easily and got dressed and ready in about 10 minutes. I wish it would be that easy every day. Hallie's teacher is a man named Mr. Bell and she thinks he is the coolest teacher in school. Carter's teacher is Mrs. Baker and Jackson has Mrs. Madrid; who was the teacher that Carter had when he was in Kindergarten.

After getting all the kids off to school; Mark, Grace and I went to breakfast. It was very quiet with just Grace at home. She would wander around the house and every once in a while I would hear her laugh. I think that she was having so much fun having free reign of the whole house and no one to bother her. She may find it boring in a couple of weeks.

Easter

2009-04-13T21:29:00.006-04:00

For the past few years on Easter morning before we go to church we take a picture of the kids on the front porch. I take the picture in the same place each year so that I can see how they have grown. This year I probably took 20 pictures and not one of them turned out that great. Somebody was always look away or making a crazy face or something. And it was pretty cool outside at the time I was taking the picture and they were cold. So was I. So her is the best one and the pictures from the 2 years before that so you can see how they have grown.

It's been a while, so long spring is almost here.

2009-03-10T20:12:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been quite a while since we've posted anything. Life has been busy, or tiring, but it moves right along. I can't believe we're into March already. I'm another year older and Tara will be on Saturday. And it got so warm today that we actually (well, I did) turned the air conditioner on upstairs. It was 78 degrees inside, even with the fans on, that's just too hot for me after all the cooler weather. It's supposed to cool down a bit this weekend, but only into the 50s, so that's not bad at all.

Things have been going well. Grace is getting so big. She's a great eater and we hope that lasts after having 3 picky eaters. She will eat just about anything and everything, fruit, vegetable, meat, bread and whatever she might find on the floor before we can get to it. Tonight she was eating ravioli that we had for dinner and Tara had given it to her on a little plastic plate and she was picking up the plate and licking it. It was too cute. We took some pictures and will maybe post some soon. She's starting to make more noises than just 'da-da' now, and maybe she'll actually say a real first word soon (Although I think that 'da-da' should count because she will say it when she sees me, but she also says it babbling all the time).

She's crawling everywhere, but mostly away from her siblings that think that she's their toy. Hallie gets a little playful with her and isn't careful sometimes. She loves Carter because he's pretty good with her except that he feels the need to always bring her to us, even if we just put her down to play. Jackson is just too rough with her so she doesn't like him too much right now and he tortures her a little bit. Soon he's going to pay for that.

Jackson will be 5 soon and just has a few months of pre-school left. Hard to believe, he was younger than Grace when we moved down to GA. He's so funny, polite and fun to be around when he's in a good mood, but can be a terror if he's not. When he's in a good mood though, and you have him alone, he will talk your ear off. The other day Tara came up stairs while I was working and Grace was napping, and just crossed her eyes at me and whispered that he'd been talking to her non-stop for an hour straight. Just as she's finishing here he comes mid-sentence and just keeps on going. He's quite the talker.

Carter and Hallie are doing well. Hallie had a little piano performance for another teacher recently and she did really well. I think she's starting to get much better. Soon I think she'll be able to move on to more difficult music if she'll try. I think she'd be surprised what she could play already if she gave it a shot. Carter is doing well in school and is just getting so big. If only we could get him to gain weight. He's growing up, but not gaining any weight, just getting skinnier. :-) He's as cute as ever and is getting more helpful and grown up.

Anyways, just thought I'd post a little something, but I've got to getting going now so that I can play volleyball tonight. I'll try to post a little more often, it's refreshing to just aimlessly write sometimes :-)

December 2008

2009-02-08T08:05:00.000-05:00

Well December came and went with not much being posted; but a lot going on. Here are a few of the things that we did. At the beginning of the month (or maybe the end of November) we went to Publix to watch our niece singing Christmas carols with her chorus group. While we were there we saw Santa and ate lots of samples. Jackson was a little afraid of him and Grace wanted to pull his beard off. Carter was a little afraid too, but I think that was because he was not a very real looking Santa and Carter told me that sometimes Santa's helpers that played Santa in the store did not do it very well. Later in the month we went to the Ice Forum and went ice skating with Hallie's primary class. She had gone ice skating for the first time a few weeks before that at a friend's birthday party and loved it so she suggested that they do that for their class activity and everyone agreed. For someone that had only skated once before Hallie did really well. She went off and left Carter, Jackson and Mark to hug the wall for a while. Mark then picked it up pretty quickly and went to skate with her. Carter made it around the rink once and Jackson made it about half way around and then they were done. I then swapped Grace with Mark and went out. I was scarred to death of falling and breaking my tailbone again so I hugged the wall the whole time. It also did not help that a grown man went by me and said "if you are ever going to learn to skate you have to get off the wall!" Yikes, he was friendly. These pictures are not very good because of the glass enclosure that surrounds the rink.We then went to Grandma Connie and Grandaddy Tom's house with all their grandkids and decorated their Christmas tree. A few days later we made Christmas mice cookies. The kids had a lot of fun making these and they were very easy. Hallie and Carter made a lot of mice and Jackson ate a lot of mice.

The kids then opened their Christmas Eve jammies.

Here are the kids on Christmas morning, and each one with one of their favorite presents.

(I started this post on 1/8/09 and finally on 2/8/09 I finished it. Better late than never.)

Settle Family Newscast

2009-02-05T13:43:00.004-05:00

I was out of town on business last week, and while Tara was busy elsewhere and it was kind of quiet she went to check on the kids and found that they had my older work laptop down on a table we have in the garage (they are lucky that I wasn't home). Anyways, she reprimanded them and sent them to put it away. Yesterday we discovered what they were doing. On our digital camera, we found this video. It's a little long, but stick it out, there's some parts that had us cracking up all the way through.

25 Random Things about Me

2009-02-02T20:19:00.001-05:00

I posted this on Facebook after getting tagged. I hardly ever do these things, but I figured since I took the time to do it and post it on Facebook, I'll go ahead and post it here too, so if you don't know me through Facebook, but read the blog...

1. I was born in Columbia (South Carolina that is)
2. I have the best wife in the world. I know, I know, you probably think you have the best spouse in the world, but that's your opinion. Mine's fact :-)
3. I have 4 children, two daughters and two sons. They keep us busy, make us laugh, and sometimes cry too. I wouldn't have it any different. They teach me as much or more as I teach them.
4. I love my DVR! I hate it when I travel or watch TV somewhere where I have to endure commercials, or can't pause it when I get occupied.
5. Current items on my DVR to do list: The Office, My Name is Earl, 24, The Unit, Dirty Jobs, American Idol, Heroes, Jeopardy, Ace of Cakes.
6. I also enjoy a really good book. I read mostly fiction lately and I've taken to reading a ton in the last few years, probably averaging about a book every week or two. My favorite current authors: Robert Parker, Chris Stewart and James Patterson (but nothing he 'co-writes').
7. We have a TON of trees in our yard, which is beautiful, except for the abundance of leaves to take care of in the fall/winter. I still have a huge pile of leaves in the back year that I blew behind the trampoline one Saturday (there's no grass there) and it's rained pretty much everyday I planned on doing yard work for the last 2 months.
8. I don't know if I'm happy or sad about #7 above, but if we're on water restrictions this summer after the amount of moisture we've had this winter, somebody in the local government is going to hear from me.
9. I drink way too much Dr. Pepper. I need to cut back.
10. I could eat pizza every day of the week. Luckily I don't, or I'd be 200 pounds, which for me would be too much.
11. I love doing puzzles. I don't do them very often, but I love to put them together, especially when I get in a groove on a 1000 piece puzzle and can just look at a piece, pick it up and put it where it goes.
12. Likewise, I like solving puzzles in general. I like that kind of challenge, and maybe that's why I love software engineering. I love solving the challenges that I face in programming, it's very frustrating and satisfying at the same time.
13. When I was a kid, I hated taking showers, and it was all my parents could do to get me to take one once a week. Then at about 13 or so, I'd take one or two a day, or even three depending on what I'd done. That hasn't changed. I don't feel right until I've taken a shower, and if I work up a good sweat, I'll take another one.
14. I love just about all sports. I love playing golf, basketball, volleyball, tennis, racquetball, baseball and soccer. I've player other sports I enjoy as well, but these are the primary ones that I've played most of my life.
15. I'm not particularly great at any sport, although I might achieve the higher end of mediocrity at a few.
16. I'm clumsy. Just in the last four years, I've severely cut my left thumb, jammed countless fingers playing basketball, sprained my wrist very badly, tweaked a knee and recently rolled my ankle and I'm pretty sure I tore some ligaments in that, took me 2 months of no sports and 2 more months before I'm finally starting to feel right on it again. If was I a professional athlete, I'd be Penny Hardaway or Grant Hill (but not Mike Hampton, there's something SERIOUSLY wrong about him).
17. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke. Really, really hate it. Thank goodness for the laws in most or all states now to not have it in public buildings.
18. I served a two-year LDS mission in Guatemala and fluently speak Spanish.
19. I regret not being as patriotic as I could have been in my past, but am trying to be more so now. I'm trying to be more informed on political issues and voicing my opinion, which sometimes is difficult for me.
20. I'm republican and am conservative on moral issues, but actually cross parties on some other issues and quite admire the reserved, educated and well-spoken manner of our new president.
21. I hate the no child left behind law. It is killing the education of our next generation of Americans. It's bad for the advanced students AND the students who are behind, and it makes our schools gear everything they do towards passing standardized tests, rather than actually being able to educate and causing us to loose great teachers.
22. I love to do handy work around the house. I'm not the best, but competent. I've tiled, replaced subfloor in a bathroom, completely gutted and refinished a bathroom, replaced kitchen counters, replaced sinks and faucets, hung fans and even done a little bit of plumbing. Most of these things are not hard if you just do a little reading and take your time.
23. I'm terrible mechanically. I have an uncle that could fix anything mechanical, but not me. I can check the oil and change a tire, but that's about it. I have changed a fuse in a car and a spark plug in small engines, but otherwise I'm pretty intimidated by engines.
24. I play the piano and sing (but not at the same time ;-). I sang bass in the BYU Men's Chorus my freshman year there and got the opportunity to sing in their first recorded CD and sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during their Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. Mack Wilberg was the director of the BYU Men's Chorus then, and is now the director of the MoTab. He's EXTREMELY talented.
25. I almost never respond to these things. Not usually my favorite thing, but have enjoyed trying to think about some of these things about myself. I've probably tagged a few people who have already done this, so sorry!

She's crawling

2009-01-28T13:15:00.004-05:00

I think Grace has officially decided to crawl. The real crawl; not the "drag your body" crawling that she has been doing for a few months. And of course Mark is out of town when she does it. So here she is.

Timmmbbbbberrrrrr!!!!

2009-01-25T17:26:00.004-05:00

Back in September we had a tree at the side of our house taken down. It was very interesting to watch them because the tree was between our house and our neighbors house and they had to avoid hitting both houses and all the other trees. Here are some pictures of it coming down. Luckily they had pretty good aim and did not squash our house. They told us that the tree was between 80 and 100 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter.

Recipe of the Week #7

2009-01-15T12:42:00.007-05:00

Hallie and Carter are at shcool, Jackson is at preschool and I laid Grace down for a nap. I have grand thoughts of all the things that I am going to get done; but what do I do? I bake. That is what you are suppose to do on a cold day. The east coast is under a winter weather advisory. Tonight is is suppose to be -5. That is unheard of in Georgia. So I better take advantage of it while I can. I put some Chicken and Cheese Enchilada Chowder in the crockpot and start thinking about what I can make with some zucchini that needs to be used. It has to be well hidden or the kids wont eat it. So I will make Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins.

3/4 cup whole wheat pasty flour (or all-purpose)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup milk

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup shredded zucchini

1 shredded apple

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

1/4 cup pecans or walnuts

Mix all dry ingredients together. In a bowl whisk egg, oil, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients. Fold in the zucchini, apple, chocolate chips, and nuts. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Grace woke up while I was making these. So I put her in her high chair and let her have some multi grain Cheerios. They are her new favorite. When I gave them to her so grabbed fistfulls and put them in her mouth as best she could.

Later she started scooting all over and come in the kitchen to wait paitently for the muffins to be done.

After the muffins were done I made Three Great Tastes Blond Brownies and Cornbread. (I am not going to eat all of this stuff. I am taking it to a girl in my ward that just had a baby.)

So I did not great any of the things I needed to do checked off my list, but I did have fun baking. Maybe tomorrow I will get those things done. Or maybe I will find another recipe that is calling my name and begging to be made!

Boys will be boys

2009-01-11T19:46:00.001-05:00

Carter and Jackson sometimes amaze me. I think it is because as a girl I would never think to do the things that they do. A few examples of these are the kleenex and oatmeal episodes. I think they must have been missing the snow of Utah when they did these things because they said that they were "jumping" into snow and they were making snow "fall" after they made these messes. They decided to do both of these things within a week of each other.

This past week the boys decided do to get into things and make messes again. It started exactly one week ago tonight. Mark and the kids were upstairs in our room and I was downstairs in the kitchen. I heard Jackson cough and then cry out "I swallowed it". It was a steel ball that goes to Magnetix. The ball is about the size of a marble and there are little magnetic rods that they stick to and you can make cool things with them. We have told him not to put them in his mouth but he does anyway, because what do we know! Well I called the pediatrician and they said to take him down to the ER and have them take an xray to make sure it was not stuck in his throat; because his throat was hurting. Apparantly things like marbles and money can get stuck in your throat and you can still breath and everything. So I get ready to take him to the ER and Mark asks him "how many times have we told you not to put the balls in your mouth?" He replies "about 100". Exactly. About 100.

Here is a picture of his marble.

It finally made its grand re-entrance tonight! Thank goodness because I am sick of checking poop for a marble. I will spare you the details. But one funny thing that he said when we were sitting in the ER until midnight was "I'm glad I swallowed this marble because now I get to stay up and watch cartoons." I am thinking about contacting the ER and telling them to get rid of the tv's because Jackson thinks if he goes to the ER that it is fun because they let him stay up and watch tv and eat popsicles while he is there.

Then next thing the boys did is destroy their room last nightwhile they are suppose to be going to sleep. That is nothing new but this is how Mark found them.

Now would a girl ever say to herself "Oh, I think I want to take all my books off the bookshelf and sleep in it!" No, they would not. At least I wouldnt. But to Carter and Jackson it must have seemed like an interesting thing to do.

Like I said

Boys will be boys!

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T10:45:00.002-05:00

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy New Year! I hope you all have a wonderful 2009. We're planning on it. This year we'll have a child that is in double digits this year as Hallie turns 10, Carter 7, Jackson 5 and Grace 1. We'll also have 3 children in school in August. We're looking forward to that!

Also just wanted to post that we're recanting our post saying we're going private. We've decided to not make our blog private as of yet. So keeping following us anonymously or not for now. We just decided that it's kind of a pain to have to log in to view the bloggs of friends of ours who have gone private and we've enjoyed it in the format it is now. If we run into some problems with it being a public blog, then maybe we'll change it, but we're leaving as is for now.

Recipe of the Week #6

2008-12-23T11:36:00.005-05:00

Here is an easy breakfast recipe that is in the crockpot. This is what we are having on Christmas morning. We eat these in tortillas with salsa like a breakfast burrito.

Crockpot Western Omelet Casserole
serves 12

32 ounces frozen hash browns
1 pound bacon, ham or sausage, cooked
1 medium onion
1 bell pepper
1 1/2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1 dozen eggs
1 cup milk
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper

1. Place a layer of frozen hash browns in bottom of slow cooker, followed by a layer of bacon then onion, bell pepper and cheese. Repeat layering process two or three more times, ending with a layer of cheese.
2. Beat the eggs, milk and salt and pepper together. Pour over the mixture in the crockpot, cover and turn on low. Cook for about 8 hours.

Hallie's rantings

2008-12-22T21:44:00.003-05:00

The other day when I took Hallie and Grace shoe shopping; Hallie got a pair of boots. I did not really want to get them but she just went on and on about how she had always wanted boots and how cute they were. So finally I told her that she could get them but they would be a Christmas present. She was ok with that until we left the store and she wanted to wear them. Then when we got home she was showing them to Mark and wearing them all around the house. Finally I told her that she didn't have to wait till Christmas to have them. (Mostly because it was just another present that I would have to wrap, and I was tired of wrapping.)

So ever since I have bought her these boots she has changed. On Sunday on the way to church she told me that she wants to move to Texas. And when she gets there she wants to be a tour guide and take people all over the state and show them Texas. (Which I thought was really funny because she has never even been through most parts of Texas.) She ask me how much she should charge for this. While I am thinking, she says "maybe I will charge the adults $5 and the kids $3". I said "that is not very much money for a tour of the whole state, you could probably charge more than that." We discussed this a little more and she finally decided that she would charge $30 for adults and $22 for kids 11 to 3 and under 3 were free and she would give the babies free milk. She then told me that she wanted to get a horse and ride it to the store. So this boot thing has knocked cowgirl land. She also wanted to wear the boots in her pictures that we had taken today. And I have even seen her wearing them with her pyjamas. I am surprised that she hasn't tried sleeping in them. Here is a picture of her in her "cowgirl" boots.

"Somebody" in Texas needs to send her some REAL cowgirl boots.

Christmas pictures

2008-12-22T20:31:00.007-05:00

We went and got our family pictures taken today. It went pretty well. Mark usually hates doing this because it is a lot of drama trying to get everyone to smile and hold still at the same time so the last professional family picture we had taken was when Carter was a baby. But when we were done he said that is went quite well and we were happy with how they all turned out. We also got Hallie's 9 year and Jackson's 4 year old pictures taken (we had done Carter's earlier). Grace did not do as well as we had hoped that she would because she was tired and hungry. So there are not many pictures of her smiling; mostly just sucking her thumb. Here are some of our favorites.

Plum tuckered out

2008-12-20T17:51:00.006-05:00

"Plum tuckered out" is a way that my Mom descibes people when they are worn out. Apparantly that is how Jackson felt the other day when he came home from school. Mark took these pictures of him.

This is how I feel right now. I just spent 5 hours at the mall. I must have lost my mind to decide to go to the mall 4 days before Christmas. I was not Christmas shopping, thank goodness. I was trying to find a pair of shoes for Hallie. Black dress shoes. It should not take 5 hours to find a pair of shoes. But Hallie has these long skinny feet that no store has shoes for. We finally found some, actually a couple pair. I also bought Grace some shoes; and she has the opposite problem. She has extremely small feet. She does not even wear a size 1. The lady at the shoe store told me that size 1 is usually for newborn to 3 months old. I have never had a baby that is almost 8 months old and cant even wear a size 1. Oh well, the ones that I found are cute. Here she is modeling them.

Blabbering or First Word

2008-12-15T08:30:00.006-05:00

Grace has started to say Da-Da. We think. Mark is always trying to get her to say it and so he is taking credit for teaching her her first word. It seems very early to me for a baby to start talking, but our kids have always talked early and very clearly. So who knows. You can watch the following videos and decide for yourself. Blabbering or first word?

Blogs and going private

2008-12-12T09:41:00.004-05:00

Ok so we may be going private in the future. Mostly just because everyone is sending me these crazy emails about how your life might be destroyed because some psycho person took pictures of your kids off your blog and posted them all over youtube or something like that. Or how some ex boy/girl friend found your blog and shows up on your door step at 2 in the morning. You know how things get blown totally out of proportion in emails. Anyway. If you would like to continue to look at our blog; please send me your email at flytarafly@hotmail.com. I know, now that I put my email up here, you are all thinking that I am going to get tons of junk coming to my email. Probably so, but I can press delete really quickly.

Also, if you have a blog please send me a link to it. If you haven't noticed our Friends and Family section in missing. Somehow we lost all of the blogs that we look at when we were redoing our background.

So please send me your emails addresses and blogs.

Recipe of the Week #5

2008-12-12T09:27:00.002-05:00

Here are 2 recipes that I used for our ward Christmas Enrichment. The Beef recipe makes a lot but freezes really well. The jello also makes a lot. I don't know what else to tell you to do with all of it other than eat it. I also think it should be renamed because Fruity Gelatin Salad just sounds boring. It is really good for the holidays because of the color and the cranberries; but I have also made it in the summer for girls camp and they really liked it. (Even the ones that swore they hated cranberries or jello). So give them a try.

Flavorful Beef in Gravy
serves 12
3 lbs beef stew meat
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
1 can golden mushroom soup
1 can cream of celery soup
1 1/3 cups milk
1 envelope onion soup mix
mashed potatoes or hot cooked noodles

Place beef in a 5 quart crock pot. Mix together soups and milk. Pour over beef and stir. Cover and cook on low for 7-8 hours.

Fruity Gelatin Salad
serves 15-18

6 ounces cherry jello
1 cup boiling water
10 ounces frozen sweetened sliced strawberries
20 ounces crushed pineapple, undrained
16 ounces whole-berry cranberry sauce

In a large bowl, dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Stir in strawberries until berries are separated. Stir in the pineapple and cranberry sauce until blended. Transfer to 9x13 pan and refrigerate until firm.

Grace swinging

2008-12-06T10:43:00.003-05:00

Here is a little video of Carter swinging Grace in her jumper. She is not laughing like she was before I got the camera (of course) but you can still tell that she likes it.

Recipe of the Week #4

2008-12-03T17:24:00.002-05:00

I bought a whole bunch of cranberries at the store during the week of Thanksgiving. So here are some muffins that I made with them.

Cranberry Orange Muffins

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
2 Tablespoons ground flax seed
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 egg
1/4 cup oil
1/4 cup unsweetened applesauce
2 tablespoons water
1 cup 1% low-fat milk
1 teaspoon orange extract
zest of 1 orange
1 cup cranberries, chopped
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

Preheat oven to 400. Mix first 6 ingredients together. Mix wet ingredients together and slowly mix with dry ingredients. Chop cranberries and fold into batter. Toast almonds. Fill muffin cup and sprinkle with almonds. Bake for 18-20 minutes.

If you dont want to use the whole wheat pastry flour you can use all purpose.
You also can replace the flax seed with another egg.

Who is carrying you?

2008-12-03T17:03:00.004-05:00

This is how Jackson came to me today. I did not take the picture at that time because I had to rush to get Grace before he dropped her. (For this picture I had him show me how he picked her up and then took the picture. And Hallie was standing there ready to catch her if he dropped her.) When Jackson brought her to me her arms were up around her head because she was slipping down as he walked. Later I let him drop a raw egg in the sink to show him what would happen if he dropped her. I dont know that it taught him anything other than throwing eggs in the sink and watching them crack is fun.

Happy 7th month birthday!

2008-11-26T21:42:00.006-05:00

I meant to post this yesterday (the 25th) since that is really her birthday but didnt get to it, but I thought I would post it anyway.

Happy 7 months little Gracie. You are such a cutie pie and such a sweet baby. I cant believe you are already 7 months old. I love it when you bury your head in my shoulder and squeeze me back when I hug you. And how you kick your arms and legs like crazy when I come to get you out of your bed. And your sweet baby breath. And how you put your head on my shoulder and sleep after I feed you at 3 am.

Writing this makes me want to go wake her up and play with her. But I wont. Here are some pictures of the 7 month old little girl.

Recipe of the Week #3

2008-11-23T09:34:00.005-05:00

Well maybe I should rename this post to recipe of the month, because I have not done one since Halloween. Oh well, I will try to be better at doing one every week. But here is one of my favorites. Pecan pie is probably my favorite pie. Especially if it is done correctly. (Done correctly to me is whole pecan pieces on the top and little chopped up pieces floating around in the heavenly filling. I think that my mouth is watering just thinking about it!) And if you really want to have a treat you can get a pecan cobbler a la mode from the Whistle Stop Cafe in Kennesaw, GA. Anyway back to the real reason I was posting. This is a recipe that you can use for Thanksgiving if you are wanting to limit your Pecan Pie intake. (But who would want to do that.)

Pecan Tassies
24 tarts

Shells
1/2 cup butter, softened
3 oz cream cheese, softened
1 c flour
Filling
2 Tbsp butter
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pecans, chopped

For tart shells, beat the butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add flour; mix until a soft dough forms. Cover; refrigerate for at least 1 hour. Preheat oven to 350. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Place balls of dough into ungreased cups of mini muffin pan. Dip a tart shaper in flour; press into dough to form tart shells. (If you dont have a tart shaper you can make an indention with your thumb or the back of a spoon.)
For filling, microwave butter on high for 30 seconds or until melted. Stir in brown sugar, egg and vanilla. Chop pecans, stir into filling. Using a small scoop, fill each tart shell with a scoop of filling. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until light golden brown. Cool in pan for 3 minutes. Remove from pan and cool completely. Sprinkle with powdered sugar if desired.

Is there anyone at home?

2008-11-19T08:12:00.004-05:00

Well, I've been very quiet on the blogging front lately, but that isn't because life is boring. So I thought I'd at least get on and post a little something. I've been plenty busy at work lately. In what I do, we have up and down periods, usually every 2-3 monhts or so I might end up in between projects, but I've been busy for 2 months now and have work through the end of January, so that's very nice.

One of the big things going on for me lately is that I sprained my ankle really good playing volleyball about 5 weeks ago. I grazed someone's leg coming down at the net and rolled it all the way down. I've rolled my ankles (both) multiple times playing basketball, but this was a really good one. I was on crutches for close to a week, and now 5 weeks later, I'm still tender and maybe only about 70%. It's sucked, because I miss my volleyball, basketball and tennis. They're my get away. I thought I'd include a picture or two of my bruising and swelling from a couple days after the sprain, but I don't want to show off my hairy feet. :) I did swell halfway up my calf and down to my toes and bruised from above my ankle to my toes. The swelling had spread out nicely by then. About 3-4 hours after the sprain it was just like I'd hidden a softball in my ankle.

This past weekend, Tara and Grace and my sister in law went up to Nashville to a time-out for women and met my sisters there. They had a lot of fun, and me and the children went and spent the night Friday at Wes's house. We had a lot of fun there too. I brought my TV and Wii, so we had two TVs and two Wiis so we played lots of games and Wes and I watched Iron Man that night. We also went and bought Wii Music on Saturday, and it is quite a fun little game. There's a lot of different things you can do with it. We're learning that Carter has quite an ear for music has he plays a little music game called Pitch Perfect. He's really good at it.

Pearly Whites

2008-11-05T15:07:00.004-05:00

Last week was the week of teeth. Grace got her first tooth; actually teeth. She got her 2 bottom teeth in one day. She had been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and I just could not figure out what her problem was. Then one morning she was chewing on my finger and there they were. It took a few more day and then they were completely out. Here is a picture of them.Then, a few days later Hallie FINALLY lost her snaggle tooth. Her front top tooth has been sticking out because her adult tooth was coming in behind her baby tooth. It looked horrible. I told her that if she did not get it out by Friday that I was taking her to the dentist to have them pull it. On Thursday night she was at soccer practice and a boy that was defending the goal kicked the ball and it hit her in the mouth! Knocked the tooth right out. I told her that she needed to thank him for saving her from having to go to the dentist and get it pulled.

Jackson Votes

2008-10-29T13:09:00.005-04:00

Today after I picked Jackson up from preschool, we went to the grocery store. When we gott there he wanted to take his Weekly Reader that he got from school in the store with him so he could trace the letters. So we go in and go shopping and when we are waiting in line at the check out I started looking at his Weekly Reader. The cover of it has a little kid with a flag and it says Ready, Set, Vote! So I am look at his Weekly Reader and talking to him about it. On the inside of it there is a section that says "Who Will Be Our President?" and there are pictures of John McCain and Barach Obama out on the campaign trail talking to people. There is a little box on each one of the pictures and Jackson had colored in one of the boxes. The following is our conversation.

Me: What are these little boxes for?

J: We voted for the Prophet.

Me: Oh, you mean you the President.

J: Yeah, we voted for the President and he won. (pointing to McCain)

Me: Oh, why did you decide to vote for him?

J: Because he wears a tie!

In the pictures McCain is wearing a suit and tie and Obama is wearing a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the top botton undone.

So there you go. Go out and vote and choose the one that wears the tie!

Grace's First Food

2008-10-18T16:48:00.005-04:00

Grace had her first food this week, with some rice cereal. Here's a pretty good video.

Soccer

2008-10-18T16:38:00.003-04:00

Tara's been bugging me for a while to blog about the kids playing soccer and post a few pictures. We signed the kids up for soccer to play in a league at a big subdivision in our neighborhood. We signed them all up 2 weeks into an 8 week season, so they missed the first couple of weeks. They've now had 4 weeks, and seem to be doing better each week. Jackson scored a goal last week! Jackson's league is just chase the ball back and forth to the goal. Carter is one of the youngest in an under 8 league, but he seems to really enjoy it, and just runs around. Hallie was very timid at first but she's getting more and more relaxed and in to it as the weeks pass. If she'd get over her fears and try hard, I think she'd do well, because she's actually very athletic. Here's some pics of Carter and Jackson, we don't have a good one of Hallie because we've forgotten the camera a couple of weeks, and didn't get a good one before.

Recipe of the Week #2

2008-10-17T17:00:00.003-04:00

Here are some Halloween/Fall recipes.

Pizza Dip in a Pumpkin
1 small pie pumpkin (about 2 ½ pounds)
½ cups finely chopped onion
¼ cup finely chopped green pepper
1 tablespoon butter or margarine
2 ½ cups pizza sauce
1 cup (4 oz) shredded mozzarella cheese
½ cup finely chopped pepperoni
½ cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
Breadsticks
Cut top off of pumpkin; scoop out seeds and fibers. Replace top; place pumpkin on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until hot. Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, sauté onion and green pepper, mozzarella cheese, pepperoni, Parmesan cheese and Italian seasoning. Cook and stir over medium heat until heated through and cheese is melted. Pour into hot pumpkin. Serve with breadsticks. Yield: 3 cups

Pumpkin-Apple Muffins with Streusel Topping
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
2 cups sugar
1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup canned pumpkin
½ cup vegetable oil
2 cups finely chopped peeled apples
Topping
¼ cup sugar
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon butter
In a large bowl, combine first five ingredients. Combine eggs, pumpkin and oil; stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. Fold in apples. Fill greased or paper lined muffin cups three-fourths full. For topping, combine sugar, flour and cinnamon. Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs; sprinkle 1 teaspoon over each muffin. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes or until muffins test done. Cool in pan 10 minutes before removing to a wire rack. Yield: about 1 ½ dozen

Really Big Guy

2008-10-15T07:17:00.006-04:00

On Sunday we went to a stake fireside with Coach Ingle and Shawn Bradley. Coach Ingle is a man that is in our ward that is the basketball coach for Kennesaw State Univerity here in Georgia; but coached at BYU when Shawn Bradley played there. It was a very good fireside. It was for the youth but everyone was invited; so we went. Shawn Bradley was a very good speaker. At the end he answered questions that the youth had. He is some interesting things about him. He is 7 feet 6 inches tall. He was only 19 inches when he was born; but 10 pounds. His wife is only 5 feet 4 inches tall. They have six kids. Since retiring from the NBA he now is the the athletic director and assistant principal for a school for troubled teens. Here are a few pictures of Shawn holding Grace; and with me and Mark.

What ever happened to customer service?

2008-10-11T08:19:00.006-04:00

On Friday we had a bad customer serive day. This is how it went.

I took Grace back to the doctor. On Wednesday when I took her to the doctor they said they wanted to recheck her breathing and lungs; so I went back. Her appointment was at 9:15. They did not call me back to see the doctor until 10:15! Sitting in the waiting room with a 5 months old and a 4 year old for an hour is not exciting. But because I love the doctors at this practice and it is not normally like this, I will continue to go to the them.

After the really long doctors visit I went to BJ's (equivelent to Costco and Sams except they will take manufactures coupons on top of their coupons). Any of you that know me well will know that I am a little obsessive about getting the LOWEST price on things. It makes me so happy to see that I saved more money than I spent. I think even if I was a millionaire I would use coupons. It thrills me to pay .50 cents for a box of Cheerios! Anyway, back to the real story. So I go in to BJ's and buy a butt load of stuff like usual. I get up to the check out and did the self check out. I scan all my stuff and then my coupons. I know that the machine is going to not let me use the manufactures coupon and the BJ's coupons because I have tried it before and one of the workers have to come manually enter it in. So I am expecting this. Well, I was not expecting what then happened. The worker came up to me and starts scanning my coupons. She sees that I have 2 $1.00 manufactures coupons for grape juice and have already scanned the store coupon for grape juice. She tells me that I can only use one of them. I say to her "I thought I could use two if they were packaged separately." She says "no you can't do that." I say "well I do it everytime I come in and they usually take them." She says "Well, I will let you do it this one time and you can't do it anymore!" (I am not very happy at this point.) I say back to her "when I bought my membership they told me that if the product was individually wrapped and then packed together I could use a coupon for each indivual item." She then flashes her name badge at me and says "Well my name is Corey and I am second in charge here and you are not suppose to do it" She then asks me if I bought two of something and I said no and she blows air through her lips like she is really disgusted, scans the coupon and walks away. After that I was livid. So I wrote her name down and I intend on writing a letter to BJ's. Also, later that day I looked up on BJ's website and read their policy about taking coupons and this is what it says

"Can I use more than one coupon?

You may not use more than one coupon on a single item. However, if you buy a multi-pack (a pack that contains multiple full-sized packages of a single product shrink-wrapped together) you may use multiple coupons.
For example, if you have 2 coupons for 50� off an 8-oz. bottle of face cleanser and you are buying a multi-pack that contains 2 or more 8-oz. bottles of face cleanser you may use both coupons" (taken from the BJ's website)

So doesn't it seem like I should be able to use 2 coupons if I buy Grape Juice that has 2 individual bottles packaged together?

Anyway on with the next episode of bad customer serive.

[MARK]: "Tara, Jackson, Grace and I go to Chili's for lunch. We arrived at Chili's at 1:10 pm. I know specific times because we had to be out of there by 2:00pm so I was checking the clock. We were told we had about a 15 minute wait. I looked around and noticed and told Tara there were 7 tables/booths that were empty, waiting to be bused, so it shouldn't be that long. We waited for over ten minutes and none of those tables were still bussed and now I would estimate that number had at least doubled, yet we still waited to be seated.

"So as a manager walked by, I grabbed him and brought this to his attention, stating that we'd been waiting around 10 minutes and when we walked in there were 7 empty tables and booths that I could see that were waiting to be bussed and now there were even more and yet we still waited to be seated. His first response, word for word, was "Sir, I just walked by and you weren't here." I'm very mild mannered, so I just disagreed with him and told him we had indeed been there longer than ten minutes and he said he'd take care of us, and walked off. I cannot believe the the first response from a manager at this store would, for all intents and purposes call me a LIAR!!

"We were then immediately seated (why we weren't before, I don't know), and we were seated near the To Go area, so I went to one of the employees there and asked if there was a way to give feedback on the store, they said it was online. Then I asked if the gentleman that we spoke to was the only manager there today, and they said yes. I asked for his name and they told me Joel. I said thank you and sat down and noted the name. We then had great service from our server, she was very polite, kind and attentive.

"When time for the check came, the manager returned to apologize and took an appetizer off our meal. When I told him I was less upset about the fact that we were slow to be seated than the way that he responded to me when I told him what I'd observed, he then back pedaled more and then gave us another $10 in Chili's gift coupons. His apology seemed anything but sincere and only a way of trying to placate me, with my best guess being that it was only delivered because I asked what his name was from one of his employees, otherwise, I doubt I would have seen him at all.

(this is almost word for word from my complaint to Chili's on their customer feedback, with a few changes and the final comments ommited)"

Recipe of the Week #1

2008-10-10T19:51:00.003-04:00

Well, when I started this blog I thought about putting a section of recipes and adding a new on each week. Never did it. But the other night I taught a class about crockpot cooking and the girls (women, but I like to call all women "girls") wanted more recipes so I thought I would start adding them on here and if they are that interested in getting my recipes then they will also have to read our somewhat boring blog. So here is my first recipe. They will not always be crockpot recipes; but maybe the first few since they were wanting more.

Fudgy Peanut Butter Cake
Category: Crock pot
Serves 4
3/4 cup sugar, divided
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
1 Tbsp vegetable oil
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp baking cocoa
1 cup boiling water

In a bowl, combine 1/4 cup of sugar, flour, and baking powder. In another bowl, combine the milk, peanut butter, oil and vanilla; stir into dry ingredients just until combined. Spread evenly into a slow cooker coated with nonstick cooking spray.

In a bowl, combine the cocoa and remaining sugar; stir in boiling water. Pour into slow cooker (do not stir). Cover and cook on high for 1 1/2-2 hour or until a toothpick inserted near the center of cake comes out clean. Serve warm with ice cream.

Smile!

2008-10-06T20:52:00.002-04:00

We had a family home evening on Smiles today (we're using the New Nursery Lesson Manual from Church, it's great!). We decided to let the kids show us their best smiles and take a picture and post it. These aren't really their best smiles, because they had to make some crazy faces too, of course. They're still really cute. You can see Hallie's snaggle tooth. I'm going to pull that thing in the middle of the night!

I love fall

2008-10-01T15:00:00.005-04:00

I love fall. I love having the windows open and crisp air. I love the smells. I love the colors. I love fall fabrics. I love my new blog background. I love it all. But one of my favorite parts is that it is cool enough to go out walking. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, Jackson goes to preschool and I walk him to school in the morning. At the beginning of September when I would leave it was still pretty hot; but now it is so nice. Well, I think it is nice but the kids are a little cool. Today I did not walk Jackson to school in the morning but I decided to go walk and pick him up at noon and it was only65 degrees! I love it! Here is a picture of Jackson and Grace all bundled up the other morning when it was only 48 degrees.

Hallie's birthday party

2008-09-25T16:04:00.008-04:00

Last Friday we had Hallie’s birthday party. She was turning nine and wanted to have a sleep over, but we decided instead to have her friends over from 5-9 pm and wear their pjs and do fun things. They made their own little pizzas. (Which I forgot to take pictures of.)

Watched Camp Rock.

Played with Hallie’s hamster Jerry.

Painted nails.
Opened presents.

Decorated cupcakes.
And because we thought they had not made enough mess already. We had a fondue fountain to add to it.
And then after they were all good and sugared up; we waved good bye and sent them home to their parents to get them to calm down and go to bed.

Why do children do this?

2008-09-25T14:04:00.003-04:00

Ok, so Jackson says that he wants a fruit rollup. So I go and get the snack basket down and the following is our conversation.
Me: Ok there is a blue. Blue. Green. (This whole time I am digging through the snacks trying to find more fruit rollups.) Blue.
Jackson: No, I want red.
Me: I dont think there are any more red.
Me: Blue, green, oh here is a red.
Jackson: No, I dont want red I want a blue.

Why do kids do this?

"I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void."

Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail

Mmmm. I love this foot!

2008-09-15T21:12:00.002-04:00

Grace loves her feet! And a few cute pictures of her and Grace and Carter and Tara.

Too many ignorant people in GA

2008-09-15T21:07:00.004-04:00

Just a quick rant about people not using their heads in GA. I read recently that the national average of gasoline rose just $.05 over the weekend. Well here it rose well over $.60. Why? Because all the people here freaked out and went and got gas on Friday and Saturday because I guess they believed that Hurricane Ike, which was over 900 miles away, was somehow going to cut off the whole supply of oil to the state of GA. Man, if it really was that fragile of a setup, we'd have been in trouble a long time ago!! Almost every gas station we drove by on Saturday was out of gas, and we saw it for as much as $4.50 in some places, and it was around $3.60-$3.70 on Thursday.

Think people!! You're the same ones that complain about gas prices, and then you go and drive them up yourselves!

Hablo Español ... todavía

2008-09-15T20:59:00.004-04:00

I was invited a few weeks ago to give a talk on the 14th in a Spanish group they are creating in a branch in our stake. So with some nerves, having not given a talk in close to 12 years in Spanish, I prepared my talk on Prayer. The group is small, but growing quickly, and after the 1 hr 15 minute drive, I made it out a bit early for the meeting. The meeting was simple and before me a poor Elder that was out only a month was also giving his first talk. Ahh, I remember how difficult that was. We opened my first area in my mission, there were no members there. For the first two weeks, before we had investigators, our Sacrament Meeting was just my companion and I. It was an eye opener.

Anyways, the talk went well. I was a bit nervous about the amount of vocabulary that I'd remember. I speak some from time to time at church since we've moved to GA, but not as much as I'd like. Well the talk went quite well, and I felt that I really kept their attention and felt that I was able to invite the spirit to the meeting, convey my message, and the Spanish felt great. Afterwards, I met some of the members and investigators, and there were quite a few from Guatemala, and almost all of them were from the area of my mission (there are 4 missions in Guatemala).

It was a great experience, and I was able to drive about an hour back and still make it back before our meetings ended in our ward. Maybe they'll ask me to do it again, I really enjoyed it, just not too soon.

59-0?!?!

2008-09-14T09:27:00.002-04:00

Go mighty Cougars! Could they have had a more perfect game? Four touchdowns in the first 5 minutes of the second quarter. Everything went their way, and nothing went UCLA's way. Can't wait to see the polls tomorrow. Max Hall, Pitta, Collie, Unga looked great, and the entire defense too.

Got some cute pictures of Grace and Hallie, we'll try and get them posted later.

I love the Olympics and my DVR

2008-08-19T20:40:00.004-04:00

...but apparently I don't love sleep as much. I have to say, this Olympic experience has been different for me than any other, and that has to do almost completely with the DVR. I just finally gave in and got one about a year ago, and it's been great. In fact, I hate it when I'm watching TV in another room and want to rewind and can't.

However, I've never enjoyed the DVR as much as I have for the Olympics. We keep the DVR in our room, since we typically only watch TV at night, after the kids are in bed, or we're in bed too, so we watch most of the TV in our room. This has been perfect for the Olympics. I just record everything and watch it at night, and start watching the primetime Olympics around 9-10pm and watch until midnight or one... or two... and skip all the commercials and other things that I might not be interested in.

I love it because I get to watch so more of the events that sometimes you miss during primetime. I love so many of the events, swimming, gymnastics, diving, track & field, basketball, beach volleyball, indoor volleyball (I love the men's indoor volley ball, Clay Stanley is a beast!), even trampoline.

But I have to say there have definitely been a few amazying things this Olympics. Michael Phelps is just unreal. The 4X100m freestyle relay was amazing, how we beat France, and then the 100m butterfly was just magical. I couldn't believe that he out-touched the other guy. From almost every camera angle until it was slowed down and from below, I thought it looked like he lost. Then the men's gymnastics team taking silver with their best two gymnasts injured and gone. Then Nastia Luikin and Shawn Johnson going 1-2 in the all-around.

Also I have to say that Usain Bolt (what a great name for a sprinter--Bolt) is a freak. He runs a 9.69, even while celebrating the last 15 meters! I could have done without the grandstanding, but what's this guy going to do when he gets a better start (he had probably the worst start in the group) and runs the whole way. Is 9.5 or even 9.4 out of the question? That's so stinking fast.

Then there's one thing that has just become an inside joke for Tara and I. On Saturday we were watching trampoline. It really is amazing, they jump like 20 feet in the air. Anyways, there was a Chinese man who competed who is named Dong Dong. No joke. Why would the parents do that? I guess there's probably some cultural explanation, but Tara and I start laughing at even the mention of the name now, so it gets thrown into conversation at random times now over the last few days.

So that's it. I highly recommend a DVR. Great for the Olympics and General Conference too (if you're LDS). And if you haven't tuned into the Olympics much, do it. You're missing out, and you're one of the few in America who's not watching :-)

Grace

2008-08-02T20:51:00.002-04:00

Here is a little video of Grace. Not a very good one, but Ellie wanted to see her in action. She is laying on a quilt I am making. Doesn't it have pretty colors?

Good-bye old friend

2008-07-29T21:50:00.002-04:00

I have decided that if I post small little blurbs (instead of waiting until something really exciting happens) maybe more things will be put up on here. So today as I was doing the laundry I made a sad (and somewhat embarassing) discovery. I have a shirt that I have had and worn since high school. Yes, you read that right. Since high school. I probably got it going into my Junior year. So that you dont have to rack your brain figuring out how long ago that was; I will tell you. Fourteen years ago!

So the sad thing that I discovered is that this shirt finally has a spot on it that looks worn out and I feel that I must part with it. But I am just amazed that it has lasted so long; because I wear this shirt pretty often. It is soft and comfy and does not look too out of style (I hope). It is just a blue and white striped tshirt style shirt. I have never had an article of clothing this long. So I am putting a plug in for Jones New York clothes. They will stand the test of time.

Good-bye old comfy shirt. I will miss you.

Pictures from Vacation

2008-07-29T20:15:00.004-04:00

Carter, Kyler (their cousin) and Jackson at the children's museum

Hallie and Grace Carter during his birthday party at Sarah's. Notice the movie is upside down.
Carter ready to blow out the candles on his backward cupcakes. We sang backwards too.
Jackson's cousin Ethan just loved him. Ethan was a cute little guy, always laughing.
Grace catching some z's at the zoo
All the children at home on the couch. Jackson's cheesing, and Carter's looking elsewhere, but Grace looked cute in this picture, so I wanted to post it. A little half-smile.

"Vacation", Vacation, "Vacation"

2008-07-29T19:53:00.003-04:00

Well the month of July is almost over and it's been an interesting one for me. This is first full week of the month that I'm going to be in the office, and it's the last week of the month. The first week of the month I went to Utah for a team meeting with my group at work. When we get together for a team meeting there is a bit of work and play, but the work even, is just meetings and conversation, so it's kind of like a "Vacation" from the norm. Plus, I got to play 27 holes of golf that week, including 18 holes on my favorite course ever, Hobble Creek in Springville, UT. Then we played the newer "Mountain 9" at Cascade. That was a crazy course. Then it was the 4th of July weekend, then the next week, I was in the office for Mon-Tuesday and we left on Wednesday to drive up to Indiana for a week-long visit with my sisters Stephanie and Sarah and their families.

That was the actual vacation. It was a lot of fun. The children did really well on the 500 mile drive each way and we had a ton of fun while there. We we able to go to the children's museum, which was awesome. It's about 10 times as big as the one here in Atlanta, and much, much nicer. We also went to the zoo and it too, was much nicer than Zoo Atlanta. Sorry Atlanta, but you really need to pick it up on the family attractions! Tara and I were able to have a night getaway with just the baby which was nice, a little late 10 yr anniversary celebration. I was able to play another 18 holes of golf with my brother-in-law Chris and two of my nephews. That was a lot of fun.

On Carter's birthday, we had a cookout and my sister Sarah threw Carter a backwards birthday party. The streamers were on the floor and the balloons hanging from the ceiling, and everyone was wearing their shirts backwards. The cakes were upside-down cupcakes. It was very well done. Thanks again Sarah! We had an adult night out, and plenty of other time together as a family. Including pizza and bottle rockets the evening before we left. It was a lot of fun visiting with Sarah, Steph and their families. The children were all a lot of fun and great to spend time with everyone. I can't believe how big everyone is getting.

We got back on a Tuesday night and I was in the office for 3 days that week, then last Monday I left for a Mon-Thursday trip to Philadelphia to a client. Typically for me, a trip means I'm at the end of a project, so the time leading up to the trip is crunch-time and while I'm travelling, I'm testing and wrapping up code, and in the evenings while at a client site, I'm working to fix something so that it's corrected for the next day as we run into issues. This trip was just some assistance and training about some things that were already in place, so it was a very relaxing trip with a client that is very easy to work with, so it was another "Vacation". So it was 4 weeks with a total of 6 days in the office. Pretty nice for me. Of course, my two "Vacations" weren't such for Tara. When I was in Utah, the children definitely could have been better, but they went to bed and were much better for her last week. Can't believe we're almost in August already, school starts in less than 2 weeks for us, and this August is 4 years for me at this current position at work, and is my 10 year anniversary with LexisNexis. Crazy! Well, I'm going to post some pictures, but not part of this post, in a separate post. Also, got a new quote I've been meaning to add from Jackson, check it out.

Our Owl, Part 2

2008-07-07T19:31:00.001-04:00

Well, if you have been reading our blog from the beginning you will remember that we have an owl that lives in the trees around our house. We find him very interesting, but when we found that he had killed one of the wild bunnies that live around us we were not really happy. We also assumed that he was the reason we had not seen any of the little chipmunks roaming around our back yard this spring.

So the other day Mark found the remains of an opposum in the back yard. We are more than happy for the owl to eat animals like this. When Mark shoveled it up to bury it he realized that it was just the skin of the end part of the possum.

We assumed that the owl ate everything else and left that part. Then we found this gross ball of stuff on the deck; which if you watch Dirty Jobs you might know what it is.

If you dont watch this show then you can go to this link and find out what the mysterious object is. (Or if you are like me and just want to watch Mike Rowe in action you can watch too.)

http://mefeedia.com/entry/dirty-jobs-owl-vomit/10375488/

Grace and Carter

2008-06-27T16:26:00.005-04:00

Tara had some pictures of Grace (baby pics) and Carter (6 year old pics) done today. We were going to do all the children together, but Jackson has a rash, so we'll do all the children and Jackson (4 yrs old) soon. Some of these came out really great I think so I had to share.

We've Made it 10!

2008-06-26T09:20:00.005-04:00

Ten years ago today on a hot, smoky day in Orlando, FL (fires in North FL), Tara and I were sealed for time and all eternity in the Orlando, FL Temple. Ten years later we're here now with four beatiful children! What a great ten years that it has been in retrospective. Thought I'd share a bit about our beginnings.

In January of 1998, Tara and I were both at BYU but didn't know each other yet. I had a Book of Mormon religion class as the Joseph Smith Building (JSB). For those who don't know much about the JSB is the religion building, and there are study tables in a common area, however it's very quite, almost like a library. I had a free hour before the class, and sat down the first week of the semester to study. I looked up and was taken aback by a beautiful young lady sitting across the table from me. She was wearing a white button up shirt with blue jeans, had short brown hair, astoundingly beautiful eyes and a wonderful smile. I was smitten! The problem was, that I was here in this quite room and didn't get up the nerve to talk to her.

For the next few weeks, I looked for opportunities during this hour break to find her and maybe meet her. Days passed where she wasn't there, or I coundn't sit near her. The idea of just walking up to her and introducing myself in the middle of this very quite atmosphere was very daunting. Then one day I decided that I was going to meet her. I circled the building and found that she was sitting right outside my class in the hall. I made my way and found a seat right across from her and sat there trying to get up the nerve to say something. Right when I'm finally about to say something, a girl (Tara's roommate at the time) comes up and begins to talk to her, and talks to her for the next few minutes until class starts. So I go disappointedly to my Book of Mormon class.

My professor lectures on, as I ignore him sitting engrossed in thought about what to do next to meet this girl. Then I decide to do something completely immature (all though for some stupid reason at the time I didn't think so): I'll write her a note. I guess the idea of handing her something rather than walking up to her and talking seemed less daunting and an accomplishable task. So I wrote her the following note:

After class ended, I walked out of my class in into hers across the hall. I walked right up to her and held out the note and handed it to her, and I think just said "This is for you. Have a great day" smiled and walked out, hoping I wasn't sweating and that you couldn't see my heart beating. She took the note stuck it in her pocket and didn't read it until an hour later! Then she decided the next day after discussing it with her roommates a bunch to go ahead and email me. (Regardless to say, I was checking my email every hour). In her email, she asked me to call her. I did and we talked for a very long time that day, met the next day in person and had our first date that weekend. The rest of the story will get shortened to we fell in love in ways I'm still working to understand got engaged on March 31st (engagement picture below) and were married on June 26, 1998.

How grateful I am for Tara and the blessing she is to me. She has been perfect for me in so many ways that I feel that I would truly be lost with out her. Hopefully I have been half as good to her as she has been to me. So 10 years down, an eternity to go. Hope it continues to get better!

We're Still Here

2008-06-17T08:13:00.004-04:00

Life's been busy lately, but I thought I'd get on and say we're still alive and well :-). The children are taking swimming lessons this week, which I think is great, because I'd like them to learn to swim a little better. I have always loved swimming and not been to afraid of the water, but the boys are a bit nervous, even with me, and don't like to put their heads in the water, so hopefully this will help with that.

I got to go to be a priesthood leader last week at Girl's Camp for a day. That was a lot of fun. We really have a great group of Young Women in our ward, and excellent leaders. I played some games with them, and just enjoyed chatting with the girls and the leaders and Paul Hailstone who was the other priesthood there. It was a Ward level girl's camp, so it was just our ward, and I think they did a great job. This Thursday, I'm also chaperoning on the youth temple trip, which I'm looking forward to. I haven't done that in probably five years. I love working with the youth, maybe I'll get a youth calling again someday. For now, I'll just get to call them for interviews with the Bishop (I'm the Executive Secretary).

Grace is doing good, except that she's decided to not sleep very well lately, which Tara isn't very happy with. So hopefully we can get that figured out. Babies develop good sleep patterns at around 10-12 weeks, so a bit more to go before she should get really good sleeping patterns. She's getting very big though. It seems like she's grown a ton each day before we get her up. She's really starting to smile a lot, and even make a few baby cooing noises now and then.

Well, that's all for now. I'll try and post some more later.

Grace's Blessing

2008-06-02T21:18:00.002-04:00

On Sunday we blessed Grace. We were able to have her two Settle uncles, Grandfather and the Bishop stand in the circle with us. Hard to believe she's over a month old already. Life is starting to seem more normal with a fourth child now, although I'm not sure if Tara would say that or not. Tara's got a half saved draft of our now somewhat recent owl encounter, but I'll let her finish that post another day. Just a few pictures from yesterday at church of Grace in her blessing dress that Tara made, and blanket and booties that my mom made. Also a cute picture of her curled in a ball asleep on our bed.

Jumpin' Time

2008-05-19T08:27:00.005-04:00

Saturday was Jackson's 4th birthday. I want to say I can't believe our baby is four, but now he's not the baby any more. But it's hard to believe he's getting so big. Well for his birthday and for the family, we bought a trampoline. I got it on Friday night and Saturday morning my dad help me put it together after tennis (my team won both sets this week :-). It was not to difficult to put together at all, and we had a lot of fun with it.

The kids have always loved them and always want to go to the neighbor two houses down to jump. Now they can wear themselves out at our own house. It's a good amount of exercise. We had a family birthday party/cookout for Jackson, so his cousins and aunts and uncles were over and they jumped all afternoon. Grant and I even played a game were we had our older brother throwing us a frisbee and seeing who could catch it more often. Not the safest of games but a blast and a good work out. So here's some pictures of the kids and I on the trampoline that Tara took, and a video too.

I'll post some more pictures of Grace soon too. She fell asleep during her "tummy time" (as Tara calls it) on our bed, and we were trying to wake her up and I got her holding my finger while she was asleep and we got a cute picture of that, so I'll post it soon, after I get it off the camera. The picture below of Carter and Jackson with another boy, that boy is Braden Baxter, a friend of Jacksons. It was hilarious, I got the camera out for opening presents and he took on look of it and got right in front of me with this same smile on his face. Then I got Carter and Jackson to turn around and smile and took that picture.

Mark

Real High Speed

2008-05-14T11:43:00.009-04:00

I got the 8.0 high speed from Comcast installed today. I've had BellSouth FastConnect Ultra for a while which is just 1.5 Mbps for 3 years now and they still haven't offered the 6.0 in my area, so I decided to switch. The upload speed was awful, especially since I large files for work quite often. Here's the AT&T results:

Here's the first test results with the Comcast high speed:

Woo Hoo! Can't wait for the next time I need to post a large file, or download something large. I think I'll go download some big file now....

Happy Belated Mother's Day!

2008-05-12T19:22:00.010-04:00

I wanted to post this yesterday, but never got enough time. Yesterday morning, I was reading the Conference Issue of the Ensign in the morning before Church. Since it was Mother's Day, I thought that I'd search by topic for motherhood and see what I could find. I saw all of the Saturday and Sunday Morning sessions, but only parts of the afternoon sessions each time. I only saw Pres. Monson's talk on the Sunday afternoon session, so I'd missed Elder M. Russell Ballard's excellent talk on Motherhood. I read that on Sunday, and it was excellent.

He talks about the divine nature of Motherhood and that "there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood." He then goes to talk about things that: 1) Mothers can do to reduce pressure and enjoy their families more 2) What a husband can do to support his wife, the mother of their children and 3) What children, even young children, can do to help their mother. With each topic he gives great counsel on understanding the role of the mother in the home and the support that she should receive from the other in the home and how our families can be blessed by following this counsel. The talk is really excellent. Two excerpts that I really enjoyed:

"Author Anna Quindlen reminds us not to rush past the fleeting moments. She said: 'The biggest mistake I made [as a parent] is the one that most of us make. . . . I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, capture only in photographs. . . . I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.'"

"Families need unstructured time when relationships can deepen and real parenting can take place. Take time to listen, to laugh and play together."

"[S]how extra appreciation and give more validation for what your wife does every day. Notice things and say thank you--often. Schedule some evenings together, just for the two of you."

"[H]ave regular time to talk with your wife about each child's needs and what you can do to help."

The talk is really excellent and you can find the full text of the talk at the links below.

Daugthers of God
Elder M. Russell Ballard
April 2008 General Conference, Sunday Afternoon Session
Text Audio Video

So I hope all you mothers out there had a great Mother's day. You deserve it. I know that Tara and I are always grateful for our mothers, and I'm extremely grateful for the mother that Tara is.

Mark

Bathtime

2008-05-04T20:16:00.003-04:00

Just a quick picture of Grace right after a bath. One of the first really good pictures we've got with her eyes wide open.

Go Hawks?!

2008-05-04T19:20:00.004-04:00

OK, just a few sports thoughts. I grew up in Florida, but grew up a Braves fan because they were the closest pro baseball team and they were always on TBS. However, I didn't really follow the Hawks. Now that I live in ATL, it's impossible not to follow the Hawks a little since they're on TV and in the papers. I have to say I was quite impressed and enjoyed watching them and they may have gained a new fan. They got really close to pulling off the biggest upset in playoff history. They forced a game seven agains a Celtics team that took 35 games to lose their third game of the season. The Hawks won 3 of 4 to force a game seven. I didn't expect them to win today, and they did get obliterated, but kudos to them for performing so well against a very good, veteran team.

Also of note, the Braves have been a bit injury decimated including Mr Glass, who is injured again while trying to recover from an injury. The guy has surpased Grant Hill and Penny Hardaway for the most injury prone players I've ever seen. Smoltz is out injured even though he was pitching awesome and it looks like he'll come back in the bullpen, which I'm actually quite excited about. Chipper Jones has been unbelievable this year so far. This guy has another couple of seasons like this and I think that he's a sure fire first ballot hall of famer, if he's not already.

I'm playing Fantasy Baseball with some people I used to work with, and I invited Brian Johnson. We're both having awesome weeks this week, but I'm enjoying it more than I ever have with Fantasy Baseball I think because I have someone nearby to talk to about it regularly, same reason I enjoyed fantasy basketball with Grant a few years ago.

One more NBA playoff comment, I was wondering if you might see a Hawks player mysteriously injured, or some questionable calls as David Stern tries to sway the outcome of the playoffs toward a LA-Boston final :-) Just an interesting conspiracy theory.

Mark

A little bit of code...

2008-05-02T08:15:00.004-04:00

OK, if you have no interest in software programming, this will mean nothing to you, but this is what I do every day. For those who don’t know, I’m a software engineer and have a degree in computer science from BYU. Primarily what I do each day is develop web applications for companies using ASP.NET with C# that implement a certain workflow to perform document assembly with our software called HotDocs. So I thought I’d post a little info about some sites I find as useful resources when I’m trying to figure out how to do something or need a good example. So you coders out there, some of these are ones you might know and maybe some you don’t, feel free to share some of your favs as well.

MSDN Library – OK, this is dumb to post, but if you’re programming in .NET and not using this as a resource, then what are you thinking? The MSDN has a lot of coverage, but not always the greatest examples or descriptions of how to accomplish some things. But if you want a description of a class, method or property, this is the place to go.

The Code Project – This is a really good resource. They have a lot different categories and a lot of information on .NET. It is articles submitted by various users, free to join and the articles are rated, and I find the ratings to be a pretty good judge of how well-formed and useful the information might be.

W3 Schools – This one is kind of entry level, so you’re not going to get complex examples, but when you haven’t worked with a technology for a while or have forgotten some basic, this is a great resource. It’s some pretty solid documentation, and thought I haven’t used it for such, might be an easy way to learn a technology if you don’t know anything about it.

CodeGuru – I don’t use this one too much because I find the ones above a bit more reliable, but another free to join site with content submitted by users.

And a couple of blogs that I’ve run across that I’ve enjoyed:

ScottGu – This is Scott Guthrie’s blog. He’s a VP at Microsoft and does a lot of articles in the MSDN magazine and talks at a lot of the conferences. He’s pretty creative and has some good examples, especially early on of technology in development.

MattBerseth.com – This is just a blog I ran across recently as I’ve been getting into LINQ to SQL (which I’m really enjoying). He’s got some interesting posts and always has simple clear examples. He’s got some creative User Interface stuff, which is what I enjoy.

Well that’s it for now. On my next tech post, I think I’ll talk a little about LINQ to SQL, since that’s what I’m immersing myself in now.

Mark

More Pictures of Grace

2008-05-01T14:48:00.008-04:00

Some more pictures. Here's some more pictures, as promised. The ones with the children are cute. I liked the one with Hallie, she's going to be such a helper. The one with Jackson and Carter is they each had a turn with Grace laying in the bed while they had books read to them during bedtime. So they each pretended to be asleep for the picture. The one with me I posted because that's my favorite thing with a baby, is when I get it to go to sleep cuddled up on my chest. Definitely one of my favorite things about having a baby and I miss it when they get too big to do it anymore.

Also, one video clip of Jackson singing to Grace. When she cries, he sings to her. Sometimes it actually calms her down. I've always sang to the children, so I think they picked that up really well. It's very sweet.

Mark

OK, OK, I lied....

2008-04-30T16:04:00.003-04:00

I said that I wouldn’t post much, but here I am yet again. In an effort to be a little more active, I think we’re going to turn the blog into a family blog and I’ll take an opportunity to be a little more vocal. I’m sure I’ll post some stuff that I find interesting as well, so you might see some tech stuff and sports info too.

Life is fine adjusting to the arrival of Grace. She and Tara came home on Sunday evening. We’ve gotten (or I should say Tara’s has had) rough amounts of sleep so far, but that’s always expected. I’m doing my best to keep Tara from doing anything else, so I’ve been getting the children to school in the mornings and taking care of them with their homework and bedtimes in the evening. We’ve had some meals provided by family and friends for the first few days home, and that has been a great help.

Next week Tara’s mother, father and Ellie will be here so that will be great as well. We’re looking forward to it and hopefully they are too. Jill’s screaming for more pictures, so maybe I will get some posted soon, need to get them off the camera. So that’s it for now, but I’ve got some topics in mind that maybe I’ll post about later, and get some pictures posted.

Mark

Grace Kathryn is Here!

2008-04-26T21:43:00.007-04:00

Grace Kathryn arrived at 11:52pm on April 25th at the Kennestone Hospital in Marrietta, GA. She was 6 lbs and 14 ounces and 20 1/2 inches in length. Tara and Grace are both doing very well. There were no complications and everyone is healthy and beautiful. Grace is a very calm baby so far. Very quite and cute.

The children saw her today and were very sweet with her. Also, Tara's dad was in town for work, and was due to leave this morning at 8am, so he was able to come last night at around 11pm and stick around for the birth and see his 6th grandchild (#17 on the Settle side). It was great to have him there too. Tara's mom was at Hallie's birth, Ellie was at Jackson's and now her dad at Grace's.

We're excited for our newest addition. She is really a blessing and we're excited to have them home in a few days. BTW, I guess I broke my statement when this blog started that I would leave all the posting to Tara, but hopefully you'll forgive her, as she's otherwise detained :-)

Mark

Our Owl

2008-04-18T13:22:00.006-04:00

We have discovered an owl that lives in one of the trees in our front yard. We have been watching him lately. He is very interesting. But yesterday Hallie came home from school and found a dead rabbit in the back yard.

It looks like the owl was trying to have a feast but maybe bit of a more than he could chew. (Not literally) We are guessing that the rabbit was too big for him to eat and so he dropped it in the backyard. Hallie was devastated.

She immediately started planning a funeral. Carter helped by picking flowers while Hallie got the shovel and started digging. Mark had to finish the digging so that the hole was deep enough.
Hallie even made a headstone that says R.I.P. Peter Rabbit and made all of us sign our names on it.

Tara's Blog has been Created

2008-04-17T21:15:00.000-04:00

At the prompting of her never demanding older sister Jill, I have set up a blog for my lovely wife Tara. This is the only post I'll make, and will leave the rest up to her!

Mark