27 March 2009

Kid's Know It Network

Maren and I are studying Elementary Biology and have found a fun site to help us with that.

It's called Kid's Know It Network, located here:

http://www.kidsknowit.com/

It's totally free and they offer information and games in several subjects, including astronomy, biology, dinosaurs, math, spelling, geography, and geology.

And the really cool thing--it's produced locally! In West Valley City, UT.

25 March 2009

My Daughter the Drama Queen

Scarred for life!

That's funny!

I'm feeling guilty because I'm not posting as much as I promised myself. But I've got several blogs I'm posting in at the moment. This one, my writing one, my depression one, the Vincent family one. Plus the editing work that eats up a huge amount of my computering time--but I LOVE IT!!

Plus I'm spending more time writing.

I just finished a new story last night, currently have it in the hands of some writer friends for critique, then it'll be making the rounds through the fiction markets to try to find a home.

It's a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but with kind of a sick twist. Would you expect anything less of me? So the question the story poses is, what if Red started the whole wolf extermination thing? How? Why?

I guess you'll just have to wait for it to be published to find out!!

23 March 2009

I am scarred for Life!!!
I found out what "Ring Around the Rosie" is really about.
My childhood is ruined.
So here it is, the brutal truth.
Ring Around the Rosie is about people dying of the plague.
"Ring around the Rosie" means the red rings that would develop around the swollen glands of those who had the plague.
"A pocket full of posies"People who had the plague would fill their pockets with flowers to cover the stink.
"Ashes, Ashes"The burning bodies
"we all fall down"
PEOPLE DYING!!!!!
It's horrible!

Thank you, mother, for ruining all my wonderful childhood memories.

(See this post on Hannah's blog! Let Hannah know if you would like and invite!)

12 March 2009

Relief Society

My family MADE me go tonight.

I'm an apostate, you see. At least regarding Relief Society.

I will admit (reluctantly) that I had a good time, because I found someone to be a bit, er, shall we say irreverent with. I don't even know her name. I've been out of Relief Society for so long and for so many years of our time in Ogden that I really don't know all that many people by name.

At any rate, the reason I HAD to go tonight was because they were celebrating the Relief Society's 167 birthday, and wanted to honor all the past Relief Society Presidents from the ward.

I'm on that list.

Sort of.

I was the Relief Society President for a whopping 3 1/2 months.

Not my fault. Although I'll admit I was too young and inexperienced and WAY not ready to be Relief Society President and WAY not equipped to deal with everything such a calling entails.

But, you see, when the bishop called me to the position, I told him in no uncertain terms that Darin and I were engaging in a little family planning and once I became pregnant it would be unlikely that I would be able to fulfill the duties of the office. He assured me that was OK and that the Lord wanted me in that position. I still don't know the reason for that.

I was called at the end of May, got pregnant in July, sick in August, released the first part of September.

Relief Society by Whirwind!

It felt weird standing there with women who served YEARS, sometimes multiple terms, and I was, by far, the youngest of them.

Ah, well. I got a nice corsage out of the whole deal and they sent me home with a bunch of balloons for Maren.

Not a total loss.

09 March 2009

PFSH!!!

So much for that goal of the at-least-weekly blog!

So my guilt-ridden self is here to blog, just for the sake of blogging.

I do have an excuse. February is BUSY at our house, with three birthdays and Valentines and everything else that seems to get packed in.

I am, however, very excited! I got a camera for my birthday!

My old Kodak quit after our trip to Colorado. It may have been the sand at Great Sand Dunes that did it in. If you go to Great Sand Dunes, keep your cameras in a sealed ziploc bag. You can still use them and they'll be protected from the sand. If you have a big camera, use a big bag.

This time I have a Nikon--which is SWEET! I've always loved Nikon. I hope I'll be as pleased with my Nikon digital as I ever was with my Nikon reflex. So far, I'm not disappointed. It has lots of cool features and 10megapixel resolution.

That is SO amazing.

Just 10 years ago digital cameras were pretty much unheard of. Then they were ridiculously expensive for 2 or 3 megapixels of resolution. Now you can pop out 100 bucks or so and get a pretty good little camera with 6 ot 7 megapixels. Spend as much as I did on my Nikon reflex 20 years ago and you can get one heck of a sweet little gadget with good enough resolution to do good prints up to 16 X 20!

Wow.

I have to say though, I still miss the smell of the darkroom and the thrill of messing around with light and chemistry. Digital is cool, but it's just not the same as making your own photos from scratch.