We have had the joy of testing out various mouse trap products over the last year with varying degrees of success.

Our goals are, in priority order:

  1. Get rid of the mice from inside our house, or at least from inside our silverware drawers
  2. Protect the kids' fingers from getting smashed by the traps
  3. Easy to maintain
  4. Humane (mousane?) removal

 (More)

Posted by Jon Daley on December 8, 2009, 5:14 pm | Read 52161 times | Comments (4)
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11/7 - Noah discovered the two cube puzzle that has pictures of six different vehicles and plays the sound of each when the puzzle is completed.  He was having trouble with it, which seemed strange to me at this age.  He kept getting the wrong sounds playing.  I told him to match up the pictures and it would work.  After a while, I took my attention off of Faith to watch Noah and see what the trouble was.  He was matching the pieces face to face instead of next to each other! (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on December 2, 2009, 2:34 pm | Read 3583 times | Comments (2)
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I'll start with most recent and then go to my pocket notes.  Jonathan and Faith both had well child checkups yesterday.  As much as it seems like it would be easier to have two checkups together, it really isn't.  I'll go back to scheduling them separately.  It wasn't too bad, but a bit hectic and it took a long time. (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on December 2, 2009, 12:29 pm | Read 9438 times | Comments (4)
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We began the day learning about Guy Fawkes Day (Jonathan says now if we ever visit England he wants to visit at the beginning of November so he can participate in the festivities.)  We ended the day by taking Daddy to the ER.  Jon's notes in italics.

It was quarter of five and I had gotten dinner ready a bit early.  I went downstairs to let "the men" know.  Jon was working on adding our new ultraviolet filter (to radiate the coliform bacteria) to the plumbing and Noah and Jonathan were doing projects.  Jonathan's project was making a new shelf for Daddy's tools.  He asked me to hold the shelf up while he hammered.  Then I heard a cry from Jon of severe pain.  He went running out of the well room holding his head.  He was unable to tell what had happened or even say where it hurt (though now he now says if I ever hear that kind of cry it is always eyes...)  I asked if I needed to call the doctor or go to the hospital and he said he didn't know.  He took his hand away for me to look at some point but I couldn't see any blood anywhere.  He was a bit faint, so he lay down on the floor.  I started praying and assuring the boys and Faith (and myself) that God would take care of Daddy.  (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on November 8, 2009, 7:19 pm | Read 32603 times | Comments (18)
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10/23 - Jon said, "Ask Jonathan an addition problem with two digit numbers that sum to a multiple of ten."  I asked him 53+17, and Jonathan figured out loud, "the seventeen goes to twenty, the fifty three goes to fifty...seventy!"

I signed Jonathan up for the Pizza Hut Book-it program and the way it works now is that you set your own goals.  We set a goal of thirty books a month - one a day.  He didn't really need extra motivation to read, but it's fun to get free pizza. (:  Some of the books he's read recently include The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Curious George, and Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on November 4, 2009, 8:39 pm | Read 3314 times | Comments (5)
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NEWS BULLETIN: Saying it will improve the education of children who have grown up immersed in computer lingo,
the school board in San Jose, Calif., has officially designated computer English, or "Geekonics," as a second
language. "This entirely reconfigures our parameters," Milton "Floppy" Macintosh, chairman of Geekonics
Unlimited, said after the school board became the first in the nation to recognize Geekonics.

"No longer are we preformatted for failure," Macintosh said during a celebration that saw many Geekonics
backers come dangerously close to smiling.  (More)

Posted by Jon Daley on October 19, 2009, 11:40 am | Read 3753 times | Comments (1)
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I was searching for Noah's first word on our blog (I found his first signed word: please, but I couldn't find his first spoken word) because Faith has started talking a little, and I don't know exactly what her first word is, probably "hi".  But, today, she has repeatedly said, "tada" when putting a bit of a puzzle together.

While searching for that, I came across an old post where I had posted some word problems for you to solve.  And today, I have another:What method is the best (considering cost) for purifying a drinking water system that occasionally gets coliform bacteria in it?  Your answer should be expressed in terms of:  (More)

Posted by Jon Daley on October 15, 2009, 1:22 pm | Read 39659 times | Comments (7)
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Jonathan has created a new superhero.  Actually, a team of superheroes.  They are the SuperFire team, made up of as many different colors as you would like.  Super Orange Fire is the captain (that's usually Jonathan.)  Noah is often Super Blue Fire, or Super Green Fire.  I'm sure I'm forgetting details, but some of the features are that they can turn into fire and they can shoot worlds from their arms.  They have capes that can separate into wings.  The theme song includes phrases from the Ride of the Valkyries.  (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on October 10, 2009, 9:07 pm | Read 3725 times | Comments (7)
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I noticed that upromise now allows you to withdraw your money instead of having to wait until your kid goes to college.  Given that our balance is currently $90.74 (thanks Grandma for $16 of that) it'll take a long time before we could even put it in a 529 account, assuming they are going to stick around, and so withdrawing that money now (and spending on our recent Rainbow Resources order for homeschooling stuff) seems like a good use of that money.

Posted by Jon Daley on September 28, 2009, 5:35 pm | Read 8056 times | Comments (2)
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PAUL REVERE VIRUS:
This revolutionary virus does not horse around. It warns you of impending hard disk attack: Once, if by LAN; twice if by C.

POLITICALLY CORRECT VIRUS:
Never identifies itself as a "virus," but instead refers to itself as an "electronic micro-organism".

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGAR VIRUS:
Terminates and stays resident. It'll be back.
 (More)
Posted by Jon Daley on September 23, 2009, 11:36 am | Read 9963 times | Comments (1)
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We are in the process of moving to a new filename format for our pictures, simpy using the timestamp from the camera, rather than manually typing in ordering numbers, etc.  And that postponed the publishing of our pictures for a couple months, but I finally spent the time today to get it all setup.  The RSS feed for our pictures was a little strange, so if you normally see our pictures that way, you may or may not have seen all of them appropriately.

You can click here to see the most recent pictures.

And I see that most of our Maggie P pictures are not in the RSS feed - not sure why that is - probably due to too many pictures.  Probably the best way to not miss any pictures at this point is to check out the "all chronologically" folder.

Posted by Jon Daley on September 21, 2009, 5:14 pm | Read 3846 times | Comments (1)
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Noah's three year appointment was at the beginning of the month.  He is 42.5 lbs and 41" tall.  They did the hearing and vision tests and the nurse was very impressed.  She said usually at this age, they can hear the sounds but not figure out which ear they're hearing it in, and he did great.  The vision test was very interesting for me, but not the eye part.  His vision is fine, but what they do at that age is show the pictures up close first to see what the child will call each object.  So Noah said "apple" and "house" just fine, and then circle was "round" and square was "round."  She went back and forth on those a couple of times and then said, "are those two shapes the same?"  He started to say yes, and then emphatically said No!  So I told him that that shape was called a square and he repeated it.  Then for the real test, a square was the first object.  He hesitated, and then she reminded him of the name.  After that, he named each object perfectly.  At first, it rather bothered me that Noah didn't know the simple shape names, but it just means we haven't gotten to that part yet.  He knows his colors and lots of other things.  So now he knows the name for a square. (: (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on September 19, 2009, 4:26 pm | Read 7846 times | Comments (6)
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I got an email last night from someone who was looking up contact information for one of my customers: Piexx Company. She was wondering if someone was trying to scam her.  The way the scam works is that someone says they are a hiring agency for some company and posts a job offer for a data entry position where you can work at home, and they interview and you get the job.  (More)

Posted by Jon Daley on September 17, 2009, 8:51 am | Read 238284 times | Comments (44)
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I just learned about the Wissmann family, and that they are coming to Pittsburgh, to Ascension Lutheran Church on Peebles Road (near McKnight).

We are planning on going. They have a couple sample songs on their web site, and it sounds like it will be a fun night. Brennan (paster of Ascension Lutheran) asked people to RSVP if they knew they were coming, so let me know.

PS. This is the first time I've tried using one of those fancy-dancy XMLRPC posting tools - if it works well, I might actually post more often, since this way is pretty quick.

Posted by Jon Daley on September 7, 2009, 5:20 pm | Read 6488 times | Comments (2)
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8/7 - Faith started using the more sign consistently and spontaneously.  She will now also use it to mean "I want that."

8/11 - Faith took her first step.  It was sort of accidental, since she was walking holding to my hand, and I slipped my finger out.  After that first step, she realized she was not holding anyone anymore and she sat down.  On 8/15, she took another step in a similar way.

8/12 - Faith shook her head along with the more sign to indicate "no more".  She has not done it again.

When Noah starts telling a story he begins, "Wunt 'pon time..."

Noah's word for spaghetti is "ebbi." (More)

Posted by Heather Daley on August 29, 2009, 9:43 am | Read 3162 times | Comments (7)
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