[day 92 ... april 2]

I broke down and bought an iPod last weekend: an 8GB iPod Touch. Might be too small, but I just couldn't justify paying for a bigger hard drive and I was tired of waffling around about which iPod to get, when to get it, and on and on. Costco had a $7 off deal and I had a $60 (Costco) rebate burning a hole in my pocket. Decided I had waited long enough to finally have an easy way to listen to the music I've had sitting around on CDs for years now, practically abandoned. (Very sad. :-)

I picked the Touch over the Nano and others because I want to get used to the touch screen experience. Let's call it a potential practical benefit for my work these days, and leave it at that. :-)

Today I finally completed the many steps required to actually use my new gadget. I stopped by Fred Meyer and bought a tape-for-MP3 device, so I can listen to the music in the car. Also got a car charger, just in case I forget to recharge. Then I moved a copy of my iTunes library - that I've been building over time on the desktop computer (with a big jumpstart courtesy of Tynor, who loaded a whole bunch of CDs for me at one point) - over to my laptop, set it to import all the music, then realized that it also imported a bunch of duplicate albums that I had in "My Music" folders (current and past archives). So weeded all of those out (iTunes doesn't appear to have any easy way to "remove duplicates" so I did it all by hand), and then synched my iPod. Voila! I think I'm good to go!

As a bonus, I can now load a bunch of CDs that the desktop CD drive refused to recognize, so I can add those to my library and have them on my iPod too. Sweet!

[day 91 ... april 1]

Cory has been a recyclables-creating machine lately. Man, we haven't gone through so much Scotch tape in I can't remember how long. He's been making Star Wars spaceships, signs, binoculars, houses/villages, swords, robots - a huge variety of things. Just loving it.

I love that he's on such a passionate tear - always fun to see the kids get really into something - though I'm not as crazy about our house filling up with piles of "things constructed" everywhere. Ah, well. This too shall pass, and then I'm sure I'll miss it. I remember when Tynor made himself a set of "armor" out of sheets of paper, including a helmet. It was really something. Kids are so creative and persistent. Anything is possible, even with just sheets of paper and tape. Where does that go?

[day 90 ... march 31]

I saw these pretty mugs at Starbucks the other day and decided they'd make a good addition to our "larger mugs" collection. I got a set of two blue mugs a while back (also from Starbucks - you can tell that I don't get out much LOL) that I just love, and of course, everyone else loves them too! They're "just the right size," apparently, and bigger than our other mugs. Well, now we have two more "bigger" mugs so I hope that my special blue ones will be available for *me* to use more often now. We'll see. If not, I like these a lot too so I won't complain (too much).

[day 89 ... march 30]

Finally got organized and took the boys and myself to the Bothell Courthouse to apply for passports. We had our mini-photos taken a couple of months ago, and I'm just getting around to the actual passports now!

Of course, once we got there, I found out that because I already have a passport (albeit an expired one), I have to mail mine in - can't do it in person. Probably just as well, because Cory and Niall's applications costs $25 apiece in *addition* to the passport application fee itself - all for the privilege of working with a real person, I guess. Which you have to do for kids under the age of 16 who haven't had passports before. Sigh.

It was cute when the woman asked Tynor to affirm that I was really Cory and Niall's mom, whereupon Cory chimed in to fill her in completely. "She's our mom, and he's my brother Tynor, and he's my brother Niall. And I have another bigger brother, Kellen, but he's not here." I think she got all the evidence she needed that we were legit. :-)

For Tynor, I also have to have an affadavit from his dad saying he can have a new passport - even though he already has one (expired, but still...). So we'll have to do his later - defeating the whole plan of doing this in one fell swoop! But step by step, I guess. And the best laid plans, and all that. We'll get there. At least we're "in progress" now.

[day 88 ... march 29]

Garland is on a solo vacation to D.C. for five days (lucky gal) so Grandma Shannon is helping out with Rolly. They came over for a lovely visit today. Rolly loved playing with all the toys, especially the sandbox outside. He brought this fun electronic piano to play with and all the little guys enjoyed trying it out.

We took them home in the late afternoon. It turned into a beautiful day, and we played in the yard at Garland's for a bit before heading over to Brier Park. We drive by the park every time we go to and from G's house, but either don't have time to stop or the weather is lousy. Today was an exception!

Here's Cory bringing me a bouquet of dandelions. Awww...



Niall and Cory loved playing on the climbers at the park, especially racing up as fast as they could and then zipping down the slide. Another little boy toddling around at the park, probably about Rolly's age, got such a kick out of watching them run around. They were having a great time. It's fun to see them playing together relatively happily for such a long stretch.