Year: 2015

Tech Museum

April 11, 2015 12:54 pm

Heather's been feeling a little uneasy about the new family organization.  So on April 1st I took the day off and we went down to the Tech Museum in San Jose for which Mike and Tina gave us a gift certificate for Christmas.

Heather had a blast.

We started with the requisite Chick-Fil-A, since one was in the area.  As we pulled in to the parking lot Heather began exclaiming, "I love Chick-Fil-A.  We're so close I can almost taste it!"  And as soon as we walked in, "This is the best day ever!"

IMG_20150401_120704So the trip started off good.

At the Tech Museum she liked playing with the infrared camera:

IMG_20150401_134349And anything she could put her hands on, which was pretty much everything:

IMG_20150401_140418The downside of the visit was that the place was crawling with school groups with little to no supervision.  Nothing particularly bad, but every exhibit was therefore swamped and trying to get a chance to play with it was difficult at times.  But, after about 2:30 when all the school groups left it was quite nice.  Heather got a chance to have the robot artist draw her picture:

IMG_20150401_143934And the spelling robot wrote her name in blocks:

It was fun. We'll have to go back sometime.

READY

March 8, 2015 3:04 pm

FINALLY, both the girls' bedrooms are completed! It was weeks of turmoil and a lot of hard work from all of us, but they are done! I really didn't think Heather would handle the transition to her new room (the old office) well, but she has done great. We involved her in the process as much as possible, and I think that helped a lot. She picked the paint color, helped put the butterflies on the walls, and helped move everything (books, toys, clothes, etc.) from her old room. And she loves her new room!

P1010466as P1010465as P1010468as

The nursery has turned out great, too. I love the color, and I think everything is organized well.

P1010474as P1010470as

A close-up of the owls and snails:P1010471as

The decal above the crib says, "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Do you know how loved you are?"P1010472as P1010473asWhen I eventually finish Corinne's birth sampler, it'll hang above the dresser.

I am so relieved to finally have those rooms done. I am 38 weeks along tomorrow (2 more weeks to go!) and have been itching to just be READY. I haven't packed my hospital bag yet, but that's just about all I have left to do. Car seats are in and everything! Just hoping Corinne holds off until Kyle's mom gets here, and then we will be ready to roll!

 

Supercharging Slickdeals

March 3, 2015 10:46 am

I've been using Slickdeals.net to discover good deals on things for several years now.  Today I thought it'd be really helpful to be able to hide deals from companies that I don't ever buy things from (like Tigerdirect and eBay).  A quick Google search turned up nothing, but playing around with Slickdeals revealed just such an option.

Open the Frontpage preferences by clicking the little gear icon at the top-right:

slickdeals_preferences_1Doing so reveals the Preferences panel which allows you to adjust Category Preferences (on the left) and Store Preferences (on the right).

slickdeals_preferences_2The Store Preferences allows you to type in a store name and it will provide suggestions for matching companies.  Select the match and it will appear with a dislike/neutral/like slider you can adjust.

Any category or company set to "dislike" is hidden.  Any category/company set to "like" will result in more deals matching that category/company being shown to you.

This makes Slickdeals even more useful since I can stop seeing stuff from companies and categories I don't care about and instead see more stuff I might actually be interested in.