Skiiing at Deer Valley

My brother Matt and I went skiing at Deer Valley today and had a great time. Even though we’re extremely crappy skiers, we managed to enjoy ourselves. One of the main reasons was that the whole day was free! I got lift tickets from work, and both of us were able to borrow gear from friends.

It was a perfect day for skiing. Deer Valley had received 14 inches of the greatest snow on earth the night before, but the storm passed and the sun was out. It was nice and warm, and the sky was clear and blue.

Unfortunately, the perfect conditions did nothing to improve our skiing ability. We stuck to green dots (easy trails) most of the day. However, that didn’t prevent us from eating our fair share of snow. Matt pulled of a few one-legged saves, but turfed it a couple times. I even caught one on film. No complete yard sale crashes though, and we came home injury free.

However, it was I who suffered the most ignoble of all crashes when I fell coming off the chairlift. I got my skis crossed and went down hard. Totally embarrassing, but thankfully the few chairs behind me were unoccupied. What a newb. Fun day though.

Ellie, Drew & Claire photo shoot

So our life has been a bit hectic lately to say the least. This is my excuse for not getting sweet Ellie’s photos taken professionally. Kara Simmons Photography had taken photos for another relative and I thought she did a good job so I gave her a call. Kara came to my house with all her props and she was wonderful! Plus her prices are incredible so if you are in the area and in need of photos I would highly recommend her.

Anyway, here are some photos of Ellie at three months, Drew at 2 and Claire at 3 (almost 4). Claire, by the way, was hilarious. You should see all the poses she was doing without any instruction from the photographer. What a ham!

iMac hard drive transplant

One of the reasons for the recent lack of posts is the tragic hospitalization of our beloved iMac computer. We’ve had the iMac for a couple years, and it just so happened that when I was setting it up in our new home, I started noticing problems. I rebooted, and got nothing. It wouldn’t boot up. I feared a total loss, but at the very least I knew that the computer’s hard drive had serious problems.

My brother, Matt, has a buddy who works as a “genius” up at the Apple store. So, I went with Matt to have the genius confirm my diagnosis and hopefully to replace the drive. Well, it didn’t work out so well. First, Matt’s genius was not very helpful (not entirely his fault — it was a busy day at the Apple store). Second, I found out that the iMac’s AppleCare warranty had just expired, so I would have to foot the bill on my own. And third, I was told that because it was so busy, they would have to keep it overnight and have a tech diagnosis the problem and call me the next day.

The Apple tech did call me the next day and confirm that I had a “bad” drive and that it would cost me about $350 to replace, but all of my data was gone. I told him not to work on it, and that I would do it myself. Once I got the iMac back, I started prepping for surgery.

First, I shopped for a new hard drive. After some back-and-forth, I decided to purchase a Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB drive. It’s a 7200 RPM drive with 32MB cache, so it is fairly fast. Also, it was double the size of the original drive, and it was priced right — about $70 from Newegg.com.

Since I was going to be opening up the iMac, I thought it would be a good idea to also upgrade the memory while I was already in there. So, I added a 2GB stick of memory to replace a 1 GB stick, thereby maxing out the memory for my machine.

While I waited the couple days for the new equipment to arrive, I thought I would do some CPR on the old drive to see if I could rescue any of the data. I was really nervous that we weren’t going to be able to recover anything, which would mean losing months of photos and documents — not good.

I started to take apart the iMac, not an easy chore. It was pretty nerve-racking because of the many parts all jammed together into the monitor. I tried to keep track of all the screws and cables so I could put it back together again, but I eventually got to the faulty hard drive.

I borrowed a USB drive enclosure from work (thanks help desk guys!), and took the removed faulty drive and plugged it into another computer and see what data could be recovered. When I plugged in the drive, I got a warning message that basically said, “This drive is having problems, back it up as soon as possible.”

So that’s just what I did. I immediately copied all of our digital photos, since that is easily the most valuable data of all the bits and bytes. When that was done, I felt much better. The important stuff was safe, and everything else I could recover was gravy.

With the crucial data safe, I started exploring several other parts of the drive, trying to copy what was important. There were some areas that I couldn’t get to, but with the crucial data (photos) safely backed up I felt like I could start experimenting with the drive.

My first experiment was to to freeze it. That’s right, I put the bad drive in a zip-lock baggie and stuck it in the freezer overnight. Freezing a drive can help in certain problems where the generated heat from the drive causes parts to expand and start bumping into each other, or totally seizing.

Unfortunately, the freezing didn’t work. I still couldn’t access all the data on the drive.

Next was to try to use some hard-drive recovery software. I purchased SpinRite and put it to work on the drive. It ran for nearly three days go though the drive sector by sector. While SpinRite was working away, my new hard drive and memory I purchased from Newegg arrived.

Installing the new hard drive and putting the iMac back together wasn’t as big a deal as I originally feared. I installed Snow Leopard (the iMac operating system) on the new drive with very little trouble, and I noticed just how peppy my “new” machine was. A little RAM and a fresh OS can go a long way in making your computer feel brand new again.

Once the machine was put back together, I attached the old drive (using a USB drive enclosure I borrowed from work) and restored all of the files I could get to. Unfortunately the freezing and SpinRite-ing didn’t manage to recover any additional data, but it was still a fun project. It’s nice to have our computer back up and running.

Boys’ night out equals girls’ night in!

Seth got a couple tickets to a BYU basketball game and planned on taking Jacob. Normally Drew stays home with the girls, but Jacob thought Drew was finally old enough to go to a game, and Drew loved the idea. So, it became a boys’ night out. They all got outfitted in their BYU attire and headed out the door to the ball game.

Meanwhile…

The girls ripped it up at home with tons of crazy fun. Seth took the camera so we had to take all of our pictures in front of the computer with photo booth. They aren’t stellar quality but you’ll get the idea. It is so fun to be a girl!

The girls insisted we start by making “go girls” signs. (I love the “boo boys” sign with the boy in jail that Megan made.)

Next they insisted on getting in their swimsuits and taking a bubble bath in our jacuzzi tub.

Then next it was time to paint our nails.

We finished off the night with some yummy strawberry Italian sodas!

PS – No pics of Ellie because she slept through most of the fun…kind of nice actually. 🙂

The good, the bad, and the ugly

So we have been in our home going on three weeks now. We have truly loved having a home of our own again but with it has brought some challenges as well. We promised some photos to our friends and family who can’t come by and visit (If you can come visit and haven’t come by please do!) so here you go:

THE GOOD (which far outnumbers the bad and ugly)


The kitchen is great! I initially thought it was small but I have several cupboards and drawers that are empty and we have tons of counter space. Love, love, love it!

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This is a picture of my oven. It is some fancy machine. It preheats in minutes and everything turns out so good. I have never had a stove/oven that worked so well. (By the way, I said fancy, not clean. I will eternally have fingerprints and smudges on my appliances…tis my life with six little ones.)


This is our family room. I like the ceiling vaults and especially the new fan Seth put in (he wasn’t too happy about it). We need an entertainment center and some other pieces of furniture but overall it is great.


Master bedroom…and you can see the bedding we picked (You were right dad!). We need major decor but otherwise it is great. It has french doors out to the back patio.


Seth especially loves having two sinks. He threatens that all my junk must stay on my side.


My late night luxury. It is so big! When I lay in it my toes don’t even touch the other side. Super duper like it!


This is half of the large family room in the basement. We got that cute game table from Grandma Jan…she found a steal at DI.


This is the other half of the room. This will eventually have a mounted TV, but for now we use our huge old-school TV.


Here is our basement kitchenette. It will be handy when we watch movies or have late nights with the kids’ friends.


This is the cutest little playroom built under the stairs. The girls think it is so fun!


This room is the playroom but will eventually be a guest room. It is nice to have a place where all the kids stuff can go.


This happens to be my very favorite thing in the house. I really appreciate a closet deep and big enough for games and toys.


Here is Meg’s room. Her room is the only one clean enough to show. How do I clone her?


This is our office. It has built in cabinets and will come in handy when Seth needs a quiet place to work.

We live on a half acre and this stuff was already in place when we bought it. The kids are in heaven:


Jake and Meg have a nice pad to play ball in our backyard.


The in-ground trampoline. (If you look closely behind the white fence in our backyard the neighbors have a swimming pool. We’ve been told they like to share!)


The swing set.

THE BAD:


The water heater went out the first day we moved in and had to replace it. In the process we found out that the water softener had a big leak in the tank and had to be replaced as well. Not fun but I can handle it if that is all that goes wrong. 🙂


This is the formal living room. The room itself is fine. However, we have no furniture in it other than what we are currently storing there and it looks pretty bad.

The UGLY:


There are 4 of these lights in the kitchen. I do not like them at all. We actually replaced the one that was in the entry but the rest of the lights we ordered to replace them won’t arrive till next week. I will be glad when these are gone.


I like this large storage area, but boy is it ugly right now. All of our stuff that needs to be organized and/or thrown away is there till I get a weekend to clean it up.


This is all a matter of opinion but I think the tree is quite ugly. Seth, on the other hand, likes it. I will say it has been a great way to give directions to our home. We just tell people to get to our street and then look for the twisty tree.

How was that for a long post?! Now you have it. Mom, was that detailed enough for you? 🙂 We should have it all organized, cleaned and decorated in about 5-10 years.

Drew’s new do

So Drew FINALLY has enough hair to comb. Yes, he is two but for whatever reason our babies just don’t get much hair before they turn three. So last week I started to come over his hair to the side and Jacob said, “Mom, Drew looks like a dork.” I guess I really am getting old. So Jake helped me restyle it and now this is his new do. Of course his hair is still very thin but it’s getting there..if only I can keep Seth and his clippers away from him.

Which one?

A common phrase that can be heard around our house lately is “Which one do you like?” Seth is completely exhausted when it comes to making home decorating decisions. The truth is, he doesn’t really care enough to pick it out but picky enough to have some type of opinion and I am picky enough to have a favorite but I am very much a “pleaser” so I want to get something he likes as well. That makes things tricky when trying to purchase rugs, shower curtains, bedding and most any furniture.

We decided that since our master bedroom was large enough we would go ahead and get a king size bed. However, along with a bed means new bedding. I quickly found how expensive king size bedding can be. I have now spent over a thousand dollars. Of course most it it has now been returned. We keep buying bedding and laying it on our bed and then returning the bedding. I started by picking bedding that I thought was really cute but didn’t take into the consideration some major factors.

First, I have six kids under the age of 10 and several enjoy hanging out on our bed. Second, I have a newborn who spits up constantly and I often set her on my bed while I put clothes away and such. Third, the room already has curtains and paint and to make things easier I probably should try to match them somewhat. So after several sets and several hours of just sitting on the beds at Bed, Bath and Beyond and staring at the millions of different bed sets we have finally made a decision. It probably wasn’t my favorite one but the most adaptable, affordable and the least likely to stress about if my kids were climbing on my bed. Here are some of our purchases. Can you guess which one we settled on?

So phew! That week long (or probably more) decision has been conquered. Now if only I could decide what color to paint my kitchen table, what bar stools will match best, and where to find the perfect entertainment center all would be good. Winning a lottery would be helpful as well! 🙂

Packing has begun

I am not sure there is a way to express just how much I dislike packing up all of our belongings for a second time in six months. It is certainly on my top ten list of things I don’t enjoy doing. I did allow the kids to pack up their own boxes and couldn’t help but chuckle when I saw that Jacob wrote “kind of fragile” on his box. I am not sure what is in it but if I decide to throw it across the room I will do so “kind of” gently.

We close on our new home on Monday. We are all very excited about that. We’ll spend all week bringing small trailer loads over and then do a big move on Friday and Saturday with the larger items. It will be SO nice to be settled and to have a place to call home. The only thing that will make it better is if we finally get this rental rented out. We do have some interest so cross your fingers! We’ll post photos of the house soon.

Tweed jackets and leather elbow patches

My co-workers have started calling me “The Professor” in an effort to tease me about my new part-time job. One co-worker even laughed when he found out why I was carrying a stack of books into work. However, I don’t mind the ribbing, because I’m having a great time. I’m now an Adjunct IT Instructor at Utah Career College.

I totally lucked into the job. My brother Eli is a math nerd, and after graduating he took a job teaching math at the college. I told him to keep an eye out for an IT teaching gig, because it was something I have always been interested in doing.

In December, he sent me a text saying there was an opening for a Monday night IT class, and that I should call about the position. I did. I applied, got an interview, and apparently they really liked me (or were desperate — I prefer to think they liked me) because they offered me the job on the spot. I took it.

Now I have two weeks under my belt. I am teaching IT155 – Computer Essentials to ten great students each Monday night. It’s a 12-week course, mainly on computer hardware, putting your own computer together, that kind of thing — but I’ve found that I really enjoy it. Teaching is  very rewarding personally, even if it lacks financial rewards. Plus, I get to keep my full-time job and try out this new profession. Who knows where else it may lead?