Saturday, February 27, 2010

BEST CANDY EVER

Easter Eggs
Hey everybody, I just wanted to throw out a little advertisement for you all. My mom is the BEST CANDY MAKER EVER and I'm not just saying that because she is my mom. There are hundreds and hundreds of people who would most definitely agree with me. We would like to make that more. She has been selling her candy for years and doing wedding or party favors for people. She now has an official website thanks to my awesome brother Dave. Check it out at http://www.caroljeancandy.com/. Any help in passing along this add would be great, especially those who can vouch for the greatness of this candy. Also my brother made this website for a competition so it needs a lot of visitors. Thanks for your help.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Pulling her over to the Dark Side

Lily is becoming a Daddy's girl. We're trying to help her learn to say prayers by herself, encouraging her to think of things she's grateful for with a few prompts. Mostly she just sees her toys and lists them off. But I can't help but feel a touch a laughter when we tell her, "Thank you for my family," and she adds, "Yes, thank you for Daddy." Last night she singled out a blue bird on her bed sheet, and said, "And thank you for this blue bird." Then we decided to switch to asking for blessings, and after we prompted her to ask for a good night's sleep she said, "Help me to have a good night's sleep with this blue bird." We kind of lost it after that. Lily loves to laugh, and picks up quickly on any laughing or snickering going on.

This morning, I was trying to get Lily to compliment Kat (who looked foxy in a black dress) and said, "Lily, what do you like most about Mommy?" Her answer: "I like Daddy."

:)

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Look Ma, No Plaque

Lily had her second dental appointment yesterday and she did awesome. Her teeth were very clean and everyone was impressed. She is a good little brusher. WAY TO GO LILY!
Dr. Gowans at work

Monday, February 15, 2010

Climate Fun

Everyone likes to attach GATE to any scandal, so let's see how many GATES we can throw on all the climate scandals that have happened over the last few months. Below are some excerpts from the Orange County Registers list of Global Warming Scandals. I'm afraid I don't know enough about the "settled science" to confirm or deny the Register's list. But there seems to be an awful lot of smoke.

ClimateGate: Thousands of leaked documents from Britain's East Anglia Climate Research Unit showed systematic suppression and discrediting of climate skeptics' views and discarding of temperature data, suggesting a bias for making the case for warming.

FOIGate: The British government has determined someone at East Anglia committed a crime by refusing to release global warming documents sought in 95 Freedom of Information Act requests.

ChinaGate: An investigation by the U.K.'s left-leaning Guardian newspaper found evidence that Chinese weather station measurements not only were seriously flawed, but couldn't be located.

HimalayaGate: An Indian climate official admitted in January that, as lead author of the IPCC's Asian report, he intentionally exaggerated when claiming Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035 in order to prod governments into action. It was originally advanced by a researcher who later admitted it was "speculation" lifted from a popular magazine.

PachauriGate: The IPCC chairman who accepted the Nobel Prize with Al Gore at first defended the Himalaya melting scenario claiming critics practiced "voodoo science" until the melting-scam perpetrator confessed.

PachauriGate II: The IPCC chairman also claimed he didn't know before Copenhagen that the bogus Himalayan glacier claim was sheer speculation. But the London Times reported that a prominent science journalist said he had pointed out those errors in several e-mails and discussions to Pachauri, who "decided to overlook it."

SternGate: One excuse for imposing worldwide climate crackdown has been the U.K.'s 2006 Stern Report, an economic doomsday prediction commissioned by the government. Now the U.K. Telegraph reports that "some of these predictions had been watered down because the scientific evidence on which they were based could not be verified."

SternGate II: A researcher now claims the Stern Report misquoted his work to suggest a firm link between global warming and more-frequent and severe floods and hurricanes. Robert Muir-Wood said his original research showed no such link.

AmazonGate: The London Times exposed the IPCC claim that global warming will wipe out rain forests was fraudulent, yet advanced as "peer-reveiwed" science. The Times said the assertion actually "was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise," "authored by two green activists" and lifted from a report from the World Wildlife Fund. The "research" was based on a popular science magazine report that didn't bother to assess rainfall. Instead, it looked at the impact of logging and burning.

PeerReviewGate: The U.K. Sunday Telegraph has documented at least 16 nonpeer-reviewed reports from the advocacy group World Wildlife Fund that were used in the IPCC's climate report.

RussiaGate: Russian think tank investigators evaluated thousands of documents and e-mails leaked from the East Anglia research center and concluded readings from the coldest regions of their nation had been omitted, driving average temperatures up about half a degree.

Russia-Gate II: A presentation last October to the Geological Society of America showed how tree-ring data from Russia was deceptively truncated and misrepresented.

U.S.Gate: Forty years ago there were 6,000 surface-temperature measuring stations, but only 1,500 by 1990, which coincides with what global warming alarmists say was a record temperature increase. Most of the deleted stations were in colder regions, just as in the Russian case, resulting in misleading higher average temperatures.

IceGate: The IPCC based its peer reviewed findings of reductions in mountain ice in the Andes, Alps and in Africa on a feature story of climbers' anecdotes in a popular mountaineering magazine, and a dissertation by a Switzerland university student, quoting mountain guides.

ResearchGate: While a Penn State University inquiry into climate scientist Michael Mann found no misconduct, they did find "further investigation is warranted" to determine whether Mann engaged in actions that "seriously deviated from accepted practices for proposing, conducting or reporting research or other scholarly activities."

ReefGate: The IPCC based its peer reviewed findings linking climate change and coral reef degradation on advocacy articles by Greenpeace as its sole source for this claim.

AfricaGate: The IPCC claim that rising temperatures could cut in half agricultural yields in African countries turns out to have come from a 2003 paper published by a Canadian environmental think tank not a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

DutchGate: The IPCC also claimed rising sea levels endanger the 55 percent of the Netherlands it says is below sea level. The portion of the Netherlands below sea level actually is 20 percent.

AlaskaGate: Geologists for Space Studies in Geophysics and Oceanography and their U.S. and Canadian colleagues say previous studies largely overestimated by 40 percent Alaskan glacier loss for 40 years.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

So Tired

Today Lily came in to me with her shoes and coat on. She wanted to go play outside. I was in the middle of writing a recipe so I took about a minute to finish up. Seriously it was only a minute. When I was done I looked over and found her dead asleep in a pile of laundry that Jake had dumped out earlier. I don't understand how you can go from getting all ready and excited to go outside, to snoring in a pile of laundry a minute later. It sure was nice to have two hours of peace and quiet though.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Here we go again:

Jan. 25th, 2010 12:01 AM EST
Submission Period Opens

Feb. 7th, 2010 11:59 PM EST
Submission Period Closes
-Amazon editors will review a 300 word Pitch of each entry. The top 1000 entries in each category (2000 total entries) will move on to the second round.

Feb. 25th, 2010
Round Two Entrants Announced
-The field will be narrowed to 250 entries in each category (500 total entries) by Amazon top customer reviewers from ratings of a 5000 word excerpt.

March 23rd, 2010
Quarterfinalists Announced
-Publishers Weekly reviewers will read the full manuscript of each quarterfinalist, and based on their review scores, the top 50 in each category (100 total entries) will move on to the Semifinals.

April 27th, 2010
Semifinalists Announced
-Penguin USA editors will read the full manuscript and review all accompanying data for each semifinalist and will then select three finalists in each category (six total finalists).

May 25th, 2010 12:01 AM EST
Finalists Announced, Voting Begins
-Amazon customers will vote on the three finalists in each category resulting in two grand prize winners.

June 2nd, 2010 11:59 PM EST
Voting Ends

June 14th, 2010
2010 Grand Prize Winners Announced

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Random Cuteness

Lily is way into princesses and Jake is big on chewing things these days.
She no longer calls her baby "Baby" her name is "Sweetheart."
I love watching these two play. They love to rough-house on her bed. Jake and his favorite toy Lightening Mcqueen. He always carries that thing around.

It is amazing to me how kids can develop such attitudes at such a young age. Jake, at 10 1/2 months will let you know when he's mad. Anything you try to give him he will just throw and eventually(if he is not bound to a chair) he will crawl away and hide around a corner and when you find him he will go find another corner to hide behind. Today for some reason he started out mad and then thought he was hilarious. What a little stinker.