More snow

Well, we got another snow storm on Sunday night/Monday morning and we're getting another storm right now. When I got Kitty out of bed this morning, I opened up the blinds and told her that it was snowing and let her look outside. She immediately hugged her arms tightly around her body and said, "Brrr! Freezing!!"This is a picture of the road in front of our house at about 11:15 this morning. Hopefully Luke's kindergarten bus will make it fine through our neighborhood (we are usually some of the last roads plowed in the city).

I'm hooked...

Well, I'm officially hooked on the church's internet indexing program. DH had mentioned the program a few times (the people who are working on the program work with DH down in Orem), but for some reason I thought that it was not something that I could do (at least not yet) or would take more time than I had. Then when DH's family were all staying at our house in January for his grandfather's funeral, we got into a family discussion on doing family history work. DH mentioned the program of internet indexing again and DH's sister-in-law Chez really expressed interest in it. When she got back home she was eventually able to get signed up online and wrote a blog about it. When I read the blog, I thought why don't I try it as well. Well, I signed up online and have been hooked ever since. It's a lot easier than I thought it would be and extremely flexible. You can sign up online and then you go through the online tutorials. Then once you receive your user name and password from the church, you can download the FamilySearch Indexing program and start indexing. It is AWESOME!! You can download up to 5 "batches" at a time which for me so far have consisted of one sheet of a census record from the 1900 census which contains 50 lines on it. They give you a week to index each batch and once you're done you upload the indexed info back to the church's server. The batches are set up so they should only take about 30-60 minutes each to index. The absolute beauty of the program is that you can work on it for as little or as much time as you have. You don't have to complete a batch during one sitting. You can start on it and then leave the computer and come back to it when you have more time. Another thing to know is that each batch is indexed twice. Then if there are discrepencies between the two indexings, it goes to an arbitrator who decides which entries are correct.

I signed up a couple of weeks ago and find myself working on it off and on throughout the day. Our computer is in a very accessible location for me so I can jump on it any time and do a little indexing here and there when I have a few minutes. I did a lot while I was listening on the computer to some of the Utah Senate floor sessions when the midwife bill was still alive... I also find myself choosing to use my time to do some indexing instead of sitting and watching T.V. when there is really nothing on at night.

So, if I've perked your interest, here is a link to sign yourself up:


Family Search Indexing


All you really need is a computer and an internet connection. You don't even have to be a member of the church to participate, so if any of you have non-member friends who have caught the genealogy bug, send the info on to them too. Hopefully with everyone working together, the church can get more records indexed and help make family history work that much easier for everyone. DH says that the program will be officially announced in June or July, but right now it is just being spread by word of mouth. So go ahead and start spreading!! (If any of you sign up and have questions about how to enter info let me know. I had to ask some questions because I didn't think the online tutorials or help were very clear or comprehensive enough on some cases. I'm working on trying to get some changes made since DH has an "in" since he knows the engineers.)

**A Word of Warning**
**Internet Indexing is very addictive, so don't let it take away from your spouse and/or family time!!**

Jumbled words

Luke at 6 years old still gets mixed up sometimes when saying his prayers. I think his problem is that his brain is thinking a mile a minute (usually about everything except what he's doing at the moment) and so his words come out all jumbled up. Last week he was saying the dinner prayer and this is what he said, "Dear Heavenly Father, we ask thee for the food. We thank thee to bless it..." I had the hardest time not busting out laughing in the middle of it...

Kitty Jane

Yesterday I came home from a stake choir practice and Kitty heard me come in the garage door. She came downstairs to greet me and when I saw her I said, "Hi Janie" (which is what I like to call her) to which she responded, "I'm Aura". It is very cute that she's starting to call herself by her name (even if she can't quite pronounce it right)...

Sunset

Here is a picture of the sunset tonight. By the time I got to my camera and was able to take a picture, it was almost gone (in just a matter of a minute or two)...
On another note, the hostile midwife amendments bill that was proposed in the Utah legislature this year has reached it's sunset as well. On Friday, the sponsor of the bill chose to remove it from the senate reading calendar and send it to an interim committee to study the issue during the off-season of the legislature. Another win for the midwives!! Yea!! Now hopefully the committee that is chosen to study the issue will realize that it is not needed or will actually have an open dialog with the midwives to see which limitations are reasonable and which ones are not.

More winter

Well, we had about a week or two of really nice, almost spring-like weather and then this is how the kids spent Friday afternoon:
I'm actually glad we got this storm and hope that we get a few more before spring finally sets in. We definitely need the snow, especially in the mountains...

Our three girls

I came downstairs the other day and found our three girls sitting together on the couch watching T.V. I think that even though they have some very different looks about them, they still look like sisters...

The D.I.

I love the D.I. for little girls' dresses! I found these cute dresses today for $3 each and the girls had to try them on as soon as we got home from the store. (Unfortunately they are not so good for older girls' dresses. The only dresses I've been able to find for M&M there are red holiday dresses...)

Alarming Autism Statistics

Is anyone else troubled by the alarming increase in kids being diagnosed with autism, ADHD or ADD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder)? These problems were virtually unheard of when I was growing up and now I know so many people with these conditions or whose child or children suffer from them. The first time I think I heard of autism was when I was in high school and found out that my high school band teacher's young son had just been diagnosed with it. A year or 2 after I graduated my band teacher quit because his second son was also diagnosed with autism and he wanted to spend more time with them & helping to find treatment for them.

There was a new study just released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) which gives some troubling statistics. Out of 14 states that were that were recently studied, Utah had the highest rate of autism. In Utah, 1 in every 79 boys is diagnosed with it!! Overall in Utah, the rate is 1 in every 133 children!! Utah's rate of autism is 20 times higher today than just two decades ago!! (Deseret Morning News Editorial)

What is going on?? Why isn't more time and research being devoted to try and find the cause(s) of this brain disorder??

I have been concerned about these conditions for several years and whenever there is another article or study published, or I hear of another person I know being diagnosed with one of these conditions, my concern increases. Most researchers agree that there are most likely multiple factors contributing to the increase in autism (one of which is better detection and better reporting - but that certainly can't explain a 20 fold increase).

There have been a lot of theories discussed:

• childhood vaccines
  
• a specific gene in the DNA
  
• decrease in maternal bonding immediately following birth
  
• too much T.V. in the first few years of life
  
• drugs administered during pregnancy & childbirth
  
• rhogam shots given to Rh- mothers during pregnancy & immediately following birth

I have read a lot of interesting studies & articles on these issues and they all have some interesting points. There is also a lot of speculation that some kids are more "predisposed" to autism and that one or more of these factors might cause it to trigger in the brain. I just wish that there would be a comprehensive study conducted that could verify or rule out some of these possibilities so that we can stop this epidemic in it's tracks...

Can you do this?

...sit on a balloon without popping it?

Blondie & Kitty have been sitting (and even bouncing) on the leftover balloons from Luke's party. And they have both been laughing hysterically while doing it...