Dallin and the Chipmunks!

We had our very own performance of the famous Christmas singing Chipmunks, as part of the Christmas eve talent show. Check out Elayna's ponytail.

Christmas in Marietta

We had a wonderful time with Wendy, Austin and family in Marietta, Ohio. Den discovered the Wii (for 8 hours) and we had lots of fun with the Christmas Eve talent show, and of course, Scrabble.Here's Granpa with Riley, Allison and Elayna. Allison didn't want to be in the picture because Granpa kept teasing her about her thumbsucking. He's got her convinced that she is going to grow a unibrow if she doesn't stop!
The kids got not one, but two little beagles. They are 3 years old and belonged to one of Austin's employees. Best of all, they are potty trained and very well behaved.
Upon arrival, we read a letter Dallin had written to his Mom about his disappointment with Christmas. I quote, "As you know, I am not having a very good Christmas. The girls are a pain, there is no snow, and this is not something that can be fixed by becoming the director of a Charlie Brown play. No, it is far worse than that. There are too many people in this house worried about presents!" He looks pretty happy here with his legos.
We were ass-tounded with Riley's next gift. Just what everyone young girl wants...a donkey for Christmas!!!! A neighbor brought over this cute 3 month old donkey so that Riley can learn how to take care of it. This education is being undertaken in the hopes of someday getting a horse. His name is Checkers and, of course, it was raining when they brought him over. You should have heard Austin and Den--they could not stop with the a-- jokes!

Sydney's Blessing

We literally left before the crack of dawn to make it up to Sydney's blessing in Cleveland. We rode up with Shauna's family and Dan got us there in under 2 hours, which is quite a feat. We spent the afternoon at Suzy and Spencer's home in Cleveland Heights. Needless to say, it took a lot longer than 2 hours to get back home.

Welcome new viewers!

I am publishing my blog address on the bottom of my Christmas letter, so I thought I should welcome everyone. This actually started out as a work blog, so don't bother to read any old posts. After the work exercise was over, I decided to change it to my own personal site. In a nutshell, here's the highlights and low-lights for 2008.

Den went to work for the Transportation Research Center. They do different kinds of auto testing for manufacturers and the government. He was hired as a project manager. After selling our business, he was getting so bored, that he was excited to be back to work! The good news is that it is 9 miles away... the bad news is that he hates it! He feels his best talents are being wasted. He is always looking for something else...but we are thankful for his job.

I was able to work full-time for a couple of months as people at the library left for different positions. I was hoping to slide into one of those vacancies, but it was not to be. I am back at part-time...but I am happy to announce that I love my job!

In March, two domestic dogs gained entrance into our pasture and 4 alpacas were severely injured and had to be put down. This was so devastating personally and to our business. One of the alpacas belonged to our friends, whose animals we were boarding. We are seeking compensation from the dog owners, but the insurance company is playing the run around with us. We also had a still born cria, and one live birth this fall. We now have 3 pregnant females, 1 female cria, and an awesome herdsire. There is a link to our farm page, if you are interested.

I was able to travel up for the grand opening of the new Highland Library. This is where I would be working if we had not made the big move south. It is beautiful and it was wonderful to see my friends.

Wendy lost part of her toe as a result of a falling piano at her aerobics class. It's too long a story, but Shauna and I spent lots of time helping her get back on her feet. (bad pun, I know)

Suzy returned to BYU to defend her graduate thesis and was awarded her Master's Degree in Speech Language Pathology. She and Spencer spent time apart as he went to Navy officers training in Rhode Island.

We took a min-vacation to Lakeside over Memorial Day. Joined by all the kids and some of Dan's family, it was a nice getaway.

Austin graduated from OSU dental school. He bought a practice in Marietta and the family moved down in early June. We traveled down to see Dallin, my oldest grandchild, be baptized.

Den was able to build a beautiful deck on the back of the house. We had some high wind damage, so were able to get a new roof on the house and barn. My garden was as wonderful as ever and I took excess vegetables to work.

Den's Dad passed away in September at the age of 92. It was an emotional few days, but we know that he is much happier with Virginia and in a much better place. It was wonderful to see how many people loved him and what a wonderful impact he made on so many lives.

Spencer and Suzy had a little girl, Sydney, on Nov.4th. I drove up and got to the hospital 5 minutes after she was born. I was glad to be able to spend a week with them. What a wonderful feeling to love one more grand-baby. I have a link to her blog.

Everyone came home for Thanksgiving!!! Got some good bakers and cooks in our family. The boys went out early for a turkey bowl football game and Dan came back with a sprained ankle. Fifteen people, and we enjoyed every minute of wonderful chaos.

Yes, you can count me and my girls among the faithful book and movie fans. What's the big deal, you may ask? Here is my take on the success of the series. It is marketed to absolutely the correct demographic--teenage girls. We were all raised on the Disney princess movies, which tend to give one unrealistic expectations in the romance department. What female does not want to be rescued from her mundane life by a prince charming...it just so happens that in this case-- he's a vampire! Are they sappy...absolutely. The best writing in the world...never. I can, however, say with all honesty, that after reading these books...I would love to be a vampire!

Learn and Play #23

I think creating the blog is the #1 thing that I have enjoyed doing. My kids have blogs and post pictures and thoughts; and I have loved reading them, but was intimidated by the prospect of starting my own. Now I see how easy it really is...I will continue posting, but now it will be of a more personal nature. I also enjoyed setting up the Delicious account. I have many folders with all sorts of tags and can store so many things, and find it, no matter which computer it is on. This is so great when I work at home because, now I don't have to keep emailing stuff to myself.

I think that these activities have opened up a whole new way of looking at things. I can keep on the cutting edge of technology and teach others to do it, too. I feel very confident because I have gained new skills and am more likely to try other new things.

I think the thing that surprised me the most was...that I kept thinking about all the other ways I could use this technology, besides work. I am in charge of a ladies organization at church and we email each other constantly. I am excited about setting up a Wiki or at the least putting stuff on Google Docs. I am empowered to educate some of the other women on how we can use this technology to make our organization more productive. I think it would also be awesome to have a family wiki. My sister, is a 5th grade teacher in Vermont and needed to make a class webpage. She has a pc, but the school has a Mac, so she wasn't quite sure what to do. I told her about Wikis and then explained to her about Learn and Play. I sent her the link and she is going to do it, too. Even better, she is going to pull out exercises for her 5th graders!

I think the thing I hear most about was the time factor and how long it took for some of the exercises. I liked the fact that I could do exercises at home if I wanted to. I would hope that the blog would stay up in case I need to refresh my memory about some sites. I had to ask for help on the RSS feed exercise, I never was able to embed video from YouTube, even though I copied the info into the window.

Oh pretty please, let's do another program like this! I would love to participate.

RSS Feeds

I have subscribed to several sites through my bloglines account. One of them is Publisher's weekly best sellers list.

Take a look at my book shelf on Shelfari!

As I looked back at my tracking log, I neglected to write a post about Library Thing. That is probably because I already have a Shelfari account and a book shelf on my blog and didn't want to use another database. They work pretty much the same. You can keep track of the books you are reading and also share the titles with friends. Books can be found by title, author, isbn. very nicely. I like Shelfari because it is linked to Amazon.com and many of my library friends are using it too.

MOLDI

Hey, it sounds gross, but it is actually awesome. This connection to digital media has a wonderful interface and tutorial. I have not actually downloaded any media, but was excited by what I saw was available. I didn't realize that there were EFlicks as well as Ebooks, Emusic and Eaudiobooks. My husband will be so excited to know that "The 3 Stooges" have many titles available for download.

YouTube

This exercise was really fun. I have been watching videos on YouTube for quite some time, but I have never searched with the library in mind. I found some interesting postings--from tours to library 2.0, even the library book cart championships! This is an awesome tool!

Pod Casting...who knew?

Our Learn and Play exercise for this week is all about Pod casting, another subject I thought would intimidate me. But, after scanning the directories and listening to some of the feeds, it seems fun and simple. I subscribed to a feed called "Reel Reviews" movies worth seeing. It highlights obscure movies that don't always get a big Hollywood following. I can use it for "movie advisory" as people ask for recommendations. There are also many sites for book reviews. I am going to listen to some about teen books, as this is my weakest area. I think that this could be a great tool for the library. It could be used to broadcast news about programs, book reviews, and tutorials about things on our website. There was a children's storytelling cast I listened to, and I think that here at Dublin, we could do a better job! I was also excited that there seem to be simple ways to create your own podcast...maybe I can even do it.

Google Docs

I created a form in Google Docs to help track the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday meal. I included the menu and then asked for input as to what each person would like to bring. This will save so much time and back and forth emailing. I am also excited that this can be accessed from any pc anywhere. What an exciting tool!

Web tools 2.0

My winner is Colorblender!!! I am an interior decorator in my dreams and always have color concerns. This site lets you manipulate a color palette and corridinate color design. Any library application? Maybe if someone needs help with an art project, otherwise, I just thought it was a fun and unique site. I will put in on another winner's site, Delicious!

CML Tools

Today I learned about the power tools available on the CML website. Am I the only one, or do some of the Avatars available on Lively really creep you out? I think that gmail does offer some nice features, but I have had my Yahoo account for so long, I am really attached to it. By far the tool I would use most at this time is Highlighter!

Wonderful Wikis!

Hey, I am ahead of the curve. Our branch has been using a wiki for quite some time! We post best practices, schedules, reviews, links, even a staff directory. It is great and accessible from home. I think that this is a great idea and I have even entered a book review. Each month, we select a new genre and then post staff reviews. For October, the genre is horror...boo! I think that this is a great tool for libraries to communicate with each other and with patrons. I used to lead a book discussion group and would have found this very valuable in communicating with the members.

Library 2.0

Having worked in libraries for over 6 years, I have discovered that the only thing constant is change. At CML and other libraries across the country, the future of the library and how we interface with customers is the topic of an exciting new discussion. While I am excited about user input and shaping of library services, I am also wary of the library becoming impersonal. I believe that the power users are all for this new and improved persona, while maybe the soccer mom's, and older patrons, may have misgivings. I think that is exciting to be a part of an industry that is always looking to the future, the better use of technology, and the most effective dispensation of information.

Deeeeelicious!

Today, I finally got around to working on the learn and play exercises from last week. I was excited to learn about Delicious and to be able to bookmark my sites on any computer. My bookmarks are not for any research, just for fun. I am hoping to add some work related ones in the future.

Tweet Tweet for Twitter

I'm on Twitter! My username is LAATDUB, which means library assistant at the Dublin Library. Not one of the contacts in my email account were members, so I don't anticipate getting a lot of response.

Messing around with image generators

So many cool sights to help you put fun things on your blogs. Some of them are really hilarious. I look forward to doing some crazy things in the future.

Buckeye Showdown

Tomorrow's the big day. Will we prove victorious against the cocky Trojans, or will we return to Columbus with our tails between our legs....again?

New Techno Post

I have recently been playing around with RSS feeds. I have subscribed to just about anything that has to do with books! I have also added feeds from my children's blogs so that I can just look in one place to see if they have updated their information. I think this is a great way to save time.

Look what I made

Technically Speaking...

I'm not very savy, when it comes to the computer. I feel like I know enough to get by and to gently assist other beginners. I feel that there is so much out there, just waiting for me to discover. I've spent time this week on Flickr, discovering how to add pictures, collages, maps, and mashups to my blog. I also enjoy looking at other blogs and seeing the marvelous posts.

Coming soon!

Suzy and Spencer will be having a new baby at the end of October. This will make 7 grandkids. We are so excited.

Welcome to my blog.

Thanks to the cml lifetime learning program I have created my very first blog.