Dad (Brett)
All around rockstar geek. Brett enjoys his job as a Clinical Data Manager (helping research medical breakthroughs at Celgene); in his time off he enjoys reading books, watching movies, and learning new tricks on his camera and in Photoshop. He absolutely adores his wife and 2 daughters.
Mom (Erin)
Complete supermom. Erin loves her job as a Youth Field Researcher (aka 'mother'); in her plentiful spare time (ha!) she enjoys sleeping, re-reading Twilight or Harry Potter, and cuddling with Brett.
Aeriana ('Wacko', 'Princess')
Hybrid Angel/Devil. Aeriana loves her mommy and daddy, each of whom she loves to test at times and pretend innocence at others. A veritable sponge, Aeriana wants to do anything she sees an adult doing; she loves babies and especially adores her little sister, taking great care of her every need.
Zoe Jean ('Stinker', 'Cutie')
Growing fast, Zoe wants to be just like her big sister. Very goal oriented, she'll find a way to get that toy she's been looking at. She loves her pacifier and can't help but snuggle up to her blanket. Zoe is as relaxed as they come, she just loves chillin' out and watching TV.
There's no better way to start a Saturday morning than to have a special date with daddy... Dunkin Donuts (pink frosted with sprinkles, of course) and chocolate milk in our pajamas!
Then there's no better way to start a Sunday morning than meeting an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ. (Elder Christofferson came to our Stake Conference meetings this weekend; an absolutely incredible experience.)
General Conference is this weekend and I'm really, really excited. Not only will this weekend be a spiritual feast, but things have been kicked off in a spectacular fashion.
The October Ensign (available electronically in text and audio as of today) is focused entirely on temples.
Also something I saw on the lds.org site today was a link to a new documentary, apparently posted on BYU.tv yesterday. The documentary is called 'That Promised Day' and covers the incredible work that was performed in the 70s to reformat the standard works; adding chapter headings, cross references, and everything else that someone like me, born after this was all complete, takes for granted.
I haven't watched the documentary yet (I'm at work), though the trailer alone is really interesting. It seems that it will be aired immediately after the Sunday morning session of conference, but thankfully the full documentary is also available to watch whenever you want on BYU.tv. Enjoy.
This past Wednesday for our combined mutual activity we had an awesome game; my mom had asked for details but I thought I'd share with everyone in case there were others who might be interested. The entire premise of the activity was Minute to Win It - a show on NBC which is actually kind of fun to watch (if you can stand the annoying host).
The game show has a ton of different, silly tasks that people have to do in under 60 seconds. Think 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", but instead of answering who was the 14th U.S. Ambassador to Uganda, you have to drop a quarter from 4 feet up, into a fish bowl full of water, and get it to land in the shot glass at the bottom of the fish bowl (sounds easier than it is - the water makes the quarter shoot off to the side). As soon as I heard about it I thought "I can picture these types of games happening at one of our family reunions."
Since we wanted to make the activity fun for all of the kids, not just one at a time, we tweaked the game a fair amount. To start with, we chose six games which were sometimes exactly like the game show versions, others were modified considerably. We broke the kids into five different teams of four kids each; we then had them race each other rather than the clock. The first team to finish got 5 points, the second got 4 points, etc. and any team that finished the task in under 60 seconds got a bonus point - but that actually only happened a couple of times.
One thing that actually made it a lot of fun was that I was able to get audio of the game show countdown timer, the game show music, and an airhorn to start the timer and notify the players when the first 60 seconds was up and their chance at a bonus point was over. If anyone ends up playing this game, I can send you the audio files to add a nice touch to the event - though you'll want some very loud speakers to play the sounds/music over since the games get the kids pretty riled up. Of course you'll want a handful of adults playing referee and a handful of adults getting whatever pictures/video they can - it's hilarious to watch.
As for the games:
"Hanky Panky" - Each team had two boxes of kleenexes and teams sub-divided into pairs; one of the teammates from each pair was required to hold the box down on a table while their partner raced to pull every kleenex out of the box using only one of their hands and only pulling one out at a time. The two players who had been holding the boxes down then had to pick up all of the kleenexes and get them to the garbage - we finally made cleaning up a game.
"Egg Roll" - Two players from each team participated at a time; we started everyone off at the half-court line with a hard-boiled egg and an empty pizza box for each person. Each player had to use the air from waving the pizza box to roll the egg across the court and onto a piece of paper we'd taped down at the baseline - both teammates had to get the egg on the piece of paper before they were done. At no point could they touch the egg with anything but the air from waving the pizza box. Once the first round was done, the other pair of teammates played in round two so that everyone could participate.
"This Blows" - Each team was given 19 plastic cups (because that's how many fit across the tables we used), several balloons, and two sets of chopsticks. Two of the teammates had to first take the stack of cups and line them up, face down, in the middle of their table; the other two teammates then had to use the air from the balloons to blow the cups off the table - nothing could touch the cups except the air coming out of the balloons. The original pair of teammates (who did not have the balloons) then had to use only the chopsticks to pick the cups off the ground and put them back on the table.
"On the Nose" - Each team was given 20 cotton balls, working together they had to transfer the cotton balls from a stack at one end of a table into a cup at the other end of the table. The cotton balls could only be touched with the player's nose, with vaseline acting to lift the cotton ball. Ideally the player has to shake the cotton ball off (too little vaseline and the ball won't stick; too much and it won't come off), but most players were ignoring rules at this point and just wiped their nose onto the edge of the cup - not nearly as funny to watch.
"Johnny Applestack" - Each team was given 4 red, ripe apples and they had to create a vertical stack using all four apples. The apple tower had to then remain standing for at least 3 seconds. Nothing but the apples could be used to make the tower.
"Face the Cookie" - This was our grand finale; everybody was given an oreo which they had to place on their forehead, then without touching the cookie with anything except their face, they had to wriggle the cookie down into their mouth. If the cookie fell they had to pick it up and start again.
We really had a great time with this game and I highly recommend it for mutual activities or family reunions. Check out the show's website for a complete list of all of the different games, just watching the "blueprints" on how the challenges are performed is a load of fun in and of themselves.
My brother asked me for a list of apps for the iPad that we would recommend; I was part way through the email when I realized that there were probably others who might be interested as well.
We tend to gravitate toward free apps, and for many of the apps listed below we actually have the "lite" or "free" versions because we like the app but not enough to pay money to do more with it (we also will sometimes use the iPhone version rather than the iPad version of an app if it's cheaper - app purchases can add up quick). There are also a number of paid apps that we were able to get for free during a special discount period (using the three websites below); finally some are apps which Erin or I thought worth the cost and purchased the full version (I've added an asterisk before the ones we actually paid money for). We do have plenty of other apps, but these are our "recommended" ones; we also really like some of the native apps - but I don't think you'll need any help finding those.
State Primaries are coming up (some have already passed). NJ has its primaries on June 8th, you can go here to see the primary dates for other states (click the button to the top-right of the map).
In the April 1990 LDS General Conference, Elder Russell M. Nelson stated that "A saint is an honorable citizen, knowing that the very country which provides opportunity and protection deserves support, including prompt payment of taxes and personal participation in its legal political process." (full talk)
And if you've got a few minutes to read, here are some other pertinent General Conference talks.
In July we went up to Palmyra NY to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant. We had a ton of fun with our friends Sarah and Cory, well mostly Sarah because Cory always had school (he graduated this past fall, hooray for Cory!).
While we were getting ready to check out the sites Aeriana took a nap, or so we thought... I heard her making noise after about an hour (which is a short nap for her) and found this... I think she got hungry. While up in Palmyra we had a chance to visit the sacred grove. I love it there, it is so peaceful. I will never forget the very first time I visited Palmyra I saw all the sites and the pageant; it was the coolest thing ever. I wasn't a member yet but the spirit was so strong there was no way you could deny the sacredness of this place. This time however...the experience was completely different "quite", "peaceful", and "toddler" just don't mix well. I apologize to those there that were enjoying a nice quiet spiritual moment... my daughter likes to talk... a lot and she's not quiet about it.
After we walked around the Temple grounds. Brett had so much fun taking pictures that were artsy fartsy that he didn't get one of us there. I thought I had made him take one, but where it went I have no idea. While Brett was off in his own little world, Sara, Aeriana, and I walked around looking at all the pretty flowers. We spent some time in town and got some amazing burgers and ice cream at the Chill and Grill. Yum... just what my pregnant body needed... we then made the customary stop at the church bookstore and spent more money than we should have, but well at least their spiritual books right? We then headed to the pageant, it was great. Aeriana was exhausted and had a rough time and Brett, being the amazing man he is, took care of her during the pageant so I could watch. He didn't get to see much of it. :( Thanks babe. After the pageant we got a chance to get a shot of us all together. Sarah, me (prego with Zoe) and Brett (Cory was at class and then studying for a big test and Aeriana was finally asleep in her stroller. Thank you Sara and Cory we sure do miss you guys!
I've been reserving political commentary for my Back In Focus blog; however I figured a lot of readers of this blog would be quite interested in this.
Today, Elder Dallin H. Oaks, an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, spoke to BYU-I students about the right to religious freedom in America. If your first reaction is 'eh, politics... why would I care?', then I'll point you to this quote from the beginning of his speech. "There is a battle over the meaning of that [religious] freedom. The contest is of eternal importance, and it is your generation that must understand the issues and make the efforts to prevail."
Elder Oaks touches upon Prop 8, the civil rights movement, the founding fathers, and the church throughout the world. It's very interesting and very timely.
Other quotes that really stood out to me:
"Unpopular minority religions are especially dependent upon a constitutional guarantee of free exercise of religion. We are fortunate to have such a guarantee in the United States, but many nations do not. The importance of that guarantee in the United States should make us ever diligent to defend it. And it is in need of being defended. During my lifetime I have seen a significant deterioration in the respect accorded to religion in our public life, and I believe that the vitality of religious freedom is in danger of being weakened accordingly."
"A second threat to religious freedom is from those who perceive it to be in conflict with the newly alleged “civil right” of same-gender couples to enjoy the privileges of marriage."
"Those who seek to change the foundation of marriage should not be allowed to pretend that those who defend the ancient order are trampling on civil rights."
"we must not be deterred or coerced into silence by the kinds of intimidation I have described. We must insist on our constitutional right and duty to exercise our religion, to vote our consciences on public issues and to participate in elections and debates in the public square and the halls of justice."
"As Latter-day Saints, we should never be reticent to declare and act upon the sure foundations of our faith. The call of conscience — whether religious or otherwise — requires no secular justification."
I recommend you watch this brief companion interview video, and then read Elder Oaks' speech in its entirety.
It's Feb. 20th and we got enough feedback to know that the new blog design just wasn't working... so we're back to the old version, for who knows how long. I guess with my next attempt I'll keep it to a more standard format.
**End Update**
I'm sure many of you know someone who has "music A.D.D."; you're driving down the road and they listen to 30 seconds of a song and then change it, never settling in to listen to an entire song. Well, I apparently have blog-design-A.D.D. and have been itching to redesign our blog for a while. Attempt number one resulted in what Erin correctly called a "complete failure." What you see now is attempt number two.
I personally love the new design... but I designed it. Erin's not completely convinced yet, but it seems like she's starting to come around. Anyway, I'm curious to hear what all of you have to say... do you like the new look or the old look better? I've backed up my old files, so I can reset to the old layout in about ten seconds if the response to the new design is overwhelmingly negative.
As for the new design, there is now a lot less scrolling and a lot more buttons. The buttons hopefully won't be too confusing, but just in case here's the breakdown.
- Out of order, but most important is the "stop" button... most of the buttons trigger a pop-up and the stop button closes them all. - The "power" button will take you to blogger.com, if you have an account this means it'll take you to your dashboard. - The "rewind" button will display our monthly archives and ten most frequent posts. Hit the stop button to close. - The "play" button will display our uploaded videos from Vimeo, these can be browsed chronologically (based on when we uploaded the video), there is also an option for full-screen viewing. Again, stop will close this. - The "fast-forward" button takes you to the LDS website. Erin looked at me quizzically, wondering how that made sense... I told her the church is all about progressing and moving forward. I'm a dork, this should not be news to anyone.
- The "home" button will reset the page. Using this will reset everything and close open pop-ups, but may take a tiny bit longer than the stop button. - The "B" button (Blogger icon) will display a list of blogs we follow. If your blog is not on this list, let me know. Use stop to close. - The "globe" button will display a list of websites we love. Stop closes this (see the repeating pattern?) - The "camera" button will start a slideshow of a subset (as defined by me, this may change) of our photos on Flickr. Once the slideshow has started, you can zoom into full-screen mode, browse through the included photos, or you can click the Flickr logo to see our Flickr site. Stop closes the slideshow, or the open Flickr page. - The "book" button will display our never-too-long list of books. Again, use stop to close the LibraryThing page.
Please leave your feedback, since I designed the page it all makes perfect sense to me... if it doesn't for you, or if anything isn't working how it's supposed to, please let me know.
A couple of weeks before Christmas Matt and Renee came to visit and we went to the temple to do baptisms for my ancestors, including some of my grandparents. It was such a powerful experience. I have never cried before doing baptisms but this time I was so full of joy I couldn't help it. I was smiling ear to ear and couldn't stop crying with excitement knowing that I had found these names because of my great-grandfather Raymond and now was starting to do his work in the temple. It was amazing.
After such a wonderful experience we were happy to be able to go to the temple again in North Carolina over Christmas break. On the Friday after Christmas we went in and did initiatories for all of the names, and then on Saturday went in for endowments. While several of us were in doing a session, Riley and Brett's dad were doing more baptisms.
I am so very grateful for this gospel and for everything it has taught me and I especially love the temple!
So I've been loving doing my family history on the new Family Search website. My only complaint is that you can't see everyone you're connected to very easily and you can't print a big chart like you could with PAF, but it's still really cool. This is what i found while doing some work today.
Ummm... So does this mean I'm done???
Well with this branch of the family I guess... :) Happy hunting!
We watched some kids from our home ward (we usually go to a branch where we serve) for a week. So we temporarily became a family of seven. It was crazy, but fun and they were great kids. This is them at the Turtle Back Zoo.
We went back to D.C. again for another fun filled family adventure! (Riley and Aeriana)
Mary Anne and Cache, Dacia and Alyssa, Erin and Aeriana swimming and keeping cool.
Kaitlyn loving a doll that moves and plays back!
Aeriana taking a bath. This is the face she makes when she almost drops her duck but catches it, or if Brett or I try to take it away. She's so cute!
A few friends from church had a pool party and Aeriana loved every minute of it!
She had so much fun; when I went to go check on her when she should have been napping this is what I found! (she's working on crawling, she has the backwards thing down and is now aiming for foward motion).
Aeriana has also figured out that grass is yummy!
Driving around town ;)
Playdate with Raquel
Playdate with Rebekah. By the way these two are three weeks apart.. yeah, Aeriana is a big fatty.
Aeriana also has found a long lost love...
ELMO!
So we went to Sesame Street Live with her best friend Pierson!
Needless to say she loved it!
We also recently took a trip up to Mass. to do some Family History work. On the way up we went out to dinner with the Bassetts (luckily getting to catch up with them before they moved away)!
While we were in Massachussetts we had fun but it was kind of frustrating too... the family history part that is. The cemetery was really old and we had no map so it took us quite a long time and I only ended up with a few extra dates. Fortunately with those dates I was able to connect names in a book I have and now I have over 400 names that are almost ready for the temple! And those are just the names I've already imported, there are thousands more I still need to research! I do have my work cut out for me, and it's all thanks to my great grandfather Raymond Patterson! He left me several boxes of family history stuff.
Aeriana was blessed in church a week ago on Easter. We had a great time and had a good number of family members that were able to come. My parents and two brothers, Erin's parents and grandmother, as well as Karlene, Nikki, and Nayana. Matt and Renee also came down. It was a wonderful day and Aeriana looked gorgeous in her dress.
We had woken her up a bit early, got her dressed and fed, had everything worked out so that she was asleep in my arms and we were in our seats before church even started; she looked like a perfect angel. She laid there asleep and quiet through the opening prayer and song and I started thinking we were home free. That lasted until literally the exact moment the Bishop announced it was time for the baby blessing, suddenly the chapel was filled with Aeriana's wails. Luckily she took her pacifier and we were able to get through the blessing just fine.
After church we all got together at Karlene's house for Easter dinner (we also had dinner there the night before, thanks a million to Karlene for hosting all of our guests so generously). We had a great time and Aeriana loved the attention, there were constantly new people wanting to hold her and talk to her.
By Sunday night the family was all headed home and we were left to enjoy a few more days with Matt and Renee... I took a couple days off of work and we just hung out playing games and passing the baby around. One of the greatest accomplishments of the weekend was getting Erin and Renee to play Risk. Granted I got ganged up on and was out of the game quite early, but I think the girls had fun which may open the door to more matches in the future where I will prove more resilient.
That brings us to the last couple of days... Aeriana came to church with us again on Sunday and was wonderful. Then yesterday she started not feeling well, really really not feeling well. She's been much more quiet, not quite as talkative as usual, but she's definitely still happy and smiling... at least when she's not throwing up all over the place. It's been fun. Erin took her in to see the doctor today and it looks like a stomach virus for which pedialyte and time will be the cure. She hasn't been able to keep any formula down, but she seems to do okay with the pedialyte and doesn't seem like she's getting too dehydrated so I'm sure she'll be fine in no time. We'll definitely keep you posted if anything interesting happens though.
--Check out Flickr for more pictures from that weekend, we can't post them all here.
The passing of our prophet and president of the church has weighed on my mind this week, as I'm sure it has countless others. What sorrow to think that we will no more have the privilege of listening to his council at General Conference, but how happy to think that his pain and discomfort is over, and that he is finally reunited with his wife that he missed so much.
My friend Sariah posted some tribute videos that I enjoyed. Here are my two favorite, if you'd like to see the other two she posted check out her blog under the "Sariah and Ryan" link to the right.
I got back late last night from a 3-day Youth Conference trip. It was one of the most amazing three days I can recall, similar in spiritual potency to EFY. We really had a wonderful group of kids and we had some amazing missionaries (including Elder Ed Pinegar) walk us through each of the church sites in the Palmyra/Fayette area.
Thursday we went to the Hill Cumorah; Friday we saw the Smith farm, the Sacred Grove (including a cold, but very powerful, testimony meeting in the Sacred Grove), the printing press and the church bookstore; and Saturday we went to the Whitmer farm and stopped by the Aaronic Priesthood restoration site in Harmony, PA on the way home, sleeping each night is some pretty nice cabins at a church girl's camp site.
It was not fun being away from Erin for so long (this was the first time we've had a day go by without being together since the day we met...) but it was a great few days all the same. It is definitely good to be home though, and good to be back in my comfortable bed.
My first college class is going well. It's been only slightly more time-consuming than I expected, not quite as difficult as I feared, and has gotten me as excited about learning again as I'd hoped (so far, at least - for all three points). This being the first week in a macroeconomics class we've had some pretty basic assignments, one of which was to review some articles on a few select websites and post our thoughts, then we were to read other people's posts and reply to a few. One of my classmates wrote his post in response to a speech by Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, on the Federal Reserve's website. My classmate mentioned that he agreed with Chairman Bernanke's thoughts regarding what Chairman Bernanke perceived to be the best investment advice he could give... Get an education.
This thought struck a chord with me, we constantly hear the leadership of the church talk about how important education is and it got me thinking about the "investment cost/returns" that an education generates. An education is initiated as a baby and generally builds until at least high school graduation and for most people far beyond their diploma. The real "returns" other than the feeling of self accomplishment don't really kick in until at least high school graduation, then those benefits can serve us with returns on our investment until we're old. Even retirement doesn't dull all the benefits of an education since we can pass on our knowledge to those around us through official or un-official methods. Truly, education is an excellent investment. There is, however, a limit on the returns we can gain from education and I realized that Chairman Bernanke and my classmate were wrong, education is not the best investment we can make.
To me there is a clear-cut winner when investing in the family (and good friends who may as well be family). Depending on the situation, a family can immediately provide a person with things far more important than an educationally-based self worth or monetary compensation for applied knowledge. The returns based on a familial investment don't have to wait until high school graduation, don't begin to diminish at retirement, and don't have to be subject to the fluctuations of an economy or industry. If we invest in a family of our own, the benefits can grow exponentially through children, in-laws (though some may put this in the "expense" column rather than the "revenue" column), grand-children, etc. The returns on the family investment no doubt far outweigh any other that is available to us. It's something that can provide a benefit to us from the day we're born to the day we die. And if we so choose, those benefits can continue to increase exponentially even after death.
While I restrained myself from jumping into a theological discussion in our online classroom (it is after all only the first week), I was able to make my point in a reply to my classmate's post. Ultimately it's true, education is an important and wise investment, and not just the formal kind but a life-long pursuit of greater knowledge and truth is imperative to our own progression; but at the end of the day family will always trump all other investment opportunities. Regardless of the "cost" we may have to put forth to gain/maintain a successful family, the family is the only investment which can truly have endlessly increasing returns... and hey, that's an investor's dream.
Yesterday morning Erin and I spent a couple hours with a professional photographer, we thorougly enjoyed working with him. He was referred to us from our wonderful friend Tania and we'd be more than happy to pass that referral on to anyone who needs a photographer. We expect those pictures back in the next few weeks at which point we will of course share them. For now however you'll have to do with the pictures that I took this afternoon while Erin, Matt, and I stopped for about an hour at the temple to just walk around and see the grounds.
It was a great opportunity since I'd never seen the Boston Temple before this weekend, and yesterday had too much going on for me to get to just walk around and slowly look at everything. Hopefully these pictures will give you a feel of the beauty of the building and surrounding grounds, though I have no doubts that the shots we get from our photographer, Tim, will do a much better job. But until then, here is the Boston Temple through my eyes.
Dad (Brett)
Mom (Erin)
Aeriana ('Wacko', 'Princess')
Zoe Jean ('Stinker', 'Cutie')
A Good Weekend
Palmyra
Religious Freedom
New Blog Layout
The Temple
