Many updates!

First, Princess has had another birthday and now she's so old she can't hold her age in one hand. She now requires the assistance of one digit from the other hand. She asked what happens when you run out of fingers. I told her that that's the age where many young people think it's funny to show people their toes anyway. By the time you run out of toes, you no longer tell people how old you are.

Next, a friend of mine (who I mentioned several posts ago, the one doing laps around the park to get her labor going) is in need of some serious prayer, positive thought, meditation, whatever your belief system is. Her little 2 month old boy, Ricky, is failing to thrive. He has spent time in the hospital here but they can't do any more for him. He can't keep any food down at all and hasn't gained any weight since birth. As of a couple of hours ago, he and his dad were on their way to San Francisco where they hope to stabilize him. This hospital is his last hope of survival. These parents lost their first baby as well and have one healthy child. Any prayers are appreciated.

I'm exercising again. The grand kickoff was 45 mins of DDR followed by 14 situps. 14!! Oy, I have a ways to go.

Baby Frieda was blessed this past Sunday. I forgot to get pics of that.

Mother in law came to visit! We had a really great visit and her help was very much appreciated. We all miss her.

Someone posted the method whereby one might lay one's blog out all on one webpage, making it much easier to format. She credits her brother in law, Andy, with showing her how to do it. Here's how:

1. Copy and paste this url into your browser: http://[yourblog@blogspot.com]/search?updated-min=1999-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z&updated-max=2009-01-01T00%3A00%3A00Z&max-results=999 Except change the bit in brackets [yourblog@blogpot.com] to your desired web address and get rid of the brackets. However, you have to adjust the date the in address as well to include the dates of all of your posts.

2. Save the webpage by going to file and save. I used openoffice at first (shareware office program) and had to save it as text only to get it to work, but Man pointed out that we do, indeed, have Microsoft Office which handled the document very well. I went through and put all original pics in my blog posts rather than just leaving in the smaller versions.

3. You can print this out or save on a disk. I'm going to save on a disk for now since it's a huge file.

Here are some stats on the entirety of the document:

39 megabytes
411 pages
115,891 words
I havn't even counted the pictures and Word has no function to do so automatically.

It's been fun to go through and flash it out a bit when anonymity isn't a problem. I've put full names in places, put in the text of several recipes added pictures of Man and additional pics I didn't think to put in the first time around, etc. I've thought about printing it, since even that is cheaper than scrapbooking or ordering a bound book online, but for now with space considerations digital is just fine. Maybe some day down the road I'll make hard copies for the kids.

Now I'm all excited about personal history again and want to write down all my Dad's stories from college and mission, gather all of Grandma and Grandpa's recipes, get recordings of everyone's voices, etc.

Man and I are now released as Primary Teachers. I'm guessing he won't get another calling before leaving and I probably won't either. Who knows when we'll be leaving and how long I'll get to me a single mom before that next big move.

Having been released, I got to go to Relief Society this past Sunday! We had ward conference so the Stake Pres came and spoke to the sisters. What I remember of his message: "Sisters, I know that when you're counseled to do better with your lives that you really take it to heart and can sometimes despair over that eventual goal of perfection. I want to tell you today, sisters, that your offering is acceptable to the Lord. He understands that there are times when one ball must fall in favor of taking care of that which is needful. All is well." I sighed in relief and enjoyed the spirit of his message tremendously. He talked about simplifying and, rather than exercising so much psychological behavior modification on our children to simply treat them with love, consistency, and in short to treat them how Christ would.

Poor little Frieda with evidence of eczema. It's starting to clear up a bit today.