Okay so now that I posted an enlargeable picture of the family I of course have to put up an enlargeable picture of my kids. So here's Miranda and Samuel in one of my very favorite pictures. Aren't they cute? Yes, I thought so too. (I'm not at all a biased Mom talking about her own kids.) They look so sweet, innocent, and adorable. It's nice to have pictures like this to look at when the kids aren't acting so picture-perfect.

By request I put I our family picture on the actual blog instead of the sidebar so that it can be enlarged. I thought I ought to put a family picture on because some people may have never met my husband, Nick, or only met him at the wedding.

Now that I have a picture of my kids as the perpetual first element in the sidebar, I can publish a post that includes the link to my thesis. So I know that this is pretty grand-standing-ish of me, but I was really excited when I got this finished and wanted to let everyone possible know about it. (Now I'm not as impressed with it because I flipped through it a couple time and found a number of errors.) I, of course, don't expect anyone to actually look at it, much less read any of it, but I wanted to have the URL available (which you have to copy--both lines separately--and paste) because it was such a big part of my family's life for a long time. So here's the link to the info (title, author, abstract, etc), which has a link to the actual pdf (complete with chapter bookmarks which I had never seen before and I thought were a very nice feature).

http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/cdm4/item_viewer.php?
CISOROOT=/ETD&CISOPTR=1341&CISOBOX=1&REC=1

YEAH, a comment. One person has visited my blog. I'm very excited. Unfortunately, that's the most exciting thing that I have to post. I realized that I almost never take still pictures anymore. If I want to record something I use the camcorder. Hence, no cute pictures of my kids to post. . .yet. I'll work on that.

In other news, we used our clearplay for the first time last night. I was pretty impressed with it. Since Jeff was the one to make it work, I suggest you contact him with any questions. (Of course since Amy is the only one who ckecks this blog that wouldn't be very helpful.)

In other, other news, I emailed Brant Gardner, the author of "An Analytical and Contextual Commentary on the Book of Mormon." This is a 6 volume set that is really well done. Every time I read a new section I'm surprised at something that he points out, which should have been obvious to me but I had totally missed. So, he emailed me back and that was cool. I definitely recommend his work. From what I understand most of it is available online if you want to read parts of it. (Just google Brant Gardner and I think his site will come up.)

Yeah! Finally! Graduation! We are so happy. . .well we don't look all that happy but that's because my back was hurting so much I had to lean on the rail to take the picture. The kids were getting tired of being hauled all around (they spent most of the ceremony in the Bean Museum with Grandpa Parker), and Nick was trying to keep track of the several different groups. Still, I'm glad we went to graduation. It made me feel official.

Here we are a singin' a singin', a singin'. Oh here we are a singin' with our family.

Trying to learn how to Blog

I started my blog so that I could keep in touch with my family. They all seem to have blogs and keep up on each other's lives by updating and visiting them. Unfortunately for me, I have yet to have anyone visit my blog or add me to the links of their blogs. I'm hoping that if I actually start posting that this will change. I decided that the first thing on our family blog should be a picture of the two kids. They are, after all, the heart, soul and center of the family. The second thing I wanted to post was the link to my thesis. I know that dozens of family members are waiting on baited breath to read my thesis and so I figured I couldn't deny the people what they wanted any more. . .Actually I was just so excited to actually finish it that I wanted credit on my blog that no one visits. Hopefully, I find out how to post those two things relatively soon.