MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR !

Where has the time gone? That was the phrase most commonly uttered by the Cones this past week. In a flurry known as the holidays it left barely any time to reflect on the year. So to recap here is what we did -- the week of Christmas started with the annual Cone Christmas party hosted by us. All attended except for those out of state (Ma & Pa & Oma) and the Andersens - Ma/Pa did make a conference call to the party so that was nice to have them check in. We had the usual Christmas dinner (Ham, Sides, Dessert) -- then we exchanged gifts and then had a special Christmas Jam session with Brother Jon Jon who so graciously brought his electric guitar and amp with microphone. The younger ones enjoyed singing Karaoke Style while we all sang too. Other hand instruments were available (wyatt and I had the tamborine). Fast forward to Christmas eve where the Jensen's (Cynthia's mom's side of the family) all migrated north about a hop skip and a jump from the north pole (ok not really but seems like it) to the little canyon town called Mantua (just north of Brigham City). It was a great time. Good food and lots of it. After dinner we had a cool story read by Cynthia's Aunt Dineen and then all went home to wait for Santa (or as Wyatt says "DANDA"). Christmas morning was snowing but we all rolled out of bed when Wyatt did around 7:30am and opened gifts. Wyatt got a few of the fisher price little people and a dump truck and some other Car's toys -- his absolute favorite is the Nerf Bowling set we got him.



After opening our gifts we headed down to West Valley City to join all those who could make it to the Reeves Ranch on Maple Way for some lunch. After that we headed home and then woke up friday morning with the FLU -- then a cold (BAM BAM or DOUBLE BAM). Not fun at all!!!

ELF

We just showed Wyatt "ELF" and he loves it. He just sits and laughs and mimics him. But he usually doesn't watch the whole thing. He kinda gets bored after the first 1/3 of the movie.

SNOW

We got about 6 inches of nice new christmas snow. It just wouldn't seem like the holidays without it. Clearing the drive was fun ... not really! Now that we are way past November and halfway into December I have to let everyone know I am still alive just not blogging that much. DUH! I noticed with all the other blogs I am following that is kind of an occuring theme. People take Hiatus' every now and then. There is no way I can do a daily blog. I will leave that to others to do. However I kinda wanted to do a weekly one but that just isn't happening either.



Wyatt has become addicted to The Polar Express. Mainly because it has a train in it. His interests lately are trains, anything bowling, and taking the Christmas balls off the tree and throwing them through his basketball hoop. They tend to get stuck though with that hook thing and we end up with a net full of ornaments. He has discovered that chocolate is a pretty darned good tasting thing. This was verified with his downing of an entire package of M&M's at the Reeves Xmas Party. We enjoyed some home made soups, exchanged some gifts, and then went to the zoo to see the lights. It wasn't too cold but luckily the monkeys and other animals were in these indoor buildings. Wyatt loved them -- there were a few of them that looked like "Dexter" from "The Night at the Museum".

Thanksgiving to recap we all migrated up to MANTUA -- pronounced Man-too-aye -- not MAN-too-ah -- I was corrected on that one back when I first heard of it. I made my mom's famous strawberry fruitcubes / ginger ale drink. I think people were skeptical and there were a few that thought it was cubed watermelon? I don't know why but I had to explain over and over how good they were. Half the people there said they were real good and commented this to me. The other half didn't voice it but judging by the fact they were for the most part all gone I would say they like them too. Grandma Reeves turkey was delicious and ofcourse I over ate. Who has will power on that day.

Day after thanksgiving was not too exciting this year. Not like last year where I was called a f***er by some girls who were trying to cut in line at target. I pointed them out to security who pulled them out. Too bad so sad. No this year Cynthia braved the shopoholic crazed heathens. She did get some good loot though. I did go out with Wyatt to the Office Depot to get some cheap dvd+r's then we went out to the Ihop and had some skillet thing. Pretty good at the time but then decided it really didn't get along with my stomach and I had a belly ache for 2 hours. Alot of stupid drivers out that day. Alot of people were also looking for the ever elusive Wii's -- one guy was outside Sam's Club and asking the door greeter if they had anymore because he was going to join sams club for 1 year just to get he wii. Heck I should have bought some and held out selling them til November black friday. I just can't gouge people like that. I have picked up some for my friends but that is about it.

So we are very excited to have a girl. The ultrasound was pretty confident showing no male giblets and this ultrasound lady was the same one who did Wyatt's. Cynthia said she can feel the baby kicking more now. Getting a little cramped in there I guess.

Baby Baby

Ok so we had our ultrasound and got these pics. Somewhat freaky with the whole one eye thing. One is the face and you can see the mouth and eye the other is the side profile of the skull. They had some legs and feet but these were the coolest.

Drumroll please--------------------------

Well I can't say I was surprised at all he won. Even though I didn't vote for him after listening to his acceptance speech I didn't have that "o heck" moment. I think he will be a good president or atleast has the potential to be one. All the internet rhetoric aside he has alot of pressure on him to be that catalyst of change that there is a buzz about and I really don't think he will stick his head in the sand and do nothing. I don't agree with everything he stands for but I think we just have to watch and see how it plays out. He gave a good acceptance speech and I just hope he does what he says and doesn't do anything that will hurt the country.

My Computer Friend

In my office working from home occasionally I pull out the spare buggy computer I am tring to resurrect (I think it has some bad RAM) -- for the most part it works but occasionally crashes -- it works 95% of the time but like I said due to the bad ram it will crash -- I uploaded some blues clues and movies for wyatt and he will sometimes crash in the office and watch his movies like this.

Halloween 2008

We didn't do a whole lot -- our neighborhood meets at the local church parking lot where they have a 'trunk or treak' which is basically a candy tailgating trick or treat party. Wyatt dressed up as STEVE from Blues Clues and his friend Ah-deedee as he calls her (addie) dressed up as a u of u cheerleader. We got a ton of candy and blue didn't even get lost.

Tot and the cell phone!

Occasionally we will let our little guy play the bowling on our cell phone. But there are times he gets bored with that and decides to take pictures. Here are some self portraits he took!

SNOW

Well a few weeks ago it snowed but was gone shortly after -- here is our first snow!

Courage + Believe = Life

I first heard of John Challis on ESPN - his story is amazing yet sad as he lost his battle with cancer last month. May we all live our life and not take anything for granted as this young man did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrVBWdCnys4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut1XjcFRVLA&feature=related

Google Desktop

I have been playing around with resurrecting a surplus pc that I got from a school auction and using some old parts created my franken-pc. I loaded XP on it and found a pretty cool app by google again that puts a 'sidebar' on your desktop that makes it look similar to windows Vista. Here is a screen shot of my vista desktop and notice the sidebar with the clock and stuff on it on the right.

http://desktop.google.com/

it is pretty cool and you can add different gadgets and customize it --- my main favorites would be the analog clock and weather gadget.

Flag Football / Babies

Well on monday we found out Cynthia is pregnant and we saw the heart beat -- the baby is due in may 2009 (early part of the month) -- pretty exciting stuff. We had to change Dr's as the one that delivered Wyatt retired from delivering. So we moved to his practicing partner. No dvd yet of the ultrasound but once we get that I will re-encode and post it on here.

Saturday was our first flag football game - our ward team (thankfully consisting of a little more than half of them are 18-20) and we won 39-0. We had dominated them but they were alot older and played a man down. I wasn't as sore but it was nice to get some rest during the game and have some fresh legs.

Quiz Show Link

http://www.notmuch.com/Audio/RAfiles/080906b.ram

You have to have real player -- you can listen to the whole segment or just que it up to min 14 and start from there -- enjoy my debut!! hehe

I was on a radio quiz show - and won!

So I have been listening to this radio show called "What do you know" for 10 years now.  It is mainly broadcast on 88.9 fm or something like that in the midwest and since it isn't out here in UT I have had to listen to it on the web / or podcasts.  What is this show?  Well it is an entertainment show and they usually have a guest and it consists of a live studio audience then it is capped off with a quiz show portion where a caller is teamed up with an audience member.  So I wanted to do this and went to their website to find out how -- 

http://notmuch.com/Speak/Mail/quiz.html

So I sent an emailed to them through this and then you are supposed to wait by your phone from like 9am to 10am -- so I did this and they called but I was getting a haircut and didn't answer my cell.  I later checked my voicemail and it was them.  DANG IT!  So I emailed them again and told them I again wanted to be on the show so they emailed back and told me they would keep my info for the show.  So I waited again this past saturday and they CALLED!! WOOHOO!!   So what you have to do to even play the quiz is answer a qualifying question and they are usually VERY hard and obscure.  So I was on hold and while on hold you can listen to the show and hear them up to the point of when they put you on live.  So the qualifying question was something about what percentage of the pumpkins shares its DNA with humans.  So I quickly googled it and found the answer was 75% and BAM -- just like that I was live on the show -- so what happened?  Well check out the website and look for the show archives and check it out for yourself - it is the 9-6-08 show and I am in the hour 1 quiz -- I was soooo nervous so I probably sounded very dorkish!  

http://notmuch.com/

GOOGLE CHROME

I downloaded the new google web browser called google chrome.  It is actually pretty cool and pretty darn fast.  It is free and really streamlined and hasn't crashed.  Nothing I don't like about it yet.  

http://www.google.com/chrome

I think the only thing I don't like about it is how it views images from some websites.  If I wanted to just view the images sometimes it will just download them to the desktop when I just want to view them in a different window.  There is probably some setting you can tweak to fix that but who wants to do that.  

Look what came to visit us.......

So last saturday I was in the living room watching a little college football when Cynthia opens door and says "Jay come out here now and look at this" so I go out there and saw this massive catepillar beast.  It was HUUUGE -- about the size of my middle finger.  It would rear up like some kind of miniture monster.  Wyatt absolutely hated it.  So what happened to it?  Well somehow it ended up in a neighbors back yard!

SPAM MILESTONE #1

  HOORAY after only 29 days we have reached spam milestone numero uno!  1000 spams!  I actually reached it last week but the total time was 29 days current the count is 1337.  Now I have to make point out that I am using my gmail account because I have used most of my other ones as junk email accounts where if I sign up for something I always put those or when I tried that 'free ipod' offer I used a different one.  My gmail account that I use as my main email, is used mainly for family, friends and bills so this is just the normal spam received without any outside manipulations.  

Finally............

Now that he is 2 Wyatt has gotten his back seat drivers license. He passed his exams with flying colors. The test included the screaming at the top of you lungs test, the whine til your parents go crazy, the cheerio and food throw from the back to the front seat, and finally the infamous drink spill test.... all with flying colors. I don't know if this is congratulations? But we love him regardless!

SPAM

Ok if you can't tell I hate spam -- oh I hate it with a passion. So much so that I have like 4 different email address to try and avoid it. You know like when you have to sign up for something and they ask for an email address. Well I have my free ones like yahoo and hotmail that are just infiltrated with them. So my main account which is Gmail is pretty good about blocking the spam and putting it in the spam folder. However. I noticed that more and more spam comes every week. Not a big deal at all because like I said I never have to see it or do anything about it since gmail does the great job of finding and filtering. But it still goes in the spam folder and I thought what would happen if I just let it go? How long would it take to get to 1000? 10,000? 100,000? and 1,000,000? Well I am about to find out. On August 1st I stopped 'emptying' my spam folder. Already after 21 days I have 744 spam messages ranging from fake rolex's to various body enhancements to generic drugs to whatever else that junk is. I project I should hit 1000 sometime in september but I will periodically post the number and the length of time it takes to get there for each milestone. I wonder what will happen when it hits 1,000,000? Will my gmail account die? Will the internet crumble? Will time stop? We will find out.

We went on a trip....

In June/July we went back to South Dakota for the Cone reunion and 4th of July.....

We got to ride horses...

Go to a parade...



Sleep.....






Shoot guns....




See old friends....






Tour Laura Ingalls Wilder stuff...

Visit Nanci in Iowa...

All in all it was a fun time and we miss everyone!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY WYATT!

He is 2 yrs old today and here is my feeble and first attempt at playing around with windows movie maker....

Fire in the Sky

So I was watching tv the other day and the movie "Fire in the Sky" was on -- for those who may not know about the movie it is about some guy who claims to have been abducted by aliens. In it they recreate what happened. So as I was browsing I just happened to come upon the alien scene. Wyatt was playing with some blocks and when he stood up he look at the screen and saw this guy (screenshot of the alien above) -- he slowly and cautiously backs away from the tv and as he was backing away the alien just happened to be moving his head in the movie as if he was following wyatt as he was moving. Then it screeched and wyatt about had a cow. He freaked out. I guess I would too if I didn't know it was fake.

125th Willow Lake 4th of July Celebration

Summer time blues

Wow what a hot summer it has been so far. Since my last post we have added on some concrete to our driveway and doing away with the uninspiring rocks and then put some dirt for cynthia to plant flowers. Next year we will probably put sprinklers in there but this year Super Wy has been enjoying his new 'chore' .... watering! We put that watering thing on there and he absolutely loves playing with that. I don't know how much watering he actually does but he sure enjoys it nonetheless.

May came and went pretty fast. We got our stimilus check and used it to payoff our couch and a few other things for the yard. Cynthia was in charge of the Ward BBQ so we spent alot of time planning that and I hope it was a success it seemed that way anyway. Stamps went to .42 cents -- I read that a while back they passed some law that made it so the US postal service can change it whenever they want or feel it is needed. I guess before it had to be passed by Congress or something.

We finally got some new neighbors in the circle -- I am horrible with names but we welcomed them and found out they are from washington and lived on an island there. They are very nice people and we definately welcome them more than the bachelor / animal house tenants from before. No more half naked people climbing on the roof and chasing each other, no more smashed pumpkins all over the circle, no more unwatered brown lawn, no more leaky moss ridden sidewalks from their unkept sprinkler system valves, no more using the entire circle for a parking lot blocking almost everyone's driveway, no more dogs pooping all over everyone else's lawn, no more late night arguments with girlfriends and then loud car noises as they sped away, no more 'band' practice in their basement...other than all of that it wasn't too bad.

MAYhem

After many people commenting on how my blog hasn't been updated in forever, I finally decided to do something about it and 'git er done'. Since my last post was back on April 20th and since today is Memorial Day I figured now would be a great time to catch up on things.

My birthday came and went and it was pretty good -- alot of eating out due to all the freebies retaurant websites I signed up for. With some of the nice weather toward the end of April and first part of May got us all excited about getting the gardens ready. So we set out and worked in the fertilizer and broke up the ground. As we were doing this thought we found that one of our garden boxes had an infestation of ants. I HATE ANTS! So we jetted off to the Lowes and bought some of that dust to kill them and it won't kill us or the veggies. We planned the addition of some sprinklers to hit our newly added corner flower spot and some of the beds under the kitchen windows. Only problem was that we found stray sprinkler head. So after digging that up we found it wasn't connected to anything. So hopefully that is the last of the idiocy from the last guy who lived here and got the boot.

Our little trooper is growing like a weed. His current love is the park near our place with all the slides. So thanks to some of our neighbors we obtained a used little tykes slide (not more than knee high to me -- but to him still gets a "OOOOO and AHHHH") and small swingset, and then we bought a $5 blowup pool. HE LOVES THEM! The picture above is what happens when the neighbor boy left his shotty gun on the ground. He just ran up and grabbed it then charged.

SICK!!

I can't believe that I have gotten sick with a nasty cold sinus something. The week started off good too. Work was going great and I was getting tons of stuff done then by WED eve I felt the raspy voice thing coming and MAN O MAN did I feel tired. So I was hoping that all it would be. By THU and FRI it was in full blown cold. Luckily by SAT and SUN I was feeling much better. I must have gotten it from Wyatt as he had it too or maybe we both got it from some other infected person.

Friday we went out to Famous Daves BBQ with my brother and his wife and 2 youngins. Great evening and fun time but I don't know if the cold had anything to do with it but later that night my belly was not in a good mood. I didn't even eat that much. So we are swearing off the fatty foods for good (well lets be honest here...probably just for the next week). But seriously ever since joining the weight management program at work I have lost 25 lbs, been eating healthier, and have also been 'kinda' doing the weight watcher point counting thing with Cynthia (who has lost quite a bit too). But the downside is now my body doesn't have the tolerance for junk/fast food. So when we eat it we usually regret it 15 min after we eat it and then feel sick.

The weather has been super windy which put the kabash on any yard work. No fun working in the garden when dirt gets blown in your eyes. So we spent saturday running errands while I changed oil in the car. Then headed down to Provo, Pleasant Grove to do some computer stuff for sisters and pickup my birthday gift (little giant ladder). It was a busy time but fun time.

BLAH BLAH BLOG

Ok so this is the first ever post for the blog. I found that after trying out the myspaces and facebooks that there is just too much clutter and junk on them. I got sick of people inviting me to download the latest facebook app and got sick of all the myspace ads. So I am jumping off into the blog-o-sphere. I can't promise that this will be a daily blog but maybe more like a weekly or every other day thing. Life can get too busy to keep up with having to do a blog.

So this weekend was the 35th birthday. If I remember right my mom said I was born about 8pm in the city of Huron. As I reflect back on my life I can't help but think about all the birthdays I have had and I can't remember any of them that I didn't enjoy. But turning 35 I think you come to a cross road. You are halfway to 40 and so one tends to think about where they have been and where they want to be. I won't bother to reveal all of that mumbo jumbo here but that was pretty much my thoughts on that. The gifts were good ... got some clothes and some games and we went out to eat. Sunday and monday were both beautiful days but then tuesday wow! It snowed? I had a meeting in Salt Lake and didn't bother to grab a jacket. It was a little chilly but I told myself that "ahh you don't need a jacket" boy was I wrong.