I was running around with the family last night.  Taking Ella to to Toys R Us is a fun experience.  She is old enough now that she sees something in every isle that is cool.  I remember when I was five or six and how really, really excited I would get when we were going to the big toy store Playland in Florida.  Ella is just starting to get to that age where a place is important.  She often asks to go to the park, asking over and over.  Simple, direct and continuous. “Park…park…park…”  persistence seems to pay off sometimes.  I should pray so fervently

After we got home, there was a great documentary on the Mormons on PBS.  Really fascinating how committed people can be to something where the underlying theology and foundation has so many issues.  I have been to the temple in Salt Lake City.  Most Mormons I have met are sincere and thoughtful people and I respect as ‘good’ people.  But I do not believe in the book of Mormon.  It has taught me that you cannot measure truth by a level of commitment.  But if people who are deceived can work so hard to please God, what am I doing for the God I know?  How am I leading my family?  How am I contributing to the Body? How am I acting today to proclaim truth?

Finally – I saw this this morning and though of Karly.  She does so much to help me, love me and raise our children.  Baby, your not invisible to me:

We had a great Easter yesterday.  Got up and made blueberry pancakes for everyone, then went to church, everyone dressed up for the occasion.  Ella was very god in nursery, and Mia slept through most of the service. 

Afterward, we stopped at home, changed and went to Brand Park for a nice picnic with Keith and the Chapmans. I enjoyed playing with Ella and Savannah.  We then came home and dyed eggs with Ella and had leftovers.

It was a nice day, but we missed going to Jenie’s for the holiday.

Ella is learning new words everyday very quickly now.  Each day has a new bunch of words coming out of her mouth.  She also throws tantrums and argues a lot, but she is still sweet and loves to run and laugh.  She is a determined little girl.

Mia is now smiling and holding her head up – a little early for that behavior.  She is just about ready to start laughing, and will watch you just to smile and try and talk.  She is quite a wonder.

I have added some links to my social sites the I have around the net – feel free to check them out:

Twitter: I post my status pretty frequently, usually once or twice a day.

Facebook: I don’t surf FB as often as I once did, but I still update regularly.

My Space:  I have a MySpace page, but I don’t do much with it.

Linked In: I keep my linked In Profile up-to-date.

YouTube:  I post a few videos of the kids from time-to-time.

Delicious:  I have really taken to this bookmarking site.

RSS Feed:  Here is a link for the RSS Feed for this site.

This made my morning:  Martian Aircraft Company is announcing that they are going to offer a jet pack with a range of 30 miles that can fly at 60 miles an hour for $75,000.  Pretty reasonable for a cool toy like this:

A new video of Amelia:

I was having Internet connection issues and had a technician come out to the apartment to test the setting on the line.  He was a nice guy older guy in his 50’s and did his tests as Ella looked on.  She just had to see everything he was doing.  She offered him a toy apple and he smiled and accepted it, playing along.  Obviously a guy who had had kids.

When he was leaving and we were standing in the doorway, I was busy signing the work tag or whatever, I heard Ella come up beside me.  In a very gentle voice I heard the technician say,

“Uhm, I don’t thing that’s a toy, honny.”

I look down to see my toddler welding the second sharpest knife from the kitchen.  Restraining my panic, I reach down a carefully take it from her, making sure to make no sudden movements that would make my little girl run, jump, throw, cry, twist, turn, poke, stab, or otherwise do anything other than let me take it.

Having secured the knife from my casually cute offspring, I look back up at the technician.  “Must have grabbed it from the counter while I was making lunch,” I confess, mortified. 

He just smiled and nodded, his face unreadable.  Could be thinking ‘glad my kids are done with that scary age’ or ‘I should call child services to get her out of this death trap’ or ‘Did I just get mugged my a 2-year-old?’.

I thanked him for his work, eager to move on.  As he turned to leave, Ella piped in with a chipper ‘by-by’.  I think she just wanted lunch.

Where’s my father of the year nomination form…

Here are a few news items that caught my eye today:

NASA Human Space Flight Review

NASA is planning a review of the Human Spaceflight Program in light of the shifting priorities in Washington.  Since the Constellation program was created about 5 years ago, it has struggled to get the funding it needs to meet the goals of returning humans to the Moon’s surface by 2020.   While industry executives are more optimistic now than they were last year, it looks like everybody will need a reality check.

My opinion is that NASA doesn’t get the front page press it used to get, and as a result of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Great Recession, I don’t expect that anyone can get them to public support it needs for spending billions on a ‘do over’ to the Moon, let alone the extra billions to get to Mars.  There is no cold-war prestige in beating the Russians, or the Chinese.

The old Space Race was seen as a foreign policy program – convince the third world the America is better than the Soviets – which was what got it past congress in the ’60s.

It’s too bad that NASA is now bogged down in writing reports instead of building rockets.  It’s incredibly vital that over the long term we get ourselves off this one rock (Earth)  and into space.

NYT – NASA to Review Human Spaceflight

Manatees Die in Record Numbers

Growing up in Florida along the St. Lucie river and the Inter-coastal waterway, I would see manatees occasional in the river shallows.  I was always excited because they were so big but very peaceful.  I the Saturdays where Dad, Mom and I would take out our little speedboat, we could see them along the canals chomping on the green plants close to shore.  I was sad to hear that winter has been really hard on them:

Star-Trib/AP – Endangered Florida manatees die in record numbers from nearly two-week cold snap

Pro-Life and Super Sunday

There is a brewing controversy over a Focus on the Family ad that is set to air during the Super Bowl with rising football star Tim Tebow and his mother endorsing a pro-life stance.

When Tim’s mother was pregnant, she was a missionary in the Philippians and she became sick and was strongly encouraged to abort her pregnancy.  Instead, she choose to carry here baby to term and gave birth to what is now a talented and respected young man.

The thing that bothered me was the outright bitterness the NOW representatives had in denouncing the ad – which they haven’t seen – and the desire to completely block a counter-point in an open debate using censorship, instead of countering with an ad of their own.  I’m pro-life, but if you have a point to make, a reasonable argument, make it.  don’t just shout the equivalent of  ‘Shut-up, poopie-heads’.  Both positions are more complex than that.

Also in this article, note how a sports commentator denounces that ad because in distracts him from his ‘holiest’ of days, Super Sunday.  Dude, priority check.  I know it’s your profession and I am sure you have a lot of emotional investment in the event, but issues of live and death and moral choices are important to consider.  And it’s just a 30 second ad, not a sermon.  It’s just a game, too.  A very exciting game, but not a religion.  Sports is a very hollow religion.

Star-Trib/AP – Focus on the Family to Air Super Bowl Ad

This past week I have been busy rebuilding a couple of sites:  ContentField.com – my business site for business and technical writing – and WritersFirst.com, my partnership site with Key Payton focused on Story and Screenplay consulting.  I have also done some tinkering with this blog as well to see if I can push-pull blog entries into content for other sites with mixed results.  for now anyway, I will continue doing it manually.

I also started working more diligently with Google Analytics and Webmaster tools to clean up the work I have done and plan new advances.  There is a great deal to dig through, but it’s interesting to me to see how websites and search engine tec has evolved in the last seven years since I put in some time at Overture-yahoo.

Next, I need to address my own personal site that wend down a few weeks ago.  No one has complained very much, but my family in Minnesota are still looking to see new pictures of the kids.   I will be kicking out more posts next week.

Just for fun, here is Amelia at 5 minutes old: