Category Archives: Family Life

Child #2: Quentin, Children, Family Life, Photography

Quentin FAQ

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I spend so much time talking about Micah but I have another kid named Quentin. He’s 6 months almost 7 months old. He is a very very good baby. He eats well and sleeps well. He has such a tender and gentle personality. Quentin gets frighten really easily which doesn’t help having a loud two year old around. Micah really likes to scare Quentin. Quentin is also very tough because he has to withstand wrestles and toys being thrown at him. Poor little guy. He can sit but has no desire to start crawling.

  1. Is it a girl? No, Quentin is a boy with a lot of hair. Here’s a picture of Quentin’s hair at birth.
  2. Was Quentin born with that much hair? Yes, he was born with a lot of hair! He has already had 2 hair cuts! I’ve cut off about 3.5 inches of hair already. He had hair down past his shoulders. Here are his new born pictures.
  3. Did Micah have that much hair? No, Micah was baud. See picture here.
  4. Where was Quentin Born? He was born in Ireland at the National Maternity Hospital on Holles street. [Side note: He was born on the fourth of July!… oh the irony] Here’s his birth announcement.
  5. So can he still be president of the USA? We have gotten this question so many times! But yes he can because he is solely American… no other country has claimed him to be a citizen.
  6. Is Quentin an Irish citizen? Unfortunately, no. He has an Irish birth certificate. We’d would have to go back for 2 to 3 more years before he becomes an Irish citizen.
  7. Did you plan on having a baby in Ireland? Originally, we wanted to come back to Utah to have the baby but then we fell in love with Ireland and their maternity care so decided to stay. Also, they wouldn’t let me fly internationally after I was 26 week pregnant.
  8. Did you have good maternity care in Ireland? Amazing!!! My opinion is that I had better maternity care in Ireland than in the US.
  9. Was it hard to get Quentin back to the USA? It all worked out. You can read about the miracle here.
  10. Is Quentin big for his age? Yes, he’s almost 29 inches which makes him about 100+% in height. He weighs about 20.5 pounds which is about 80%. He is the size of Micah at 1 years old! I guess we also have to take in account that he was almost 2 weeks late!
  11. Why did you name him Quentin? or Did you name him after Quentin Terrantino? It was the only name Dallin and I liked! I’ve always liked the name. There was also a store in Ireland named Super Quinn and a city name Quin in Co. Clare Ireland. We thought we would call him Quin but when Quentin came we have stuck with Quentin. No, we didn’t name him after Quentin Terrantino. Sometimes we tell people that we named him after Quentin L. Cook.
  12. Why is Quentin’s middle name Liam? I really like the name Liam. Dallin wasn’t too happy about it at first but then we found out the Liam is the Irish word for William. William is the name of Dallin’s dad. We already have a lot of nephews with the middle name of William so we went with Liam. 🙂
  13. Who does Quentin look like? Right now we don’t think Quentin looks like Micah at all. He kinda looks like Dallin but we think he mostly looks like May Bo.

Child #1: Micah, Family Life, Parenting, Toddlers

Paper Snowman and Other Preschool Ideas

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Micah has been needing a lot of attention and stimulation lately. My sister-in-law sent me this PDF Calendar of one year Preschool Ideas. I’ve been trying to do one or two things with Micah everyday. We made a paper snowmen and snow flakes this week. Before we made the snowman, we read this book called Snow by P.D. Eastman that we got from the library. I really like to read P.D. Eastman books to Micah. Another one of our favorite by Eastman is The Best Nest. Even though Micah is just 26 months old, I feel like he has a really good reading comprehension. I’ve been needing to read him stories with more complicated story lines. He is also starting to read memorize words in books. I’ve really been trying to read more to him everyday and we try to go to the library once a week for story time.

Like I said in our new years goals, this year I’m going to focus on teaching Micah how to read and do simple math. Micah already knows the whole alphabet and count to 20. He has an incredible attention span for another numerical or problem solving. He sat down for an hour with me to do three different – 24 piece wooden Thomas the Tank Engine puzzles. Micah repeats everything I say so I really have to be careful. It’s funny hearing use all my euphemisms like “Oh my goodness!!!” “So funny!” “You’re silly!” “Go to your room!” Micah put me in time out yesterday in my room. I don’t even know what I did wrong. Two year olds are so funny.

In the January 2014 New Era there’s an article titled Preparing Gifts for Your Future Family. The article counsels the kids to start this year to learn talents that they could use in their future such as writing, math, music and art. Lastly, it talks about the gift of repentance and getting our lives in harmony with the God.  It’s a good article! I guess these talents can be developed at a very early age.

What kinds of talents do you want your kids to develop?

Family Life, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Belated Happy Birthday to Me! – Advice Needed

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THANK YOU x 1,000,000!!! For all the nice Birthday comments, wishes, messages, notes, calls, emails, cards and text. I read every single one of them and wish I had time to write everyone of you back personally!
We celebrated by going to Tucanos. It seemed like everyone at Tucanos was having a birthday. That’s probably because they give out a free meal on your birthday! We’ve never done it before because I never remember to sign up but I was so happy when I got my free meal card in the mail. Micah got in free so we really only had to pay for Dallin’s meal. It was awesome and super yummy Brazilian Churrasco.
After Tucanos, we played games with neighbors. We played the Celestial Marriage Pursuit game. It was a funny Mormon version of the Newlywed game.
We also took Micah and Quentin to an indoor fun park this weekend. Micah enjoyed going on all the rides and insisted on riding the merry-go-round by himself! Dallin and I are way too big for the playground but the rules said that kids under the age of 3 needed to have parental supervision the whole time. So we took turns going into the jungle gym with him. Dallin had fun but my knees just hurt.
Funny side story — I was crawling in one of the longer tunnels and I was really struggling. My face probably looked really scary because a little kid coming from the other direction said to me “Can you not make that face?” [Blahahaha!] At the time I didn’t think it was so funny cause I really felt like I was stuck in the tunnel so I said to him “Sorry I cannot” with the same facial expression and crawled as fast as I could out of that tunnel.
Anyways… I need your help! I got a new set of the 2013 edition of the scriptures for my Birthday. My old set was falling apart. I read these books pretty much everyday for the last 6 years! I’ve taken my scriptures around the world with me. I treasure the scriptures and I honestly just can’t go a day without reading them. I sometimes read scriptures on my phone or iPad but I LOVE reading scriptures while holding a physical book. I don’t think I can ever give that up books even in the digital age.
My question is: How do you mark up your scriptures? I’m trying to figure out how to mark my new ones up.
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Architecture, Family Life, Photography, Temples, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Rexburg Idaho Temple at Sunrise

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This is a picture of the Rexburg Idaho Temple at sunrise taken on Thanksgiving morning 2013. One unique thing about this temple is that there is a big wheat filled in front of it. There is also a bunch of wheat in the temple garden and wheat carvings in the architecture. Wheat is a symbolizes the righteous people being gathered together in the Parable of the Tares in the New Testament. 

I haven’t felt like blogging the last couple of days because I lost about 300 gb of data while I was backing up my pictures. I accidentally unplug my 1TB hard drive during a massive data transfer. When I plugged it back in the computer went ahead and tried to fix the corrupted files but instead half of my pictures/videos disappeared. I was emotionally distraught for a few hours before I could stop moping about it but actually do something about it (I need to get over my picture addiction… haha!). Over the last week I’ve been able to recover around 15,000 files after consulting with my family and friends. I also read lots of online forums. A lot of the files I found were corrupted but I’m grateful for the ones I did find. This experience has been a blessing in disguise. First, because I did have a back-up of most of the pictures so I didn’t loose too many… just about 4 months worth of pictures. Second, I got to use the skills I learned studying computer science in school about data storage and data deletion. Third, I learned NEVER to use ctrl-x for video or picture transfer. Fourth, it made me more humble and also grateful that only half the files disappeared and not all the files. Fifth, I am never letting that happen again!! I’m so grateful I found so many files but it is going to take days to organize the files and check for duplicates. It would have been much easier if this never happened but of course, life doesn’t always work that way. God does want us to learn from our mistakes.

I was able to recover pictures I took back in November when our family took a trip up to BYU-I in Rexbug, Idaho for Thanksgiving. I prayed hard that I would find these temple pictures because I knew I only had one copy of them. I felt confident that I would find this folder but all the methods of data recover I tried didn’t work or the files I did find were corrupted. I guess my faith was tested.

Finally, last night I found these files while searching through  ~121,000 possible deleted files using Recuva.

What a big blessing! I know Heavenly Father answered my prayer. He really didn’t have to but I know God is very merciful and full of grace if we are willing to pray to Him and have faith.

What blessings have you seen in your life lately?

Child #1: Micah, Child #2: Quentin, Family, Family Life, Landscape, Photography

Family Pictures: Emigration Canyon, Utah

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I had a vision of having our family pictures taken on the top of a snowy mountain so we drove up Emigration Canyon in Salt Lake City, Utah to take these pictures. I think they turned out OK for being impromptu! 🙂

Why is it called Emigration Canyon? Wikipedia says:

Emigration Canyon was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1961. It is significant in Utah history as the original route used by pioneers entering Utah. It was part of the Hastings Cutoff route used by the Donner Party in 1846, and where the Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. As Brigham Young looked over the canyon, he declared, “This is the right place. Drive on.” These words have become famous in Utah history. The event is commemorated with This Is The Place Heritage Park at the mouth of the canyon. Throughout Emigration Canyon, there are several historic markers designating camps, trail markers and milestone where the Mormon Pioneers passed while on their way to the Salt Lake Valley. One example of these milestones is called Lost Creek Camp.

We used my brother’s Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM Ultra Wide Angle Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras.

Wide angle lens are great for landscape shots.

We took these with a tripod so that’s why my kids don’t always look at the camera. I’m going to create a device one day that will capture my kids attention while my camera is self timer on a tripod… lol!

Enjoy!

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Family Life

Our Blog Goals for 2014

Happy New Years Eve!!!

This is the time where everyone is making their new year resolutions. Dallin and I want to go on a date every week in 2014. We want to teach Micah how to read and Quentin how to walk/talk. We want to continue to workout 5 times a week and stay physically active.

So we decided we needed some blog goals. Here are our family’s 2014 blog goals:

What are your blog goals or family goals for 2014?

Family Life

Christmas Card 2013

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Here is our Christmas Card for 2013! We’re really sorry if you didn’t get one in the mail! Every year there seems to be more of a mix up of addresses and names. We are thinking to convert to a digital Christmas Card but then it’s just so sweet to receive something physical in the mail. We usually do a postcard because it cost only 35 cents to send it. May be we’ll do a Christmas video next year.

Here’s our past years Christmas Cards:

2010

2011

2012

How do you send out your Christmas greetings?

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Child #1: Micah, Child #2: Quentin, Children, Family Life, Photography

Taking a Break During Finals Week

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I graduated almost 1 year ago. Why in the world am I writing about finals week? Probably because I still feel so busy during finals week even though I no longer have school. I feel like haven’t had time to sit down this whole week. Winter semester always seems the most busiest because finals week ends up around the holidays. My husband is in graduate school and my brother is also college so “school” is still on my mind all the time. Dallin and I stayed up all night yesterday trying to get his paper done. I’m exhausted today… all I can get myself to do today is sit at the computer during my kid’s naps. I’ve also been making Christmas treats all week and today I just want to take a break!

Most of the time, sitting at the computer is relaxing for me. I love going through my computer and organizing my pictures. I have taken so many pictures since the baby! I am way behind sorting my pictures but all I do is take more pictures. During the Christmas devotional last week, President Monson said, “Christmas is a glorious season of the year. It is also a busy time for most of us. It is my hope and prayer that we may not become so caught up in the pressures of the season that we place our emphasis on the wrong things and miss the simple joys of commemorating the birth of the Holy One of Bethlehem.”

So I’m going to take it easy today and let myself sit down at the computer to do something relaxing for me. I recently discovered totally awesome natural lighting in my apartment… it’s almost like studio lighting. We have east facing windows and white curtains. During the morning when the sun is out, the white curtains provides almost perfect diffused lighting for indoor picture taking.

Thank you God for providing free lighting in my apartment shining strait onto our kitchen table! I was able to get a few pictures edited today but now my kids are awake.

What kind of things do you do when you take a break?

Creative Ideas, Family Life, FHE, Parenting, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Toddlers

FHE #1 – Creating Paper Mache Worlds

FHE stands for “Family Home Evening“. To tell you the truth, our family has not been very good at preparing for family home evening. When Monday night comes around we usually ask each other, at the last minute, “What’s the lesson for FHE?” We decided that our lack of planning wasn’t working for us. We decided to set aside a time on Saturday to plan out our family home evening. We did it for the first time last week and our FHE rocked! We had time to think and plan the lesson. Then we had time to go buy supplies for our activity and also had time to plan out a treat to eat at the end.

Our church believes in modern-day prophets whole receive inspiration from God and give counsel to the church. The prophet Joseph F. Smith announced in a letter on April 27, 1915 that the church members should hold a weekly family home evening (FHE) in their homes. FHE is family time that is set aside for  “prayer … hymns … family topics … and specific instruction on the principles of the gospel.” In 1970, the prophet announce that FHE night is preferred to be on Monday nights throughout the church and asked that church/leadership meetings should not be held on Monday nights.

I believe that the LDS church sets aside time for families on Monday because we all get so busy with work, school, sports, and other activities that it’s hard to fit in family time at home. In the end, our families is the most important entity we have here on earth and I enjoy spending time with my family on Monday nights.

FHE #1

Song: “My Heavenly Father Loves Me” (Children’s Songbook, 228–29)

Lesson: Genesis 1:1 & Lesson 7 in Nursery Manual – Jesus Christ Created the World for Me

Activity: Make paper mache worlds. I found this blog about making paper mache planets.