Dance

If there's one thing I wish I could have done more of as a youth it would have been dance. I never considered myself very coordinated, but I've always loved music and pick up rhythm pretty well too. I fell in love with couple dancing when I went to a youth conference with my cousin in Texas and was asked to dance the Swing by one of her friends who was such a good dancer! He could do lifts and everything. He could lead and I could follow, so it didn't matter that I had never danced like that before in my life... I felt like I could do anything! It was so exhilarating and whetted my appetite for more of it.

So in my senior year of high school I went out on a limb and took a social dance class. It was my favorite class ever! We learned the Waltz, Cha Cha, Foxtrot, and West Coast Swing among others. I took a country western dance class at SLCC my first year of college and absolutely loved that as well. The Two Step was so much fun. And there was a guy in my class who was a wonderful leader. I felt like I could dance with him forever! I went Latin dancing with my cousins a few times and country dancing with my aunt and cousin a few times as well. And in college I went country dancing a few times with my friends, but it sizzled out because I didn't know any guys who could dance. So disappointing!

I love dancing so much so that "to be in a professional ballroom dance competition" even ended up on my list of my biggest dreams! Somehow, though, I ended up dancing the penguin dance with my husband on our wedding day. And even that was more than I expected due to John's extent of dancing expertise (which is nill.) I tell you, there's not a whole lot that would make me happier than dancing, really dancing, with my husband. *sigh*

So, in the meantime, while I'm patiently waiting for him to sweep me off my feet, literally... I've been living vicariously through So You Think You Can Dance. We don't have TV, so every week when we go watch our nephews, I catch up on the episodes that Diane records on the DVR. This is the first season that I've watched it and it is a lot of fun. Ballroom dances are my favorite. Like the Cha Cha, Tango, Samba, Waltz, and the Jive. My favorite contestants are Janette and Brandon. Their Cha Cha and the Argentine Tango were incredible! And I simply loved their Jazz routine.

There's just something about the way that dance connects the body, soul, music and passion together that really stirs me up deep down inside. I feel I would be a better person were I to allow that magic deep within me to surface. I want a dance partner to help bring it out of me... so unless John's ok with me dancing with my neighbor (whom I just discovered loves dancing as well, whereas his wife does not) then I'll just wait for him to start dancing with me. My chances might be higher with encouraging my sons to dance and then dancing with them when they are old enough! I'm not saying I want to wait that long though...

John, have you picked up my hints yet? ;)

A Sucker for Happy Endings

John and I are both suckers for happy endings. And this show did not have one.

We picked up season 1 of 24 from the library and watched it on our clearplay. The show is so addicting and well written too. If they had ended the show any other way it would have been weak and not consistent with how they had written one particular character, however, if I had known the show would end how it did, I don't know that I would have watched it. We stayed up till 2:30am to finish it up and felt like we had wasted our time doing so just because of those last few minutes. I was all caught up in the happiness of Jack and Teri renewing their love and commitment together with the hope of "starting over" with the new life she had growing inside her, so I was so disappointed with the ending! My favorite character was David Palmer. I appreciated his integrity throughout the show. Anyway, I spent like an hour the next day reading plot overviews and such for the rest of the seasons to save myself another 144 hours of viewing time. Has anyone else watched this series? How do you feel about it?

Milestone #16

Tonight Joseph fed himself his entire bottle without dropping it once. And I think he was quite proud of himself. I know I was of him.

Cute Videos

How to Create a Blog Signature

I spent all day one day determined to figure this out, so thought I'd share my wisdom. :)

First, you'll need a program such as Photoshop, or Gimp. Here's the quick version for those who understand how to use a program like this: First create a new file about 150px x 70px and make sure it's transparent. Use the text tool to create your signature. Play with the color and rotation of your signature and when you're done, then save/export file as a .png to maintain the transparency. This is to make sure your signature doesn't have a white box around it when you post it to your blog. (if your blog template has a white background, you wouldn't see the white box.) Upload your file to an image hosting site (I use photobucket) and copy the HTML code to the file. Then in blogger, go to setting>formatting, scroll to the bottom and paste the HTML code in the box next to "post template" and save changes.

Now, that's how you do it, but what if you don't like the fonts on your computer and you want a cute one for your signature? There are a lot of sites where you can download fonts for free. It's easy to find cute fonts if you do a google search for free scrapbooking fonts. This is the site I used: http://www.kevinandamanda.com/fonts/. The heart in my signature is from the Pea Betsy Doodle font. Here is a great tutorial on how to use the fonts once you find one you like. *a little side note: I just found this tutorial on how to use these cute fonts in your blog for titles and such which I'm going to do next! yaay!

All right. So if you're still wondering what to do, then here's the longer version, for those who don't already have Photoshop or Gimp, or know how to use them. I'm going to be using Gimp for this tutorial because it's what I have, and, it's free! Download version 2.6 here. Once downloaded, open the Gimp program. Go to file>new and create the following image:
Set the width at 150 pixels and the height at 70 pixels. Click the + sign next to advanced options and change the x & y resolution to 150 pixels/inch. Click the drop arrow next to "fill with" and select "transparency." Then click OK.

Next click on the text tool in the toolbox. It's the letter A.

Then type in your name or whatever you want for your signature to say.

Now select the font you want your signature to be. *Note* see my second paragraph of this post about cute fonts and be sure that your font is installed before you open the Gimp. If you installed new fonts after opening the Gimp, simply close it down and start over. Your new fonts should show up in the font menu.

Change the size of your signature by clicking the up or down arrow or typing the the size you want. You can watch your font changing as you play around with the sizes.
After you've got the font and size you want, click in the middle of your signature and hold down to drag it to the center of the checkered square.
Now for the color! If you want your signature to match your blog then open up your blog and take a picture of the screen. Take a picture by pushing the "print screen" key on your keyboard. This copies the image of your screen. Open up Paint and ctrl+v to paste. Then save the file as a jpg. You can close Paint. Back in the Gimp, click the box next to the word "color" and the text color box will pop open.

Now go to file>open

Find where you saved the image of your blog, highlight it and click open.
Click on the eyedropper and then click wherever you want to on the picture of your blog and it will suck up that color.
Click the little black arrow to add the color to your color history and then click OK.
Now go to file>save
And type in the name for your signature.

Click on the + sign next to select file type and scroll down the list to find PNG image. Highlight it and then click save.
This box will pop up, just click Export.This box will pop up. Click Save, and you're done with the Gimp!
Now to get your signature on your blog, upload your file to an image hosting site (I use photobucket) and copy the HTML code to the file. Then in blogger, go to setting>formatting, scroll to the bottom and paste the HTML code in the box next to "post template" and save changes. Now your signature will pop up in your compose box each time you create a new post.

And, if you don't want it to say "posted by..." at the bottom of your posts then go to the Layout tab in blogger and click "edit" on the Blog Post box and uncheck the post page option that says "posted by..." and save your changes.

I'll be looking for some more signatures out there on your blogs now!

Drowning or Swine Flu

Well, this post is quite slow in coming, but... a few weekends ago we went up to visit my parents in the Salt Lake area. We stayed with my Dad & Judy on Friday night. It was sure great to be able to visit with them. Joseph has grown a lot since we saw them last! Do you see the resemblance to his Grandpa Ball?

On Saturday evening we went on a double date with my Mom & Greg to the Salt Lake Temple. It had been a few years since we had gone to that temple, so that was really neat. We did sealings and that was the first time doing them there.

We stayed with Mom & Greg on Saturday and Sunday night. Sunday morning Greg received a call from his family that his dad was not doing so well and would likely not live for much longer. His health has been poor for a while, so they were anticipating this to come soon. So Sunday and Monday we spent a lot of time at Greg's brother's house. I spent the majority of that time cross stitching. I'm working on a new little project that I am loving. (I'll show you later.)

On Monday we went swimming with Mom & Greg & my younger siblings. It was the first time that we have taken Joseph swimming.

It took him quite a while to get used to being in the water with all the people. He was unsure about the whole thing. I think he was a little tired too, so he was easily fussy. But we finally got to the point where he was smiling and laughing. He really enjoyed the lazy river. I think that's what did the trick.

So we got some happy swimming pictures and then right after, disaster struck. I was holding Joseph and I was on my knees. John thought it would be funny to tickle my feet. Well, I am extremely ticklish on my feet and hate it when the bottoms are touched! So I kicked my foot back a little and in so doing, my legs slipped out from under me and I went under, with Joseph in my arms!! I was freaking out inside my head because I was holding him and knew that he was going to go under the water and I felt so scared. I was trying so hard to get him up out of the water, but I could not get my footing. John freaked out when he saw us go under and then he lost his footing and was unable to help us get up! My mom finally took Joseph from me just about the time that I got him up out of the water and regained my footing. I swear it felt like the whole ordeal lasted at least a minute long, but I'm sure it wasn't any longer than 7 seconds. My entire body was visibly trembling and it took a long time before my legs stopped feeling like spaghetti. And needless to say, Joseph was done swimming. He was crying so hard. We took him down the lazy river a few more times to settle him down and then we decided to get out. He was so cuddly forever after that. Man, retelling this story has set my heart a-racing all over again!

Wondering where the swine flu comes into the picture? Well, John's cousin had come home from his mission and the family was gathering together that same weekend in Enterprise. Had we not gone up to Salt Lake, that's where we would have gone. We found out on Tuesday that everyone who went was very well exposed to the swine flu because it turns out his cousin had it. That would have been awesome too. Out of curiosity I looked up how many deaths have come about from the swine flu and of the total confirmed and probable cases, the deaths come to a whopping .5%. And I think those deaths are likely sicker elderly people whose bodies can't handle a lot anyway. The virus has been declared pandemic, but only on account of how quickly it is spreading rather than the severity of the illness. I must say this knowledge eases my mind, even though I wasn't really too worked up over the whole swine flu epidemic in the first place. Still, the flu isn't fun.