Update on Emily's sight

Chapter Four has been posted.

After much struggling, banging head on table, and three long-distant phone calls (thanks, Eric), it is up and available. Now all I have to do is remember how to do it when I want to post chapter five.

Emily

About My Page

Just for everyone's information... I had nothing to do with the picture and text on my page. I think that a little fun was had down Texas way. I did enjoy getting a phone call from Brooke the other day!

Life is going along as normal for me. You'd think living in the engagement capital of the USA I would at least get a date every once in awhile.... but alas the best I can do is going to a hockey game with my roommates on a Friday night. I'm not complaining, because I LOVE hockey... and my roommates and it does beat sitting at home and watching TV.

Work is going well. I love my job, but I'm looking forward to fall break. (we get a 4 day weekend at the end of October... yippee!) Maybe I'll go and play tourist in SLC or even spend a day at my old alma mater. Or I might just stay home and SLEEP! Something I rarely get enough of.

Oh, and to answer Mom's question. I was the tail end of the "big four" which puts me basically in the middle. I guess that has a lot of advantages. Your parents have already made all their mistakes on the first three, you don't have quite so many responsibilities, you get to boss around the younger ones, and best of all... until recently the pressure for marriage was completely off of me! Ahhh... for the days when someone older was still single. But I guess I don't have to feel too pressured.... being that I live out here on my own, it's not like you're calling me up and asking me about it every day... since they made that mistake with the first one... see, it's great being in the middle!

Have a fun weekend everyone!
Love,
T

Answers?

I posted another question but since no one has responded to it I'm not sure that you all saw it. It took me some time to get my last post to show up and in the meantime someone else had posted so mine was not on top. I hope you all saw the good news about your Daddy's job. It's wonderful to have him home more.

What's up with our logo on the webpage? Why doesn't it show up anymore? Also, on Clarissa's page I put her picture in the folder but it still doesn't show up. Can anyone figure out what we're doing wrong? I'm counting on you Nathan to help us, again. You noticed, I hope, that I DID acknowledge your assistance.

For anyone who's interested, here is my answer to the latest question:
How did you like being the oldest, youngest, or middle child? Did it have any advantages or disadvantages?
In a family of 11 children I was number nine. The kids seemed to be divided into three groups. There were the “big boys” the “little girls” and Lowell, Joy and Gary (the three in the middle.) Being one of the “little girls” I always felt that I was not old enough to do many things. I even felt that I was one of the little girls after I was grown and married. Around thirty or so I seemed to outgrow that title. I don’t know if the older kids really felt that way towards me or if I was just insecure and thought they did. There was a little while, when Gary was on his mission, where I was the oldest child at home. I felt that gave me some privileges but also more responsibilities.

HA!

I don't know how to pronounce "trinadam." I don't know that it was meant to be SAID, just to look cool when it's written, because it doesn't make any sense unless you SEE it. And Tawnia's page made me laugh and laugh! Tawnia, are you not telling us something?

The Susan/Trina big announcement of the month is ... after 10 weeks of blood, sweat and tears (and more than a little bit of swearing mixed in), the 50-state medical malpractice chart is done and has been released to the general public. It's supposed to be on our committee's web page on the NCSL site, and it's not yet, and if it's not there by Monday, I will unleash the big guns. Either way, we've emailed it all over the country - in less than 5 minutes after I sent an email to one of the mailing lists yesterday morning, I had over 10 emails saying "thank you for the information!" I'm learning a lot about tort reform, which is a weird way of saying "restrict certain kinds of lawsuits," and which is also kinda weird considering that my husband is going to be an attorney. But hey, someone has to defend against all the stupid lawsuits, so maybe Adam will take that side. He's liking constitutional law so far, but hasn't decided on a specialty yet.

The only other news right now is that we spent our day off Monday at Mt. Vernon - George Washington's house. It's been maintained for tours since the 1840s, and all the armies skirted it during the Civil War out of respect, so no damage to it ever. During the summer, they have people in period costume demonstrating farming techniques, because Washington was very into farm development. During December, they have candle-lit tours at night and the house is all decked out for Christmas.

And Sarah Loving is coming for a week to spend Thanksgiving with us. YAY! I'll have to work only 2 days that she's here (and maybe only one), so we can get lots of touristy stuff in. She's never been here, so this will be fun.

links

When whomever switched the sidebar to include the "guest comments" (which I suggest is switched to GuestBook, so it fits on one line), they took off Blogger. I liked having it there .. very convientent. And maybe we could add MSN or Hotmail, since that is where a lot of our emails are. It'd be especially helpful for those of us who have insanityinc as the homepage.

New cell phones

Amanda and I got new cell phones. Unfortunately we both had to change our numbers. They are similar to one another though. We will call you or email them to you so that everyone gets a chance to know what our new numbers are.

Mom, Clarissa's picture does not work because it is not uploaded onto the internet. The text is, but not the picture itself. Just copy it over into the same file that Clarissa's page is in. If you have any further complications, I will be there sometime in the near future and I can figure it out for you. Remember, you have more than two sons that know a little bit about computers.

Nathan

Posting problems

Jared I've run into the same problem but when I just tried it worked again. I think the site will only allow one person to post at a time, I'm not sure that's what it is but sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. My suggestion is just keep trying. I still haven't figured out what to put on mine. Also could you possibly figure out how to post Clarissa's picture? It works offline but we can't get it to show up online.

I'm anxious to see your changes.

Love ya,
MOM

things to say

Congratulations Eric and Laurel on the new birds. That's really exciting (and no I'm not being sarcastic, despite that weird look on my face).

Everyone, I'm having trouble accessing the ftp site today. I'm at school right now and I haven't tried to do it from home for a couple days now, but the username and password shouldn't have changed ... unless someone changed them. If anyone did, you don't have to fess up IF you return the original password right away so that the rest of us can continue posting our random creativity for all the company to see and experience. Thank you. End of lecture.

FANTASTIC NEWS!!

I tried several times to post this yesterday but I kept getting an error message. Maybe it will work now.

Dad pulled a sneaky on me. He put in for two day positions without telling me. He knows how frustrated I get when he doesn't get the day job. So today he came to Amity to tell me that, starting tomorrow he'll be working days at the high school. It has a downside. It means a pay cut because he won't be the lead custodian anymore but it's worth it to have him home in the evenings and to be able to have some time together. It's been a long time since he's been on days on a permanent basis. I thought you would all want to know that exciting news.

I'm working on getting the genealogy page up and running. I need to make some corrections before I post the final copy. I'm sure I'll still be updating it periodically but there are a few things I need to correct before I post the first time.

I'm still figuring out how I want to design my own page. I think I'll put various chapters of my history on there. The ones I haven't posted on the blog. If you have any brilliant suggestions for me, let me know.

I guess it's about time for a new question. So here's the latest one I drew from the jar: How did you like being the oldest, youngest or middle child? Did it have any particular advantages or disadvantages?

Love ya,
MOM

A new budgie

Sally hatched yesterday (Sunday) so now there are three baby birds of various sizes, and one egg left. Seedy has grown quite a bit since he (she?) hatched a few days ago. Polly has now been sitting on her eggs and her chicks (they need to be kept warm since they don't have feathers yet) for several weeks. Petey has been feeding her and the chicks. All of them are in the nest box (it looks like a birdhouse) a lot of the time. It's really neat to see their parental instincts coming out. I'm sure Laurel will have more to say as the parakeet family grows.

In other news, Laurel's brother Delwin (the one who got married last Christmas) and his wife Tavy had a baby girl named Lillian. Laurel's sisters Rachel and Amber are both pregnant. Yeah. We're working on it.

On Saturday I went to the college for a symposium all day. I probably already wrote that.

The cookbook looks great. I'm excited to recreate some of my childhood favorites, and try some new recipes as well.

And now I'm tired because I took a nap yesterday afternoon and then I couldn't get to sleep at night and then I had to get up early this morning.

THANK YOU NATHAN!

Nate came over today and fixed my website for me. I couldn't figure out how to do tables and get it to work, but he figured it out and got the recipes into columns for me. I'd like to arrange them by categories but at least they're on there for now. I was also trying to help Clarissa get her picture to show up. I tried putting it on the site and thought that would solve the problem but it didn't. Can one of you guys get it on there for her?

Reminder everyone - it's time to get those Christmas lists together so we can look for the sales. That includes suggestions for little people like Brooke and Bryan.

I hope you all had a good weekend. We went to a "Buddy Walk" for Down Syndrome yesterday. One of my students invited me to be his buddy. It was rainy but it was still fun.
Love, MOM

News from the Palmers... oh yeah... well, from Eric and Laurel

Hi everybody.

Right now Rachel (Laurel's sister) is at our house with Chris and Lance. Lance is so cute these days. He talks all the time and says really funny stuff. He's three. Sorry Trina, the baby bird is already named. Laurel is expert at naming pets. She even names other peoples' pets, stray cats... (aw, Lance just came in and gave me a hug) So anyway, the birds' names are Seedy and Sammy. Yes, there's now two baby birds, and the third should hatch soon.

Today I spent all day at the college (Cal-State Fullerton) for a program symposium. It was fun seeing all my online cohorts in real life. Good times. I'm excited about wrapping up the program this winter and graduating in May. Amazing how the time has flown.

About the page, I think it's great what everyone has done so far. Check out Nathan's poems if you haven't yet. Jared is right about the Word files taking up more space (and download time), so I also recommend learning html. I will say to Jared that you don't need to worry so much about space. The Word-generated files are fine, and the pictures are fine. I mean, we can back everything up at some point and keep a record of the blog, but there's no hurry. I would just HIGHLY ENCOURAGE everyone to keep their image sizes down. A 100K picture is much worse than a 20K html file (that could be 5K). So check your file sizes of your pictures before uploading. If they're more than say 40K, consider resizing. End of lecture.

And now the boys are playing with my green army men on the carpet of my room. Boys only in here. Yeah!

On the subject of traditions, Laurel and I have a few. One of them that is unique is Van Gogh Day. I think it's March 6th. We make a cake and decorate it like a Van Gogh painting. It's to commemorate Laurel's writing of a paper on Van Gogh, many years ago.

We celebrate each other's birthdays every year, and we have traditional Christmas and Thanksgiving (often with extended family in Oregon, Idaho, or here in California). We also like to watch fireworks on the Fourth of July, go to baseball games and the beach in the summer, and play Frisbee at the park on New Year's. I just made up the last one, but we did that one time, with Gary and Karen Knowlton.

Okay. I'd better wrap this up. Laurel left to take care of Rachel's dog for a few minutes, and the boys are putting away the toys. What good boys.

I love all of you, and I'll talk to you later.

Love, Eric

lots to catch up on

Personal page: we'll get something up soon. I'm enjoying the great prophet deRaj's commentary one some of the pages. It's making me laugh. It's also good to see what everyone else has up already. Oh, and Jared, about the font on the home page - it's okay that it's one of the basic styles, but could we have something that looks more clean than Times? To me, Times means "write a paper for Dr. Geier." ANYTHING but Times.

Laurel's birds: In keeping with the P theme, and because of it's color, my nomination in the Unofficial Name the Baby Bird competition is Peachy or Peaches. Any more babies yet?

Traditions question: just the word "tradition" makes me think of Christmas. The thing that comes to mind the quickest is caroling - packing everyone into the van, no matter what the person to seatbelt ratio actually is, and singing all the "naughty" Christmas songs while in the van. I remember one year, Eric and I whistled the whole thing of "Sleigh Ride." The other traditions that come to mind is that we frequently went to Silver Creek on July 4th because that was one of Mom's favorite places and our indoor Easter egg hunts with billions of jellybeans and one prize (usually a king-sized candybar) for everyone.

What I plan to continue is all the Christmas stuff. (Mindy, just because you don't have kids to take caroling doesn't mean you can't go with friends. That's what we're going to do.) I also want to make it a regular thing to attend a performance of The Messiah during December. (I'm in hot pursuit of tickets for the Kennedy Center Messiah Sing-along. Doesn't that just sound COOL?!?!) As long as we're in the DC area, we'll go see the temple lights and Live Nativity at the temple, and watch the 4th of July fireworks over the Washington Monument. I liked having ice cream cake on Adam's birthday - that was a bit of ingenuity on Mom's part that could very well continue into a long term thing. We'll see what else comes up - maintaining my own traditions is a new thing. I've never really thought about it before this year, but since getting engaged, I've thought about it a lot. Like Mindy said, ask me in 10 years.

Changing self question: I need to become a much better critical thinker. It's something that has come up at work. Because I'm so accustomed to really really really precise instructions, my bosses here tell me HOW to do what they want. That was fine for the first year when I was still figuring things out, but now it's time to shift gears. They give me an assignment, and I figure out the "how." I have learned VERY quickly that this type of creativity, I'm not so good at.

Our adventures: not much beyond the norm. We enjoyed General Conference. Between the Saturday sessions, we found an AWESOME used bookstore near the church, and got ourselves out of there after only 15 minutes ... and 10 books. We went to the stake center at the temple for Sunday, ate a picnic lunch on the temple grounds between, and watched the last session in the Visitor's Center. It's the screen where they show The Testaments, so we're talking BIG SCREEN for Conference. Today, our friends Jared and Allison in our ward got married, and we babysat Allison's nephews while they were in the temple. The reception was very formal - in a hotel ballroom with a catered sit-down dinner and a string quartet for the music. We both have Monday off for Columbus Day, and Adam says that we can go play tourist. YAY! It's supposed to be really nice weather, so definitely something outside.

Emily's Strange Adventures at the Post Office

Date: Friday, October 8.

Final day to return books for a full refund.

It would have helped if the instructor of my internet English class had informed us before last Wednesday that one of our books really wasn't needed. It was entitled: "Female Quiniox" or something like that. (Really, it was!)

So, since we were not going down to Salem until Saturday (and that would do no good because the Chemeketa bookstore would not be open -- go figure), I had to mail the book in order to return it. So, I found an envelope, scanned the reciept and printed a copy (a very large copy, I might add), and hiked up to the post office. The time was 12:27, and the postal workers were all at lunch. But I did pick up the mail and then walked back.

After an hour or so, I went back up to the post office. I waited in line while a couple of other people mailed packages, and then it was my turn. And then I discovered that I did not have enough money, so I had to go back home and get more.

I walked down the street through the pouring rain, the package still tucked under my arm, dug through the change bucket, got a few more quarters, and then walked out again, still dripping wet. That is how it took me three trips to mail one package.

Emily

P.S. Eric, you rock!

Answers

Traditions - The most memorable of traditions was what the family did around Christmas. Jason grew up doing the exact opposite, so I'd really like to change that, and make Christmas' more memorable for him now. I know that I won't be able to make it to Oregon for Christmas this year, but maybe next year, and I can really show Jason how I celebrated growing up. Last year we did have a tree, but I did all the decorating. And Christmas was really just in the one room. I want to make/buy more decorations this year, and have it really really feel like Christmas. It's just hard to have it with just two people I guess, after growing up and always having so many more. I'll see what I can do to change it this year. Other than that, I'm not sure what traditions Jason and I will have. I guess we'll look back in ten years and let you know.

Changing - I would really like to change my weight right now, since I've gained so much since being married. More importantly, I'd like to actually have the inner strength to actually make myself regularly do work outs. I get distracted way too easily, and although I do SOME working out, I don't do nearly enough to get the results I want. I'd like to be less depressed, but that will probably come with getting a job, and having the ability to take classes and whatnot. I really should just appreciate what I have now - the freedom to do what I want, the time to do drawings, scrapbooking, etc. I know that as soon as I do work, I'll look back and wish I could do this all again. I am doing okay with taking advantage of the free time .. I've got quite a few more drawings to add to the pile.

News from the North

I appreciate the web lessons. I'll make use of them in the next few days, but today was surprisingly busy! Jason got his bonus check from work, so we went to the mall and spent it! We both needed new pants, and some other stuff .. we even picked up some new books, including the entire Hitchhiker's Guide set. I even found piggy number 28, surprisingly at Old Navy. So we've been out all day, and I'm just too pooped to concentrate on all that. Quick question though, how do you set the background? And how do you make links to other pages (like pictures, so they aren't all on your front page)? Other than that, all is well here. I've been working on more drawings, and keeping myself relatively sane (not that my relatives are sane, but whatever). I'll get Jason to work on a Christmas list with me, and we'll email those out soon.

Good stuff people!

Wow! I emailed out those little tutorials this morning and now suddenly there is something to see at Insanity Inc.! Good work Mom and Clarissa (and Nate I guess ;D ). The sidebar is now resizable, so feel free to make it as big or as small as you wish. Just click and drag. I'm looking forwars to seeing what people are going to come up with on their pages. I like Clarissa's already -- even though she didn't post anything here to introduce it to us.

Mom pointed out another webpage creation hint -- just build it in your word processor and "save as webpage." Make sure the filename ends in .htm, and paste the file into your ftp folder. My concern there is that those files tend to be much larger than the ones built from scratch. They use up more precious memory.

On the topic of memory space on our website -- may I propose that we remove all the pictures that were posted on the blog, and are sitting somewhere in the blog archives. The pictures can all be saved to Mom's computer or anyone who wants them. I personally always downloaded the pictures to my computer as soon as they were posted, so I've already got all the ones I wanted to keep for myself. Further pictures can be added to your individual webpages, and just tell us in the blog where to find them. That's my two cents.

YEAH!!! I did it!

I posted some recipes to the Cookbook. Thanks Eric and Jared for all your help. I learned that you don't have to write the code yourself, it's really easy to add files using word. Just save your documents as webpages and when you put them in the index be sure to add .htm It worked real well. Now I need to experiment with the page format. Maybe I should put the list in a couple of columns because it's going to fill up fast. I'll add the recipe's from the cookbook and you can add your own favorites. It's a "COOPERATIVE FAMILY COOKBOOK". Let me know what you think.

Love ya,
MOM

Hype you say?

First things first,
CHAPTER THREE OF EMILY'S BOOK HAS BEEN POSTED
In other news, I am a busy busy boy with school and work and other things, and so I haven't put my own page up. Actually, I started working on it very late last night and Laurel told me to get to bed. I was kind of bummed because I wanted to post some pictures I scanned but now I can't find them, so I'll have to scan them again. Also, Laurel and I tried to write a poem to go onto our page but it was pretty late and it didn't come out too good, so we'll have to try again later.
Love,
Eric

Mom's Answer

First I'll answer the latest question.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My first thought was to think about my appearance. I’d like to be a bit smaller around and I’d like to have straight teeth and there are a few other things about my physical body that I’d like to change but they are not as important as some other changes I need to make. I think what I’d really like to change about myself is the bad habit of procrastination. I need to make myself do things NOW and not keep putting them off. I guess I have this lazy streak that I need to get rid of. You know what? I CAN change that about myself. I think I will work on it, tomorrow. Wait a minute, I can do it NOW!

Thanks Jared for the lessons but I for one am still struggling. Be patient with me and I think I'll get it. When we get our page all the way up it will be fantastic. I've already made it my home page. (Which is why it's nice to have google on there.)

There has been a little talk about Christmas lists but no lists have been sent yet, at least not to me. I know it's only October but if it flies as fast as September did it will be Christmas in no time. PLEASE either post or email your lists, depending on how public you want them. I'll get mine together in the next few days and get them off to each of you, but you know that I like whatever you choose to give and if you can't afford to send presents, that's fine, we still want to send you something, you're our kids.

webstuff

Okay, here's what I've got now. I tried a few different ways to change the font on the website to something a little flashier, but to no avail. The explanation is that web browsers such as Internet Explorer (which is the one I use) can only support certain fonts, which are the basic plain ones and not much else. There is possibility which I have on my personal homepage only on my computer, which is that all of the links are pictures. In order to do this with the sidebar, I would need some pretty small pictures of everyone to use. Also, I think that the sidebar should be consistent (as opposed to three people having picture links and everyone else not) so I would need pictures from everyone to make that work. It could get tricky, but it's a possibility. My personal vote is I like it how it is. I can however make the sideber resizeable so you can make it as wide or narrow as you want. Everyone has different monitor sizes and resolutions. I'll get to that possibly this weekend sometime. Also, Dad wanted a guestbook page. I've got a simple one put together now, just with name, city/state, and comment. The whole thing is e-mailed to the webmaster@insanityinc.net who can then post it onto the page or not. That's a much simpler program to write than the ones that post automatically. That's something else I'll get onto the site later, after I've worked all the bugs out.

Another Question?

I was hoping to get a little more input on the question of traditions but I guess I could post a new one. Do we need further discussion on the webpage and the mission statement? I think it would be fun to include a "holiday" for each day or at least each week. I believe it was Mindy who came up with a rather unusual list of holidays last year for Trina's Christmas gift. Just a thought.

Anyway the new question is....If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I'll have to think about that one.

Love ya,
MOM

My Life

So what's the latest question from Mom? Just wondering?

My life is continuing on. I was sick over conference weekend and still managed to watch all four sessions (plus the RS broadcast the week before.) And then I missed work on Monday. After one day of sitting around and doing nothing I decided that I didn't care how I felt and I was going to work anyway... and so I've been at work the last two days, even with a miserable cold.

I enjoyed conference a lot. I love the gospel and love hearing from the Lord's servants. It's nice to get the spiritual boost that comes from conference.

Anyway, It's getting dark out and I still have to walk home... so I'll cut this short.

The website looks good to me, although I don't know that my page will ever end up with anything on it... at least not until I'm able to get home at Christmas.
-T

Google

World's greatest search engine. That's why. Don't fight it.

homepage links

Not to repeat myself, but why Google? Why is that a link on our homepage? What emotional attachment does someone (anyone?) have to Google? The Church, sure. Blogger.com is a smart one. Our family stuff, absolutely. But Google? Explain this one to me.

Page Design

Mindy! Yeah! Either mail a picture home or to me and it'll get scanned in. I've just started thinking about making an animated logo in Flash, but that's just a thought. I certainly am planning on putting together some tutorials on building your page. I also recommend checking out a book on HTML from the library and just trying it out. All you need is Notepad and a browser.

I don't think there should be more than one sidebar though, just so we can keep more screen space for the "content". However, I think they should probably be reorganized a bit. I'm sure Jared will be tinkering with it over these weeks to come. Good suggestion on adding the blogger link. That could go right under the "blog" link for easy access.

My other suggestion on the links is having three sections: The internal links, the family-run links (BBC, Jungle Chicken...) and outside links (Google, LDS.org, etc.).

Mindy's Thoughts

I would love to do a homepage design, but if I drew anything I would have no way of getting it onto the computer. I have no scanner or digital camera. But I might come up with something anyway, and eventually mail it home and we can change the homepage picture then. *shrugs* And I agree with Trina - the big I looks weird, otherwise it's cool. Make it bigger.

The Mission Statement should maybe go below the logo, in a cooler font. And cooler fonts on the folders too. I was thinking the side-bar was going to be a little bigger (especially with bigger fonts), and have a second side-bar on the opposite side with all the other links .. BBC, LDS.org, etc. I'm not sure if that would work, but maybe it'd look a little more balanced. And add blogger.com .. so after looking at the blog, we have a quicker way of getting to where we can post.

I would like to figure out how to make my own little website (for my folder), even though I don't know WHAT I'd do with it right now. I have NO idea how to make websites, and although Jason can build a computer, he doesn't have much experience with website building. Maybe the boys can have mini-lessons over the blog or something, on how to do the basics of making our folders.

Introducing... Insanity!

Welcome to the new Insanity Inc. website! This is everyone's website, so you get to do whatever you feel is best with your individual folders. If you want to do it yourself, just ask Eric or me and we'll give you the secret passwords (which will not be published over the internet like this). Or, if you're not comfortable (even though it really is super easy) then we can set things up for you.

Responding to Trina's questions:

The logo that is there is a space filler I threw in just so there would be something there. An official logo contest is hereby opened to anyone who cares to make a contribution. I know Dad's interested in doing one up, but Nate had some thoughts and I'd like to see a contribution from Mindy, so please get something better than my logo.

The font can be changed. Absolutely.

The mission statement and values were made up by me just this morning. Also open for amending.

Remember all, this is your site, so feel free to play with it. Eric and I were thinking that if you want to make changes in your folders, post an announcement on the blog so that we don't all have to keep looking in every folder. Other than that, go have fun.

homepage

Let the criticism begin ...
- I like the palmtree and sun, even if it's not our original Insanity Inc. logo. The big I next to it, not so much.
- Like the mission statement and values ... where did they come from? Is that something we came up with years and years ago that I've just forgotten about?
- Can we change to a more fun font for the text than blah Times? I like the scripty ones.
- Why is Google a link? What's the significance of that?

So, I take it that Theresa married the guy she's been with for a number of years, and is Sadie and Maddie's father? Yes? What's his name, anyway? Are they still living in the house on Howard St. where Uncle Gary lived when we were kids? Adam and I have a wedding to go to this weekend - our bishop's daughter and Adam are good friends. We're taking care of the babies (5 of them, the oldest is 3) during the sealing, and then going to the fancy shmancy reception with a string quartet and a sit-down meal at the nicest Marriott hotel in the city. (One of our bishopric counselors is one of THE Marriotts.) I had to go to a work meeting there once. It's quite beautiful.

The Folders and Wedding Post

Hi all!

FOLDERS: I don't quite understand why we would need to vote on folders Jared. I mean, it's really wide open. If you want your own section, you can have it, and if you want to create a section for everyone to participate in (a gallery, a cookbook, etc.) well then, that's fine too. I don't mean to be contrary, but I don't see where the controversy is that needs to be settled is all. Whatever people want to create, that's cool. I think I'll send you some emails and make some phone calls to describe what I'm talking about because I don't know how clear I'm being.

WEDDING: In other news, Laurel and I attended Theresa and Ray's wedding this afternoon in Whittier. We saw Gary, Karen, Jeff, Jackie, Leigh... and Marie. And Theresa and Sadie and Maddie of course. They were so cute. It was very nice, and everyone was very happy. We got to see Dad's brothers dance, and that was worth the price of admission itself. What is with us Palmer men and dancing?

there, I fixed it.

Sorry 1994, not 2004 for when Elder Holland was called to the 12. At first I was thinking "Of course I know when he was called - I was serving in Sanger and hadn't transferred to Hanford yet, and Elder Perkins was my zone leader and he told me ... " And then I looked at the post. Oops. Sorry.

The main thing I came away from General Conference with was a swift kick in the butt from the Spirit to go to the temple FAR more frequently than we do. Since the beginning of the summer, we've been struggling to get to the temple once a month. We've made it, but barely. And we're a measly 10 miles from the place. No excuse! So ... what we're going to do is go at least twice a month - once (or more) by ourselves, and once, take someone with us. A lot of people in our ward don't have cars so they only go if they can get a ride. We've had a couple of people ask us to let them know when we're going, and there are a few others that we're planning to invite periodically.

There were other things that stood out, but that's the most prominent thing right now.

The web page - well, my vote is that what Jared describes sounds fine to me. Let's see how it looks and go from there. It's not like we can't make modifications to it after it's up and running.

I remember them too!

When I was in Germany, Elder Uchtdorf was President of the Europe West Area, and he came and spoke at one of our zone conferences. About halfway through my mission, President Hinckley and Elder Oaks came through Europe and we had a regional conference in Berlin, and Elder Uchtdorf also spoke there. A few months later we got a new Area President, Elder Neil Anderson. He did a zone conference too.

About six months ago, President Bednar came to our stake conference in Colleyville TX. Michelle got to hear him speak, but I wasn't able to make it to that meeting. I think Bryan was sick or something.

I've got this website just about put together -- and yes Eric I did it with frames -- but obviously there are a few diffeing opinions about what all should be included as far as subfolders. I propose a secret ballot vote -- everyone email me a list of what folders you think should be included and majority wins. Just remember that my idea was the best one and vote for that. I'll do the website with one sidebar to minimize any possibility of scrolling.

Question for Trina

Read your last message over. What year was it that Elder Holland was called? I couldn't remember. I'm glad you are all enjoying the conference, it makes us feel like we're together, even though we're miles apart.

Sunday morning with Eric

Tawnia, you're right. I did forget that you were still there after I left. It all came back to me this morning when you reminded me. In fact, you had Thanksgiving at the Davenports with us in '97 as I recall.

And Trina, you've probably already heard, but you missed hearing Elder Oaks.

Well, session's starting. Take care.

Love, Eric

lots of stuff

Jared, tell me if I'm picturing this correctly: on the left side of the screen would be a sidebar of all the personal folders. On the right side of the screen would be "community property" stuff like the blog (and maybe Dad's guestbook idea if we can get that to work), and links to other pages like junglechicken and lds.org. And the center would have the Insanity Inc. logo. Yes?

That's cool that you all remember Elder Bednar (not President anymore!), and awesome about Tawnia having FHE at his house. Adam heard him speak while on his mission in Idaho. I remember when Elder Holland was called in the summer of 1994. He was in the Seventy, and had spoken to our mission less than a month before. So we were VERY excited because he was kinda "our" Apostle - probably similar to what Tawnia described. I still think of Elder Holland as "my" apostle, because I was in a church gym with only about 50 other people and heard him speak with a level of the Spirit that I had never experienced before and have experienced only one time since then ... when President Hinckley read the Proclamation on the Family for the first time, I was in the Tabernacle. Anyway, I'm excited to hear from Elders Uchtdorf and Bednar tomorrow morning. And I wonder which Apostle I'm going to miss this Conference because he's speaking in the priesthood session.

My favorite line of the day was from Elder Groberg: "Things are as they are, and complaining won't help."

Pres. Bednar

Eric, you forget that when you graduated from Ricks, I was still there. So I was very excited when President Bednar was called.

In fact, I once went to Pres. Bednar's home for FHE. He opened his home for FHE groups to come each Monday and our group jumped at the chance. After he was called today I was so excited that I got out the picture to show to all of my roommates. I'll have to scan it some time and put it on here for everyone to see. I'm very excited to hear him talk tomorrow. He was an amazing college president and I'm excited for him with his new calling.

-Tawnia

Input on the website (Eric)

Hi all,

As I started typing this, the church "world report" startled me. I'd forgotten the connection to the conference (via the web) was still on. It's reporting on the Manhattan temple. I'm sure you've all heard by now about Elder Uchtdorf and Elder Bednar. I know President Bednar became the president of Ricks at the same time I graduated from there in 1997, and I remember Elder Uchtdorf being called to the Seventy when I was on my mission (I read Church News a lot then). Exciting times in the history of the church. Emily and Mindy can probably tell us more about Elder Bednar, what they remember of him from their time at Ricks and BYU-I while he was president there.

But back to the website dicussion.

Jared-- no offense at all. This is what I hoped might happen when I came up with the family blog idea. I hoped it would snowball into something we could all create together.

I think your sidebar idea is fine, as long as we can use frames to create it. That way, we all still have control over the content of our own pages. The index would then be a frameset holding the sidebar and the logo page, which would then turn into whatever other pages we want to put in there. Is this what you have in mind?

Dad-- I don't know how much security we want to implement. We could probably put up a simple password screen or something like that. I don't really know much about web security. My thinking is that any communication we really want to keep private we should keep to letters, email, and the telephone. But maybe I'm just making excuses.

On the overall design of the site... The blog and homepage can stay in the main directory and be sort of community property. From there, I think we ought to have our own individual folders to create whatever we want. We can post family pictures, stories, links, put up personal blogs, whatever. And those folders can be named whatever, as long as Jared knows what they're called so he can put them on the sidebar.

How does this sound?

And again, thanks so much for participating. This is going to be the coolest website of all time!

Eric

Dad's Questions and Suggestions

On the webpage should there be a private area to the page where you need a password to get on? Should it all be that way? How would that be done? Or should the page be open to everyone who happens upon it.

When the page opens up the whole page should be visible on the screen. You shouldn't need to scroll to see it.

I'd like to add a guest book for other visitors to our page, so they can make comments.

As for the links being visible, that's great as long as the side bars are small enough. I'm not sure about the artists forum thing. I thought that was what the individual pages were for. So that we don't have too many links on the mainpage we could have a link to a family picture album and put links in there for individual albums or links inside the various writings to pictures that tie in with them. (Jared said having pictures open up with the dialog is too time consuming for his computer.)

One side bar for the individual pages and the other bar has the following... guest book, recipes, genealogy, Blog, junglechicken, BBC, lds.org... this list can be longer or shorter.

I'll work on the logo here at home, unless Mindy or Eric or Laurel or one of our other artists wants to draw it.

Jared mentioned a family mission statement. Should that be on our main page? What should it be?

Love,
Dad

Web Design.

I've been playing with a few designs for the homepage. What I've come up with has a sidebar on each side with links, and when you click on them the new page opens in the middle with those sidebars still visible. On one side is the links to everyone's individual pages for pictures, etc. On the other side there are links to Mom's history page, a collaborative cookbook, the Question of the Day Blog, and what I call the "Artist's Forum" for creative writing and paintings and cartoons and whatever else creative we come up with. There will also be links to outside websites such as the BBC Meltdown, junglechicken.com, lds.org, and anything else deemed worthy for inclusion. The initial homepage in the middle would have the tree logo (if someone will scan it or recreate it and e-mail it to me or post it here) as well as any important announcements -- wedding dates, pregnancies, Mt. St. Helens erupting, etc. I know it all sounds very complicated, but I've done this kind of stuff before and it looks really neat. It's time to show off what someone other than Eric can do. (No offense bro.)

This is what Mom and I came up with in our brainstorming session. Any other thoughts or ideas?

Mom's answer

Tell about your own family traditions: Christmas, birthdays, graduations, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, hunting, funerals, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, weddings, etc.

For many of the listed days we have no particular traditions, but for others we have definite ones. Christmas, of course is my favorite holiday. We set up our Christmas tree and decorate the house right after Thanksgiving. That way we are in the holiday spirit all month long. We generally take the tree down right after the New Year starts. I love caroling and taking treats to our friends. Reading the Christmas story and singing carols on Christmas Eve is a carry-over from my childhood. A fairly recent addition to our Christmas traditions is having Christmas Dinner on Christmas Eve so I can relax and enjoy Christmas without spending the day in the kitchen.
The menu for Thanksgiving and Christmas is pretty much the same: turkey, potatoes, gravy, rolls, green salad and fruit salad, with pumpkin and apple pie and ice cream for dessert. Sometimes there are a few other things added in if other relatives join us. We generally play games while we’re waiting for the meal and afterward. We DON’T watch football.
Mother’s Day and Father’s Day breakfasts in bed have always been fun. Fourth of July picnics and fireworks are special but they aren’t set in stone. Sometimes we don’t follow the tradition and that’s fine. For birthdays the birthday person gets to choose dinner on their special day and we have cake and ice cream.

Mount Saint Helens

Today, at 12:03, Mount Saint Helens erupted. There had been tremors recorded at the volcano for the past week, and today it finally blew. It wasn't too big; the eruption only lasted about twenty-four minutes. It was all over the news here, but I didn't know if any of you heard.

Love,
Emily

P.S. Now go read my book

Now THIS is lobbying

The big huge "implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations" debate is on the Senate floor this week. Cheye and a couple of other NCSL head lobbying people are on Capitol Hill (I expect in the Senate office buildings) literally going from one office to another opposing a couple of specific amendments. I'm plugged into my headphones tracking the debate on the floor via C-SPAN (which shows a little TV monitor on my computer screen), and talking to Cheye on his cell literally every 30 minutes. At one point, he called and said he'd just come out of an office that is in favor of the amendment, so I had to call our people in that state immediately to get them to call the Senator to oppose it, and then fax them our talking points. It's taken me 10 minutes just to type this paragraph because I had to stop and send a couple of emails here and there about this thing. Lobbying, usually, is not this fast-paced and multi-faceted all at the same time. It's interesting! The speeches are still going (and will all week), but right now, not about something we're so concerned with, so I can take a minute.

My thought about the homepage is pretty basic - our Insanity Inc. logo that we had on all those shirts with the 2 palm trees and 8 rays on the sun, a current picture of everyone, and a list of links sorted by our order in the siblings with family ones like the blog at the top. Nothing complicated. Just something that looks nice and has the links organized so they're easy to figure out.

I'll post about the traditions later - it's been something I've been thinking about since last spring ... remembering what we did as kids, and what I want to either start or continue. I haven't settled on anything solid yet, beyond "decorate for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving" (that's definitely happening - with lots of lights), so I'll get back to you on this one.

Traditions

Before I talk of traditions, Jared is finished with college on December 18, 2004. His graduation is not until Sunday, February 27 at 3PM. Everyone in my family went to community college or technical schools, so this will be the first university graduation I will go to. Hooray!

My family's traditions were generally very low key, possibly with a touch of down home-county. At Christmas, we went to my grandparent's small frame house. Normally 80-100 people would show up and sit on any available floor space. For the down home part, banana pudding, macaroni, and dumplings were always served along with ham and more traditional fixings. Of course, the football game was always on no matter what holiday it was. Presents was generally a free for all at my parent's house Christmas morning. I don't know, my memories of holidays and such are good ones. We never really took vacations, but we went to Six Flags and local attractions a lot. That was fun.

As far as traditions I want in my family, hmm. I guess those form over time and then without knowing it you have a tradition. I'm generally opposed to trick-or-treating, because it is dangerous. Instead, we go to a fall festival with candy, stories, bounce houses, games, ect. That's more fun any way. For Christmas, I love going to the light parade each year. I love parades for 4th of July, New Years, Christmas, Thanksgiving, anytime. I would like to buy a tent and start camping in the spring and fall when the weather is nice. I guess that could be a tradition. Since, Bryan loves sports so much, I see that in the future also. Well, don't want to ramble on forever.
Michelle

The First Page

Good morning everybody (well, good afternoon to Trina and Adam),

I've heard from both Trina and Jared (via Mom) about a homepage for the website other than the blog. Personally, I don't mind having the blog as the hompage with links on the right side to the new features we create. However, this is not MY website, but ours. So, we will need to come to some agreement about how the website should be organized. You can create your own pages in your own folder (e.g. insanityinc.net/emily) and do whatever you want to do there, but the blog and the homepage are community property.

Disagreements on this are a little tricky though, since we are all adults here, but if Mom and Dad are willing, it would be nice to have them act as the final decision makers once all the input has been put in (including their own).

So let the discussion begin! What should the homepage be, what should be on it, who should create it, and when should it be done? (Am I missing any questions?) If we agree that the blog should NOT be the homepage, then I'll switch over to a temporary homepage that will be replaced with whatever we come up with. Also, this doesn't have to be permanent. We can always come up with a new homepage every year or something.

Also, I'm preparing a document on how to access the FTP site (and some basics on HTML and webpages for the newbies among us). This will go out via email in PDF format. If you would prefer Word format, let me know.

Okay, that's all for now. Take care, I love you, read Emily's book, listen to conference, and that's all.

Love, Eric

Update on the Story

Dear family,

The second chapter of The Elfmarked has arrived. BUT before you read that you must read the NEWLY EXTENDED first chapter. Otherwise, the second chapter will not make any sense, because it picks up where the new scene in the first chapter left off.

Emily

P.S. Chapter Three: "Departure" should be coming soon, probably Friday and if not then Monday. I hope you will enjoy it.

Congrats to The Expecting Ones

Congrats to Petey and Polley on their hopeful future arrivals! That's exciting!

Everything is going well here in Provo-land. I have finished the last assignment for my ASLP class. Now I just have to take the final. And then I really have to buckle down and work on my Anatomy class.

Work is going well. I love going to work every day, even with my 40 minute commute. I have borrowed Harry Potter 5 on CD and listen to it on the drive. It makes the drive much more entertaining. (I just have to keep my stereo in my car.) But it's not the commute that I love about work. I really love working with the kids. It's great. I'm almost always in the 4th grade and it is wonderful.

I have a lot of fun playing on the weekends. This past weekend we had an unofficial EFY counselor reunion. It was a blast seeing a lot of people again. And I am always goofing off with my roommates. Amy and I stayed up until 4 a.m. talking on Saturday night (and even though we slept in until 10:20, we still made it to church on time at 11:00!! But I have been trying to catch up on that sleep all week long.

Anyway, there's an update on me. Call me if you want more details (preferably on my apartment phone since I NEVER get calls on that and I still have to pay for it!)

Love,
Tawnia

Emily's book is online!

Hi All!

The first bit of Emily's book is now up on the website, and that makes it the first thing up besides the blog on the family website. I'm very happy about that. So check it out at insanity.net/emily.

And Theresa and Ray are getting married this Sunday... not much more to tell. We got an invitation and RSVP'd. I figured the news was out and about already. Sorry.

And the Angels beat Texas tonight. Yee-haw! (as it were)

Eric

This is a long question.

Sorry I didn't get this posted earlier. Last week was a bit hectic for me. I was sick with a miserable cold and even missed a day of work. I slept all day on Wednesday.

On Saturday we went to Washington for Baby Rachel's funeral. It was the most spiritual funeral I've ever been to. Max's talk on the plan of salvation was simple and profound. He elaborated on the scripture. "Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted." First he explained that we're supposed to mourn and be sad because it is an expression of our love. He then explained how we are comforted through the promises of the atonement. Both Ben and Mary spoke and their messages were also incredible. Ben shared some very spiritual experiences that I'd never heard before. Mary told about dreaming of her little girl, Rachel, when she was pregnant with Maxwell and she told about Rachel's birth and her life. There was so much love there. You really had to be there to experience it.

Afterward we all had lunch at Ben and Mary's and we went over to Sid's to get the tour of his house. It's going up and when it's finished it will be over 7,000 square feet. You'll have to go and see it. If you include the tower it's 5 stories.

Now for the question: Tell about your own family traditions: Christmas, birthdays, graduations, Fourth of July, Halloween, Thanksgiving, hunting, funerals, Memorial Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, weddings, etc. Since most of you have grown up in the same family, perhaps you can tell about traditions you want to establish in your own homes.

Hello from Emily

Eric, I've sent you the prolouge and first chapter of my story -- well, the first half of the first chapter anyway; I still need to do a little bit more revising. So, please tell the family when it is available.

I started classes today. History is going to be interesting, but I don't know about American lit yet. I still haven't figured out how the whole on-line thing really works, since teachers usually do things a little differently. Clarissa is also taking classes on-line.

Love,
Emily

Theresa's wedding?

This is the first I've heard of it - details?

We're fine too. I also went to the Relief Society broadcast on Saturday, along with doing some stuff for work at home. Yesterday - one of our home teaching families - their 8-year-old son was baptized so we went to that right after church. Our home teachers came over. I slept for a long time. That was nice.

Mom, are we getting another question? The pet one seems to have been answered, even though we haven't heard from Jared and Michelle yet about the guinea pig. What did Brooke name it? I can't remember, but it was funny.

P.S. Eric, Adam still can't post. He's signed on and all, but when he goes to blogger.com, there's nothing there. No option to post to our blog. Now what?

Is everyone okay?

No posting over the weekend hey?

I hope everyone is okay. Laurel and I are well. We had a nice weekend here in sunny CA. I was sick last week, but felt better this weekend. We worked on Laurel's website Saturday (there's nothing up yet, so don't check it) and Laurel went to the RS broadcast. Yesterday I went hometeaching all afternoon, and we went to Rachel's at night. The Angels won Saturday and Sunday, so I'm baseball-happy anyway.

We're looking forward to conference and Theresa's wedding this weekend. Plus this Thursday we're going to the college (CSUF) where a guy who took a solo trek to the North Pole will be speaking.

And that is all from us. Again, we hope everyone is happy and well.

Love, Eric

Emily's Book

Hi Emily!

Check your email, because I wrote you a message about posting your book on the website, but not on the blog. If you want to start sending me chapters (to my allvantage email address) this weekend, that'll be great since I'll be working on Laurel's website this weekend as well as a practice site for school, so I'll be in web development mode tomorrow.

I don't think any of us really knows what it takes to get a book published because none of us have done it. I know it's like a lot of creative activities... there's a lot of people who want to do it, and it's hard to get attention. I don't know about writing, but I know in art it generally helps to have some sort of agent, a representative, to sell your work. Same thing with acting and most other creative endeavors. Beware of scams, but maybe start doing some research on literary agents, maybe those who specialize in Sci-Fi and Fantasy.

Also, I know there are magazines and compilations out there that might be a good bet for getting "discovered". Publishers are running a business and they only want to buy what they can be reasonably assured they can sell. Someone with a proven track record (published somewhere) is a better bet than someone who has never been published. Keep working on those short story contests, big and small... I think they're your best bet.

And don't give up! Keep working on your craft and writing the stuff you would love to read.

Love, Eric

back to Emily

Because it's your story, yes, I will read it. If it were anyone outside our family (I would also read anything by any of our other siblings, like Jared's Star Wars story), I would have to politely decline.

P.S. I just emailed you about this as well.

To Trina

So -- do you want to read my book or not?

avid readers

Yes, I am an avid reader - I'm currently an avid reader of state laws about medical malpractice lawsuits. Fuuuuuuuuun ...

I've said this before, and I'll say it again: the way to get into the writing industry, or any industry or profession for that matter, is TALK TO PEOPLE ALREADY IN IT. In politics and government, it's all about "who you know." I did not get my DC job based on my qualifications. I got my job because of Ramona, and I met Ramona because of Karyn, and I met Karyn because I got off my butt and joined Model UN. My qualifications help me keep my job. They did not help me get my job.

It's the same thing for writing. Your first step should have been, and still should be, to get involved in some of the online message boards in the writing community. Those people will tell you much better than any of us how to write a novel better. From there, I'm sure you can meet people in Portland. You are not going to publish your books by locking yourself in your room chained to that old computer. While we, your fantastic family, are indeed avid readers and probably really good editors as well, we don't know anyone already in the writing community.

For your book in particular, I would just advise you to be ready to accept a lot of criticism because that's exactly what you've asked for, and don't get upset when people tell you what could be better about your story. As for me - quite frankly, fantasy books do not interest me. I enjoy fantasy movies - Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, etc ... But the books are very difficult for me to get through.

And this advice goes to everyone, no matter what job you want (or if you also want to publish a book). You need to meet people in your chosen profession. Skills and talent will take you far, but only so far. You also need connections.

Thank you for your patience in reading my rant. *end soapbox mode*

Concerning elves

Okay, fambly.

I've finished yet another manuscript for a fantasy novel (entitled The Embodiment of Magic, Book One of the Elfmarked Trilogy) which I shall attempt to have published. (If anyone has any ideas how to get into this industry, please feel free to tell me.) I am now looking for people to read it, sort of a test run. Yes, you can review the spelling and the grammar, but any computer can do that. I really need someone to tell me if it makes sense. Does the plot flow smoothly? Did someone's eye color suddenly change in the middle of the story? What did you think about the different characters? Did I use the same phrase seven times on one page?

So, how should we go about doing this? Should I e-mail you the individual chapters, or do you want all 72 pages (single spaced) in one massive e-mail? Should I post it on the blog one page at a time? Should I send you one chapter and refuse to send the next until you tell me how you liked the first?
How many of you will read it and give me feedback?

I know you are all very busy, but I also know that everyone in my family is an avid reader. Really, it's up to you if you want it in one or twenty e-mails. Remember, if you don't respond, I won't send it to you.

Love,
Emily Palmer, Author

Scripture of the week: D&C 88:119

 

missionaries

Just a random sidenote - Neil Tolman gets home from his mission today, and Paco Nava leaves the MTC for Russia today. They're probably both already on planes as I type this. And Tren Nowling got his call to Venezuela. He reports to the MTC on Nov. 3. So I'm still maintaining my "quota" of 2 missionaries. I don't believe I've ever NOT had a missionary to write to since my friend Kevin left on his mission 3 months after I turned 18. Crazy.

Mindy, I should send a package to Paco soon, since his birthday just passed (and I didn't even send him a letter - SHAME on me!) and Christmas is coming. What should I send him that he can't get in Russia? What did you wish you had when you were there? I haven't done very well with writing letters consistently in about the last year (since just before I left Oregon, so Adam can't be blamed for that), but I really need to get back on the ball. Tren and Paco aren't just buddies or friends - they're my Montana family ... who I'm really missing right now, so I'm going to shut up and get to work.

I had different pets in my childhood

I never had a pet of my own but we had several family pets during my growing up years. When I was little I remember my mom’s dog Skipper who had about 20 puppies. We had other dogs, too. When we moved to St Paul Street I don’t know what we did with the dogs but they didn’t go with us, except for Buster. He was part German Shepherd, part Collie, I think, and supposedly part wolf. He was everyone’s best friend at our house. One time, when Sylvia was three or four, our neighbor boy, about the same age, had come over. He was riding his trike and chasing Sylvia around the yard. All of a sudden Buster grabbed him by the seat of his pants and stopped him from moving. He ran home crying, “Buster bit me!” There was not a mark on him because Buster only caught his clothes. Another interesting story was when someone came to our home while we were gone. He’d been there several times and thought he would just come into the house, which was never locked, to wait for us. Buster barked and growled and wouldn’t let him in.. Not too long after that some of Dad’s relatives came while we were at church. When we got home they were inside waiting for us. Dad was shocked that Buster let them in. He either recognized them as family or he knew who to trust and who not. When we moved from St Paul Street, after 8 years, we left Buster behind. Dad figured he was too old and too independent to move with us.
Another dog we got, that we did take with us, was Nina. Speedy had gotten her while he was working in the forest service. She was a Brussels Griffon, a very tiny dog with short light brown hair. He got her when she was a puppy and she was constantly picking at Buster. If he got tired of it he would just walk away. He never hurt her. Speedy left for college the fall after he brought her home so she became our dog. We lived in Arizona when she got pregnant. Our neighbor was very worried that she’d have one or two puppies and it would kill her. But when the time came for her puppies to be born there were 6 tiny puppies. Daddy could hold all of them in one hand at the same time. One died, and four we gave away. We kept one but I can’t remember his name. He was a black and white fur ball, who grew to nearly twice the size of his mama. A few years later, after we had moved to Washington again, Nina got sick and died.
My mom also had Parakeets while I was growing up. The first one I know of was Roscoe. He was a very fun bird. Mom was teaching him to say “pretty baby” when Sylvia angrily corrected her. She said, “That’s not a baby, I’m your baby. That’s a bird!” One time, when my cousin Susannah was visiting she heard a wolf whistle as she walked into the kitchen. She asked which of my brothers had whistled at her and didn’t believe them when they said it was Roscoe; especially because he wouldn’t do it again. We had a game, similar to checkers, called Teko. Whenever anyone tried to play the game Roscoe would fly down and push the pieces onto the floor. He loved to fly free. Once he was on the floor and someone accidentally stepped on his tail and pulled out most of his tail feathers.
My mom had a few other birds over the years, including one named Teko. After I was married Dad gave her a bird. She was trying to figure out what to name it. Dad was always trying to convince us kids to name a son Guy, so Frank suggested Mom name the bird Guy, which she did. Daddy got his Guy and he never bugged us about using that name again.

here kitty kitty

Besides all the other kittens we adopted (for very brief amounts of time), and the rodents we always tried to say, Lucky was always our first real pet. She liked to wag her tail, climb up the door, and spend as much time in the house as she could manage. There was one time when we couldn't find her .. I was reading in my room, and had set up a little display of my stuffed animals .. when suddenly one of them moved! There was Lucky, sleeping in the middle of them all. We later got Mau Mau from the Saunders, and she had her 4 kittens .. all very cute.

As for me, I've had a couple of fish. Stormy was the first (of the SSS group), and was named such because it was raining the day that I got her/him/it?. I got the fish because I had read enough books at the library's Summer Reading Program. I believe that is where Sunny came from too, but Spot was a little bit nicer - angel-tailed or something like that. Last summer I had another fish - which I named Little Buddy. It was originally Amber's beta .. which Nathan had .. and then they broke up .. and he still had it .. so I adopted it. Miraculously he lived, even when he jumped onto the counter when I was changing his bowl. He died though, shortly after I left for Canada.

The only other pet I really had was while I was in Russia. My family got a little french bulldog puppy .. Shayla. She was a handful, a pain to potty-train, whimpered all the time, and loved to chew on people's pant legs and slippered feet. My Russian Mom got tired of it quickly, and gave her away.

I'll try and get Jason to the computer to answer the pet question .. I know he's got several interesting stories about pets he's had in the past, including his pirhana "Angry Over-sized Goldfish."

We've had the first snow of the season yesterday! Nothing stuck, and it only snowed for about 15 minutes, but it was really snow. And then this morning there was frost on the ground. Once the sun comes out though, the weather is beautiful.

all the same pets

Well, see there Emily, you put a new angle on the question. We all had the same pets (if we were home at the time), so everyone can say what they remember about them. I remember that you younger kids got the fish right around the same time I left on my mission, and in my first area, I got a cassette tape of everyone talking. Nathan gave a fine impression of sorrowful wailing as you told me that the fish had gone to the great toilet bowl in the sky. Lucky came along right before I came home from my mission, and we had her all that next summer. The thing I remember most about her is that Dad meant for her to be an outside cat. She wanted to be an inside cat, so she'd get in every chance she got (and Mom was sometimes rather slow in putting her back out). I would always find her sleeping in the laundry bins that used to be above the washer and dryer, usually in the load that had Mom's nice silky garments.

Eric, please get Laurel to post about your pets. I would so love to hear The Adventures of Petey and Polly!

Lucky

The problem with this question is that all of us know what pets we had -- a few stray cats like Bob, and then there was Lucky, and Mau Mau and her kittens: Snake (who was later renamed Spurs), Sparky, Sally, and Butchess.

There were also a few fish we named Sunny and Stormy and Spot. Clarissa named the fish Spot because it was a spotted fan tail, and yes it did have spots. Sunny was yellow and Stormy was silver. But then, these weren't technically my fish.

Lucky was my favorite cat. She would jump up on the windows on the door and meow really loudly if we didn't feed her. And once she got in under the house and came in through the bathroom.

Emily

The last day of summer

Well, sad to say that today is the last day of summer. I just looked at my calendar and it says that Autumn begins tomorrow. Also, for our Jewish readers, Yom Kippur is Saturday. It was a great summer. Trina and Adam got married, Nathan and Amanda got married, Laurel and I celebrated our 7th anniversary and my 30th birthday. Laurel and I went to five baseball games, went to the beach a few times with our friends, and went swimming a lot.

But I am excited for Autumn. Maybe it's because it doesn't really get all that cold here. This morning all the windows were open and the wind was blowing pretty hard. It was just dawn. The sun wasn't up but it was light out. Laurel and I both woke up and got a drink of water and closed all the windows. I could see the trees swaying in the wind and could feel the breeze. It wasn't quite warm and wasn't quite cool. Room temperature. Perfect.

It's a beautiful day today. The last day of summer.

About pets, we have two birds, as many of you know. One bird is Petey and one bird is Polly. Polly has just started laying eggs, and Laurel has been very concerned with making sure she has a nest and is taking care of her eggs. I'll leave it to her to tell you more about her pets. Laurel is a real animal lover and I am... well, I am my father's son.

Take care and have a beautiful day.

Eric

the pet question

All the pets that surfaced in the Palmer house showed up after I was gone. So we never had a pet when I was there. Maybe the outdoor cats - I remember naming kittens. But then we gave them away.

Adam is allergic to cats and dogs - the last month before we were married, he stayed with his friend Cory who has a cat. Adam would stay here at the apartment with me as late as he could, then drug himself up on Benadryl and drive to Cory's before he fell asleep. As soon as he woke up, he would immediately come back to the apartment. And even with all of THAT, he was still sick. Soooooo ... our pet is a stuffed Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland, which sits on the back of our couch with his big grin. He's the perfect pet - we can cuddle him and he doesn't scratch us, or make messes to clean up, or stink, or need to be fed ... Maybe we'll get a fish later - for now, we don't have anywhere to put it.

And back to Christmas - I would like to get an Ensign subscription for anyone who does not have one. This garbage of "I can read it on the computer" is stupid - no one ever does. But when it's a magazine that you can hold in your hands and it sits around in front of your face if you don't put it away, or surfaces unexpectedly when you're cleaning - you're much more inclined to read it. And it's very good - I think it's important to have in your homes. So please let me know of who does not get the Ensign. Also, Jared - do you get the Friend for the kids? Anyone who DOES already get the Ensign, yes, I will think of something else to get for you. No worries.

Love, Trina

Pets

Ummm... well, since my parents never really let us have pets, the only pets I remember are the stray cats we fed (including some little wild kittens even before Lucky) and some goldfish. But these weren't MY pets.

If I were to get a pet, I don't know what I'd get.... because I like a lot of different animals. It wouldn't be any sort of reptile or rodent or bird. (I just don't think I could handle something that could fly around and poop on my head.) It would most likely be a cat or a dog... but I think rabbits are kind of cute... or hedgehogs or turtles or frogs or fish or hamsters or horses... I enjoy going to pet stores and looking at the animals. I even had someone offer me a Petsmart card (it's so you can get all the good deals) but I said I didn't need one.

-Tawnia

I'm a tree, too

Mindy, I didn't think this would be a boring question. I just thought of the idea of posting them, after I had written this one, so I started with the next question. It's interesting that you wrote about a willow tree. Here's what I wrote:

I think I would be a willow tree. I remember one house we lived in when I was a teenager that had a willow tree in the backyard. I loved that tree. I’d never had one in my yard and I always thought they were beautiful. I loved the leaves that came nearly to the ground and formed a private world where you could forget your troubles. I would sit under it and watch the beautiful patterns of the shadows on the grass. Willow trees seem so serene. I guess that’s the way I want to be. Calm and serene even in life’s storms. They may beat me around but I can withstand anything. Yeah, I think I’d be a willow tree.

It looks like lots of you have responded to the last question, so here's another one to work on. Tell about any pets you had as a child. (Or any you've had since then)

The other question . . .

Mom did ask two questions: What kind of tree would you be? AND what were your early romances?

My earliest romance is . . . over.

Jonathon Coultas was in love with me, but I wasn't in love with him. We've been writing e-mails for some time, and we'll probably continue writing, even if we don't date. I had to dump him, not an easy thing to do.

Love,
Emily

...but they never hear me!

I liked Trina's idea of being a Christmas Tree! Very nice. My idea concerning Christmas, is the same as Jared's .. let everyone do what they will. I've already got ideas for what I'm doing .. I've had this figured out since LAST Christmas. I can work on a list for everyone else though, since there are few things that I could use! I wish I could say that I can come down to Oregon for Christmas, but I don't see that happening. NEXT Christmas perhaps, but not this one. Thanks Trina, now you've got me all excited about the holidays .. and it's only September!

...I talk to the stars....

I don't know what kind of tree I would be. I like the Christmas tree idea, but I also like big strong trees like oak or pecan or cherry. Oh, let's face it. I'd probably be a bonsai tree. In keeping with my title, this is called the tree of a thousand stars:

As for the Christmas ideas, I'd say leave each to their own devices. We're all on different budgets, and most of us now have in-laws too which are just as much part of the family.

I guess that's all from me.

116 days until Christmas

I am a Christmas tree, with white lights and ... I haven't decided what kind of ornaments yet. But definitely all white lights. Call me weird, but I have been all excited since January about decorating for Christmas. After Adam proposed and it sunk in that we were getting married, I was absolutely ecstatic that I get to decorate for Christmas. Not that I'm complaining about how Mom decorates and our family traditions like caroling and all, because I'm not. Love it all. But now it's my turn to be creative in my own home, and to carry on traditions, and to start my own.

And on that Christmasie note, I was wondering what everyone wants to do about gifts. The reason I bring this up now is because I'd like to have everything in the mail by December 1st. We have a couple of different options - we can draw names by family (Trina and Adam get Mindy and Jason) OR we draw names individually (I get Laurel and Adam gets Emily). You get the idea from the examples. Mom and Dad can do that and post the list of who has whom. OR everyone can just do their own thing, depending on their finances this year. Personally, I'm planning to get something for Mom and Dad, and for Brooke and Bryan, but beyond that, I'll go with whatever the plan is.

So what does everything think? It's the end of September ... time to build the wish lists and start shopping. Yay!

Love, Trina

... But they never listen to me...

Just continuing on with Mindy's subject... if anyone was wondering.

If I were a tree I would either be a lilac tree, because they are pretty and smell good and lilacs are my favorite flower or if you want to consider them lilac bushes and therefore not a tree... then I would be a Quaking Aspen, because I know what those are and they have them in Utah, though I don't believe they are actually native to Utah and they are cool.

-Tawnia

Concerning Trees

Mindy, I remember playing with the willow branches on our way to school and herding the pretend bugs. We named them. And I remember the clubs -- we seemed to have so much fun making up names for our clubs, rules, and strange initiation ceremonies that I don't think we ever had a third meeting of any of them. We would just come up with a new club the following week.

Anyway, concerning the trees -- I think I would be a filbert tree. Why? Because I am small, Oregon grown, and very nutty! I think the hazelnut is the Oregon state nut. Or is it Dad?

Love,
Emily

I Talk to the Trees ....

Referring back to the last question, I noticed that a LOT of people mentioned drama class and plays and such. I was in two plays in middle school, and was in Drama club my freshman year (a few friends were in it), but nothing more ever came of it. I was also in French club (again, because I had a friend in it), even though I was in German class. But then, I never would have had the chance to eat Escargot!

After reading the new question, my first thought was, a willow tree. I've always thought they were such beautiful trees .. and we always had so much fun playing under the one that used to be at the bottom of the hill (which had to get cut down because it was leaning, obstructing our view, and it would have had to go anyway, because the road was put in). We could stand underneath it, and no one could see us from the park .. and we burried a bird underneath it (not to mention our 3 mice further down in the park). I really missed that tree. And then there's the willow up Market St. right before the railroad tracks. I would always grab at the branches .. and I remember one time when Emily and I were walking (to school?) and I got a long flimsy branch (more like a skinny whip), and pretended that I was herding bugs the whole way. See .. you thought it'd be such a boring question, but it brought back a lot of memories of my childhood. Another memory that doesn't have to do with trees, but was inspired by the question anyway(besides all the animals we tried to save), was playing in the long grass in the park. One summer they just never got around to mowing it or something, and because we were so short, we could make trails and rooms and everything through it, and crawling on our hands and knees, no one could see us. That was probably the easiest fort we ever made. (Okay, I won't even get started on the million clubs and forts that me, Nathan, and the Symolons made.)

Mom's Turn

Welcome aboard Amanda. It's great to learn new things about you. You'll have to show me the rocking chair the next time you invite us over.

After reading Trina's email, I called Nancy, (Adam's mom) to find out how things are going. They now have water but probably won't have power for two to three weeks. She sounded upbeat. Everyone is safe and that's the most important thing. They are under a 24 hour curfew right now, which means everyone needs to just stay home so the emergency crews can clean things up.

Here is my answer to the latest question:
I wasn't very popular and I didn't date much in high school but I did have some fun times. During my teen years we lived in several different places. When I was 13 we moved from Bellingham Washington to Phoenix, Arizona, but because our truck broke down I started the 8th grade in Idaho and then went to Arizona and in the spring we moved back to Washington where I finished the school year at Lynwood Jr. High.
I also attended the 9th grade there. I remember how much fun seminary was. I especially enjoyed the annual seminary cruise that spring. We went on a boat in Puget Sound and visited a couple of the islands. It was interesting going through the locks to get into the sound and seeing the old fort on one of the islands. I really loved being on the boat. Maybe that’s why I want to go on a cruise, someday.
The following summer we moved to Monroe, Washington. There I went to high school, at last. I got a ride every morning from the seminary teacher. It was nice living in a small town where I could walk to the theater, library or store. I remember going to see Pollyana, and I can’t remember any of the other movies.
The next summer we moved once more, this time to the big city of Everett. I enjoyed hanging out with the girls across the street and going roller-skating with them on Saturday nights. Later we moved to another house where I could walk to high school. I was in the drama club and took a drama class. My junior year I worked backstage during “Romanoff and Juliette”. Our drama club put on a play at Christmas and that was the only one I was in. My senior year I worked in the library after school so I couldn’t be in any plays or other after school activities, but I did go to one football game, Homecoming, which we lost miserably and it poured. I enjoyed going to the basketball games. That was a sport that made sense.

I was going to post the next question I drew "Tell about your early romances." But with all the newlyweds maybe we should hold off on that touchy topic. I'll give you the very first one I drew, which is the only one I didn't post. "If you could be a tree, what kind of a tree would you be, and why?"

The day you have all been waiting for...

No joke everyone - I'm finally writing on the blog!

This is Amanda

and this is my first appearance :c)

I'm kind of bummed to write after such a sobering email from Trina about Adam's family and everything that's happening down there. We'll be praying for them and I know you'll keep us updated. Man...makes me grateful that the church is so focused on food storage and disaster preparation. I really hope they'll be ok.

Nathan may have been purposefully trying to irritate me into writing by putting the subject line that he did. I do NOT hate it when he posts on the blog...but we usually do read it all at once, which does take forever...so i do just want to go do something else after...but I don't hate it!!

Perhaps I'll write a looooong post to make up for all of my lost time. Hmmm...well for the moment I just want to update everyone on my accomplishments - I'm now an official Oregon resident with license, new title and plates for my car, and my new social security card is in the mail. Everything is all changed at school, the banks, the post office, and with health insurance. I got new car insurance that includes Nathan and added him to the title of my car (cuz we're selling his since we wont' really need two).

Things are going very well for us - people always ask how married life is, and I must say it is great fun! We hang out, attempt to cook things, play games, watch movies, occasionally go places and see other people, and work a lot...I'm going to school full time and Nathan starts next week.

Next year we're hopefully moving to Corvallis to both go to OSU. I really really really want to get into a Master's program there in College Student Services Administration. I'm not sure what else I'll attempt besides that, but I really hope I get in. If I do, Nathan will transfer to OSU also.

Um...my high school years were very exciting - senior year especially - I was in two plays, I was the Peer Mediation Coordinator at my high school, front page editor of the school paper, and I did a lot of stuff with my LDS friends (at that point, I was a wannabe). My teenage years were eventful, full of many many ups and downs, highs and lows that I'm glad to have gotten through.

I played the piano for six years when I was little - but she never taught me like chords, or how to read music particularly well, or how to put together notes in regular patterns, or how to memorize things...so basically I learned 6 years of specific songs, and memorized pretty much nothing. I can read music and I enjoy playing really simple things...but I would not consider myself talented. I've played the guitar somewhat on my own, and I think I understood more why my teacher didn't teach me chords or how to put together patterns or anything, cuz really all I like to do on the guitar is play the melody notes of songs...though I have memorized quite of few of the melodies of the "Hymns Made Easy" from that green book. I also am rather talented at playing the jaw harp, though I don't actually own one.

One heirloom I have is my great-grandma's rocking chair. She had it since she was a very little girl and it is a fairly little rocking chair. She passed away this year, the night before Trina's wedding actually, when she was 97, so it is quite an old rocking chair. We don't sit in it very much, but I like having it around...it is special to me. From my dad's side of the family, I also have a ring that was my grandma's before she passed away. On it, she had a birthstone for each of her children and grandchildren. She only had two children and four grandchildren so that was a little simpler than it would be in some Palmer families I could name!

There are probly some other questions that I'd like to answer, but I gotta go - like one of my favorite family vacations - but there will be time. Now that I've written once, you'll NEVER get rid of me!! haha...anyways...

Take care everyone!

Love,

Manda

Hurricane Ivan

The latest hurricane to hit Florida - now all sections of the state have been nailed - went through Pensacola, where Adam's mom and sisters are. There is no power anywhere in that part of the state - the power plant itself sustained a lot of damage, so there's not even a SOURCE of power once the lines are back up. The interstate bridge was destroyed, so there's only one road in and out of Pensacola now. There's also no running water in some parts of the city. Nancy has a pole-barn behind the house (basically a 3-sided garage) which was destroyed when a big tree came down on it. Other trees came down, and some are leaning and need to be taken down so they don't land on the house. She's basically barricaded in because the driveway, which is lined with trees and shrubs, is completely blocked.

We've talked to Nancy and all the girls that are living with her, and Adam's sister Clara who lives in the area as well. In spite of the physical damage to everything, they're all fine, and we hope they have enough food storage to get them through the next few weeks.

Life as a Teenager

My teenage life wasn't too bad. Noticing the Trina said that she really felt like it was only high school, and anything after was YSA, I understand for her, since her YSA career lasted a bit longer than mine. Teenager time for me was high school AND college .. and then I was married 3 months after turning 20. I had plenty of friends in high school .. I always had people to eat lunch with (a big group), and I always went to the movies and hung out with Jenna and Ashley. I never did sports, but was big into choir and art. More prominent in memory was my other "after school activities" .. boys! Although most of this was over the internet, I did have a boyfriend (Derek) for just shy of 2 years. I had lots of internet "boyfriends" (Trina and Clarissa probably know the most about them) .. just lots of different guys I talked to online. I even ended up with a guy I talked to online (although we were introduced through friends), so I'm pretty happy with how things turned out. I went to college for a little over a year .. not the happiest time in my life, but I learned a lot anyway. The coolest part of being a teenager though (besides getting engaged, and getting my driver's license the day before my 20th birthday) was my trip to Russia. Four months in central Russia, teaching the cutest bunch of kids .. visiting St. Petersburg .. it was just the coolest thing ever.

Michelle's teenage stuff

Well, I too was married when I was 19. So after high school, I pretty much jumped into married life. I absolutely loved high school. It was great fun. My teenage year were some of the best times of my life. No bills and very little responsibilty-just homework. I was squad leader of the freshman drill team. I did a lot of theater. I performed in over 20 plays. My senior year I was on student counsel. Planning and decorating for homecoming was really fun. I was also vice-president of the non-denominational christian group. That was a great experience. I learned a lot about a number of religions. Speaking of church stuff, I was also seminary president. I also was actively in cultural emphasis, where we learned about other cultures and encouraged tolerance among the student body. And I dated quite a bit. Funny thing is that I was deathly shy in elementry and middle school. I was brutily teased and had maybe 1 friend. I am thankful for my high school experience, it really helped me open up. Well, I need to return a call from my internet answering machine. Bye!

Michelle

teenage life

Mom, my "pff" wasn't about the question itself, it was my response to the question. I know you pull the questions out of a jar.

Upon further reflection, the thing that stands out the most from being a teenager is pep band. That was tons o' fun. I did do a lot of things - the school paper for 4 years (copy editor my junior year, and news editor my senior year), track team manager for 3 years, band for 7 years including being in the orchestra for "Oklahoma" ... my friends were Cherilee and Traci, and a few other not so memorable people (since I don't really remember them). We met in band in 7th grade - Cherilee was my stand partner in the flute section, and Traci played the clarinet. It's so far away ... it's honestly just images. Even though I was still a teenager for a while after high school, I consider high school to be "teenage" life, and everything after that to be YSA life, no matter what my age was at the time.

I did get back in contact with Cherilee and Traci because of the wedding, which is really cool. I hadn't seen them since I was 19 (and we went to a Richard Marx concert for Cherilee's 20th birthday), and they came to the bridal shower and reception.

Amanda hates it when I post on here

The reason that Amanda hates it is because we do not read this for a few weeks so we spend at least an hour reading to get caught up on all of the news. By the time we are done reading, she just wants to make out. But I am like, "Hey. Let me post." But I am weak. That is why I usually only post from Mom and Dad's computer. When we do read, we usually each read every other. As Aman reads, I try to guess who wrote it, and as I read, she tries to guess who wrote it. I think I know my family better than she does. It may be because I have known you guys a little longer than she has. But that is no excuse. She claims that she will try harder. I think that she will succeed. English is such a hard language to have to write in. If I hadn't grown up speaking it and writing it, I probably would not be from around here. Maybe from cananda or something.

Anyways... I like musical instruments. I played the trumpet for a few months, and then switched to the tuba. I have always wanted to play the drums though. I always enjoyed playing around on the computer with the music programs and making obnoxious music. That may be the closest I ever get to playing some of the instruments that I have always wanted to learn.

I like to think that when I was growing up in High School I was a pretty cool kid. I was in lot of band things, and my senior year I was in swimming and track. I was also in one play. So I got to do a lot of different things and meet a lot of different people.

On September 11th 2001 I was working at RB Rubber. The first I heard about the attacks was from a guy named Mark who was coming to work on day shift. He said that he heard from his wife that some planes had crashed. I still was not too sure what was going on. I went over to the Lay's after work, and watched some stuff on the television. I think that I saw one of the two towers fall live, but I am not quite sure if it was showing it again or for the first time. To me it is still unbelievable that four planes were taken over on the same day. Not only that, but they got three of them to crash into buildings. They took both towers done. Think about that. That is unbelievable. They took a chunck out of our nation's department of defense building. Right now I hear the rain beating upon the ground. It is calming and peaceful. It is going to put me to sleep in a few minutes. To me the rain is God's lullaby. It has already put Aman to sleep, and she still needs to take her medicine. So I think I will be the great husband that I am and bring her the pills she must take.

Good night everybody. You guys are the most bunch of weird people that I have had the pleasure of being related to.

Nathan

Welcome to Insanityinc.net!

Hi all!

If you're reading this, you've found the new family website.

Not quite everything from the blog has been transfered over. Most images over 100K were not transfered because my humble internet connection struggles with downloading and uploading such large files. (PLEASE keep your file sizes down! In whatever program you use, go to Image->Size or whatever and make it smaller!) I will transfer them some time but for now I need to get my homework done. I mean, let's get serious here: "Trina, Tawnia, Brooke.jpg" is 872KB! That was the biggest, but there's quite a few that are going to take up a ton of our server space.

But in other news, I think I'm just grouchy because the Angels are trailing the Mariners 3-0 in the 9th inning. (Oh! They just got a run! Now it's 3-1 with one out in the inning... they have a chance...)

Okay, now the awkward part. The website costs $10 per household. Once your check clears, you will get full rights to do whatever you want on the website. You'll be able to create folders, upload pages, whatever you want.

Dang it! The Angels lost. 3-2 with 2 men left on. Grrrr.

Anyway, here's the new site. I've heard a lot of ideas from y'all, so let's get to it!

Love, Eric

Teenagers

Tawnia's teenage life consisted of hanging out with Nikki, Rachel, Kristen, Kristi, and Terra. We would eat lunch together every day in high school (at least my sophomore through senior years.) I did the whole choir thing, went to Germany for a summer, went to BYU's Summer MusicFest, was in a few school and community plays, and was always very involved in Young Women's. And then I got OUT of high school and had an actual social life and a lot more fun because I was a lot more confident about who I was.