Have you ever wondered how many comments you have made? Or how many people actually visit the Frame Family Blog? Well the answer to these burning questions and many more are now available on the Frame Family Blog statics page (there is also a link now on the left hand side of this blog). It gives you insight into who posts more blogs (Jen or Morgan), and which day of the week people are most likely to comment. It shows historical "Crazy Days", where the most visits/hr and comments/day were made. So if you're a data nut you can check out his page to satisfy your statistical needs.

I would like to give a shout out to my buddy Dan as he gave me the motivation to produce this reports page. We got to talking about SQL and how Dan is starting to learn it for his job, and if you know me I get really excited when it comes to SQL queries. After talking about this I realized that I don't use it on a regular basis and I'm starting to forget a lot of it. So I started to make some reporting queries to brush up on my SQL which resulted in this statics page. So enjoy this page and thanks Dan!

PS Please comment on this blog as on average Jen has 1.6 comments per blog post, while I olny have 1.2

We set a new weather record yesterday. It's not something I'm proud of, or excited about. It was a record for the latest recorded date of accumulated snow. Yes, it snowed on May 24th. ACCUMULATED snow! Luckily, it didn't last all day. Actually by afternoon, it was quite pleasant. I didn't have to go out in the snow, but I hated watching it from my window. But the saddest part was watching my big, tall, tulips collapse under the snow. You can see in the picture - all the tulips are tipped over. And our garden on the left - covered in snow. I checked this morning, and my tulips are still tipped over. I don't know if they will recover. So sad. Blasted snow in the end of May!

So, since I didn't want to go anywhere in the snow, Baby Girl and I needed something to do. So, I made some play dough. Introducing Baby Girl to play dough has been on my to-do list for a while now, and I haven't gotten around to it. I have several recipes for homemade play dough. I chose to make the one that had the fewest ingredients, and no cooking required. The recipe is: 4 cups of flour, 1 cup of salt, and 1 3/4 cup warm water. Just mix and knead it together till it feels like play dough. Baby Girl seemed to love it. I let her stand on the chairs at our kitchen table. I broke out my cookie cutters (yes, they are Christmas cutters, but it was snowing - so who cares!). I showed her how to roll the dough into a worm shape. We used a rolling pin to flatten the dough. It was a fun way to kill time and forget about the wintery wonderland that was outside!

So I've got to add a little to Jen's post. It's funny how events affect each other, even from many, many, many miles away. The winter wonderland Jen experienced here had an affect that almost drove me crazy, while at home it looked like

Looks glamorous right? WRONG! I was cooped up for four hours wishing I could break free from my airport prison. Four hours of sitting with angry strangers, four hours seeing how many times I could get through the security checkpoint, four hours of those cheesy airport announcements, four hours of...well I think you get the picture. So here is an addendum to Jen's post, and my new found respect for the butterfly effect.

At church on Sunday, our stake 'dry-councilman' was speaking. He started out by saying that religion is to "comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comforted." For the most part, I always believed that having faith in God and following His commandments brought peace to your life. And it does. But there is a whole other aspect to this too.  My already 'comforted' life is about to become 'afflicted'! I got a new calling (responsibility, role, job) in my ward on Sunday. I'm the new Primary President. I know very little about the calling, except for the fact that its a lot of work and a lot of sacrifice. I am so excited to work with the children. I have missed teaching, so this will be fantastic! But I need to learn about all the other responsibilities too. My first Sunday in, I already had several meetings. After church, we normally get Baby Girl fed then down for a nap. I had to stay for a few meetings and Morgan's job was to attend to Baby Girl. He does great with her, but a lot of times BG doesn't go to sleep when Morgan puts her down. She throws a fit because I'm not there to do it. Well, about an hour after church is over, my meetings are finished, I come home to see Baby Girl sleeping in Morgan's arms. WHAT??!!  Baby Girl NEVER does this. It was a miracle when she did this on our vacation a couple weeks ago. I was shocked! I chalk it up to a blessing from God. Honestly, if I'm having to go to meetings and fulfill other responsibilities, then my family will be blessed for it. And this is one evidence of the blessings from Heaven! Now, if we can just get Baby Girl to stay in nursery. She did fantastic for the first month. Then she went a month of missing nursery (conferences, sickness, out of town) and now she won't go back. She's fine to play in there if Morgan or I are there with her, but we leave and she has a melt down. We're talking crying so hard she starts shaking. She never lasts longer than 3-5 minutes before the nursery leaders have to bring her to us. Wish us luck, we're going to need it!

The past couple days have been gorgeous! I love the summer weather. Baby Girl and I have tried to spend as much time outside as we possibly can! It feels so good to be outdoors! Our yard is starting to come together. This summer, we actually have grass. All the trees have leaves, and its beautiful. Our backyard feels really secluded and I've enjoyed spending time there. We even have flowers! I planted bulbs last fall, and they grew! Shocker! We had excellent soil by our garage, and the tulips are huge! They are as tall as Baby Girl, it's beautiful.

We finally got our garden started this year. We don't really know how to garden, so this year will be an experiment. We got a space all cleared out. Baby Girl was such a big helper. She picked up rocks and threw them in a pile. This was fantastic, because it kept her occupied and it was actually helping! She would hold up bigger rocks and say "huge". My reply: "yep, that's a huge rock." Then she would pick up smaller rocks and say "baby". My reply: "yep, that's a baby rock." Occasionally, she would hold a 'baby' rock up to her cheek and rock it back and forth and try to pat it on the back, like she does with her babies. What a silly child. She also helped us plant the seeds for the garden. She planted most of the seeds. I would dig a hole, then she would throw a seed into the hole.

This morning, the weather was gorgeous! I was reading a book to Baby Girl where the characters were having a sleep over in a tent in their backyard. It sounded like fun, so we went to our backyard and pulled out our tent and set it up! Baby Girl thought it was the coolest thing ever. We have a little tent, that we've never used. We might as well get some use out of it. We spent the majority of the day in our tent. It was so much fun! Baby Girl loved the 'tett'. We'll have to play with it more as the summer goes on.

We survived our first major vacation with a toddler. Last week, we went on a vacation with Morgan’s parents and his little sister. They were kind enough to bring us along on a trip to Ohio. Almost everyone’s reaction to that is: Why in the world would you go to Ohio? Good question. First of all, we went to see the church history sites in Kirtland and Hiram, Ohio. Second of all, we went to Ohio because that’s where I served my mission. Makes a little more sense, right? We left last Monday and got back Saturday. It was a long, but wonderful, week. You can click HERE to see the photos of our vacation.

We had a fantastic vacation! Thank you Dave, Lisa and Ali for the great trip!

This post is a week late, but last Friday our Family entered into a Pinewood Derby contest. I did what I've always wanted to do when I was little but never had the time to do. It seemed like when you are little you only start to work on your car the day before the race, and then Dad ends up finishing it for you. So I broke out the tools, graphite lube, sandpaper, paint, and electronics -- yes I said electronics! The thing that I've always wanted to do with a pinewood derby car is give it real LED headlights and taillights. I built a small circuit with two resistors and 5 LED's consisting of two small red, two small green, and one large blue/red flashing for the police siren. Thanks to Baby Girl, by the way, for sacrificing one of her Easter toys to the cause. All the electronics were housed in the bottom of the car with a slip cover to keep all the guts intact during racing.

When it came down to race day our car was really light because it was hallowed out to accommodate the electronics. With a few fishing sinkers though we got her up to the proper weight. 3 cars raced at the same time, and to account for any inconsistencies in the track the cars were raced 3 times, once on each track (left, middle, and right) and the times averaged out. After everyone raced our car ended up in 7th place overall so we didn't end up winning any race prizes; however, we did walk away with the "most realistic car" prize.

So here's a post to our family Pinewood Derby contest and a lot of fun that we had building it -- even if it meant almost losing a finger!