Busy Busy Bumblebees

Remember how I set a goal to update a blog once a week and specifically focusing on this blog? Guess what, hasn't happened. Not even a little bit. Sorry, it's been really busy lately, here's a taste of what we've been doing instead -

• I built and launched this website and also this website as freelance projects. The designs were done by a guy I work with and both had relatively quick turn-around times from start to finish. I'm really excited to be able to put them on my resume though because most of the sites that I've built personally aren't as reflective of my skills as I would like.
• Put together this video for Marie (Pearson) Tarbet. Marie and her brother do LDS music and this is my favorite song that they do. I also created their website for them - don't judge the design, this is one of those sites that shows my skills as a designer (read: no designer skills), I'm in the process of a redesign right now. Marie had put this slideshow together in Powerpoint but didn't have a good way to get it up on the web. It took a lot of back and forth just to get the right files to us but we finally got them... right as I was in the middle of all my other projects. Originally we'd thought Eric could do it but he's been busy as well so I finally was able to take it on. It's my first foray into video editing and I'm pleased with the results. It definitely took me way more time than it would have for Eric, but it was a fun project and although time consuming wasn't as complicated as anticipated.
• Sleep training.  See this post for details.
• Trying to figure out where we want to be come August.  Our lease for our condo ends in August and it looks like our current path will not be taking us to China in the imminent future so we will be needing somewhere to live.  As much as we've loved where we're living and our ward, we really think it's time for us to put down roots somewhere and buy a home.  So when our lease ends here we'll be somewhere else.  Hopefully another post in the near future will reveal where that somewhere will be :P
• Eric was called to be our ward mission leader and I was called to be a ward missionary.  Even though we'd each had significant callings previously (and Eric had two callings!) these callings have proved more time consuming than our other callings.  But we're really enjoying our new callings and the work that we get to participate in.
• We've also been setting new family schedules and rules.  This has meant that we're to bed earlier and up earlier (but don't get "earlier" confused with "early", bedtime for Sam is 10pm and for us is midnight, and we're all supposed to be up by 10am).  It's also limited the amount of media that we're partaking in which has been such a blessing since it gives us more time to be a family and do other worthwhile things!
• Watching the funnest one year old on the planet grow into a rambunctious toddler.  There's a lot to post about this though so I'm going to start a separate post about Sam so that I can get this one up before the end of the night (but I promise I'll start the Sam post immediately so that should be coming some time this week!)
• Enjoying my new Motorola Droid!  Eric got a Droid in February and I've been jealous ever since.  It only took about a month (during which my phone had been failing anyways) before I gave in and needed to get one as well.  I *love* it.  It's so great to be able to be connected to everything I need even if I'm away from the house.  This is definitely a blessing since it makes it so that I can go places with Sam without worrying that I'm going to miss an important work email or something like that. 
  
  However, one of the best things about my new phone is that it's been easier to take more photos and videos of Sam during the day.  Unfortunately I had some settings wrong or something so the focus has been really off.  So sorry that these are really low quality pictures but hopefully you can enjoy them anyway.  They're all located in a photo album on Picasa that you can get to by clicking below :)
  
  
  
  

  Samuel

  Cute pictures of Sam :)
  

Anyways, sorry for the lack of posts of late, but at least you hopefully now understand what's been keeping us so busy!  If you can't get enough of us there are other places we tend to update when we don't have enough time to write posts here.  You can check out our posts on my family's highs and lows blog or follow Eric or Sam or me on Twitter.  Or become a fan of Sam on Facebook or read Eric's tech blog or Brittny's personal blog.  Even when we're not updating here, there's generally still a fair amount to read about what we're doing ;)