She saw the iPad and said “Watch Daniel [Tiger] please.” So I handed it to her. She purposefully looked at all the folders then tapped one…then looked purposefully at the app icons and picked PBS Kids without hesitation. I didn’t even know Daniel Tiger was in the PBS kids app, let alone where it was.
Category Archives: iPhone/iPad
My guys are talking!
On the way home from errands, Owen was playing on his phone. But he needed to put his Legos somewhere… He said his Battle Droids were talking. 🙂
And a closer view so you can see it better.
These made Owen giggle!
I have an app on my phone where I can put faces in holes of characters—so I picked some Star Wars ones to surprise Owen. He loved them!
And he liked this one the best
I also did this one of Katie but it’s not that great.
And some fun with daddy and mommy!
It’s addicting!
Edited to add:
I redid this one of Owen now that I understand the app better.
To be blunt, it sucked.
We didn’t have a good night on the bed. Tom is in gray; I’m blue.
How we relax as a techie family.
Or really, how we get 20 or so minutes without the kids pestering us for something and letting us rest…
Owen’s watching the iPad Mini, Katie’s watching the Kindle Fire, and Tom is watching the Roku on the TV…I guess I could use my iPhone or the iPad if I wanted to join the group. 🙂
Oh, Siri. You know me better than I know myself.
I asked Siri to remind me to start the chicken. I like what she heard better.
And as it turned out, I should have listened…as that’s about the time my day started going to shit.
“Siri, I’m an hour late…please forgive me. I should have listened.” 🙂
I love the love.
Just hanging out
And Tom working on Gramma Jean’s computer that she hauled from Michigan so he could update it to Windows 7.
Kids being silly
Tom was playing a video on his camera and the kids were being silly!
The post-party party
We had the gang over after the gymnastics party so we could hang out and visit—with everyone’s busy schedules (and with Trimble’s living back on base instead of in the same neighborhood) we rarely get together anymore. We ordered pizza for dinner and had a few drinks while the kids played. We had Owen open his gifts sporadically throughout the night and then had him blow out candles on his cake (I had forgotten candles for the gymnastics party). He loved opening his presents and pretty much every response to every gift was an excited “WHAT!?!!” It was super cute.
Then he opened his big gift from us—a used iPhone 4—and he looked at it like “Huh?” and immediately said “Daddy, this is yours!” and tried handing it to him. He completely didn’t understand that it was for him, even after I showed him the Lego Indiana Jones wallpaper. He was just too excited about all the other Lego/Ninjago/Star Wars stuff. We should have kept it until after all the excitement of the day was over.
Building one of the smaller Lego sets he got:
Taking his birthday picture…that I didn’t technically need to do because it wasn’t his actual birthday!
Playing iPad games together
Fun with Alno and brother
I found these jammies while I was looking for something else—I swear I had pics of Owen in them but I can’t find any…
ALNO!!!
“Hello!”
She knows what a phone is!
Half the time I give her my phone for “Alno” she does this instead:
She’s too smart for her own good.
Katie was on my lap this morning trying to get my phone out of my pocket. I was ignoring her. She was babbling something but I wasn’t really paying close attention. So she gets off my lap, goes to get the Elmo doll, and brings it back saying (her version of) Elmo. Then tries for my phone again.
Then it hits me. She wants to play the Elmo app on my phone.
She’s too smart for her own good.
Phone Fun and a New Outfit
Elmo saves the day.
Katie is in 100% meltdown mode because Owen is taking a bath without her. I had to bring out something new and interesting because she WAS NOT INTERESTED in anything.
Elmo app to the rescue!
Whatcha doin’?
He’s doing something that’s making noise so she has to be right up there. (He’s practicing writing letters on the iPad.)
More photo booth fun!
Photo booth!
One of Owen’s books has photo booth strips on the back cover and tonight we talked about what that was. I have an app for that, so he got to see how they were taken!
The first picture I took…with my new phone.
Of course, it’s a kid!
And all was FINALLY well in iPhoneland.
I’m not sure what exact piece it had been missing, but this morning I had a fully restored phone complete with folders and contacts (with only a few very minor blips like missing passwords and a few previously-deleted apps that appeared again). But you can believe I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief…
My 12-hour iPhone restore drama.
Of course I’m leaving out LOTS of details…but suffice it to say it was NOT a fun experience. This was the error I kept seeing over and over and over and over…
Or it appeared to have restored, but there were no folders so I had 20 pages of apps all in a mish-mash and was missing anywhere from 10-30GB of who-knows-what depending on which restore I was on. Rebuilding from scratch was an option…just not a desired one (it probably would take a good 4-5 solid hours to get it back to “normal”). So I kept soldiering on, hoping it would finally JUST WORK.
- 11:53am—Doh! I am now without a phone for at least an hour…oops! In my excitement to get my new phone restored…I forgot it takes FOREVER. I hope there’s no pre-k emergencies today!
- 3:35pm—Well, it’s on its second full restore…I expect another three hours. I am not happy.
- 4:48pm—GRRR. I’m currently on my third restore attempt…maybe the third time will be the charm?
- 5:12pm—Same error message. A 4S iOS6 backup should work on a 5S with iOS7, right? I’m already at the point of wanting to smash this thing with a hammer.
- 6:16pm—Currently on 5th attempt. Next, I’ll try upgrading the 4S to iOS7 and THEN trying the restore.
- 8:59pm—If anyone needs to get a hold of me until further notice, email is probably the best bet. Nine hours in and I STILL don’t have a working phone…
- 11:43pm—After trying two new suggestions, I am setting it to restore one last time and going to bed…and keeping my fingers crossed.
I was posting as I went along on a forum I frequent and they were trying to help me. I’ve posted there many, many times about how technology hates me, and this was a PERFECT example. Someone posted this picture, which explains it just about perfectly (Robn is another user who always had odd issues that shouldn’t happen…but I’m obviously worse off):
Happy 40th birthday to me!
Tom gave me the okay to upgrade…and actually placed the order for me from Afghanistan since it was lunchtime there (when pre-ordering opened) instead of me having to be up at 3am here! (I know—what a guy!)
That it was scheduled to arrived ON my birthday was just…icing on the cake so-to-speak. 🙂
Oooh…it’s sooo pretty… I hate to put a cover on it but I don’t trust myself OR the kids. It’s also why I bought a warranty on it. 🙂
Pics from Afghanistan
These are from his trip over and the first week in Afghanistan. He didn’t have time to write info on each photo until recently (which I wanted before posting them) so that’s why they’re a little late.
At the military airport At Cherry Point. The snack bar closes at 6pm, but they have the troops show up at 7pm and wait for 4 hrs…WTF?
Lobsters in the Airport at Bangor. Yes, fresh Lobsters. You can see the tank at the back left in picture.
Giftshop area of Ramstein military annex.
Ramstein computer area where they allow unit graffiti.
Phone bank at Ramstein
Manas International Airport is the main international airport in Kyrgyzstan located 25 kilometres north-northwest of the capital Bishkek.
My (first) room! I now have a new room but don’t have pics yet!
The door to my room.
Angle 1
Angle 2 – you can see where I sleep and sit to Skype.
Extra bed and rifle.
Our in-room A/C unit.
The gym area outside my room.
Stairs to the second level of rooms.
The door to my room.
The pathetically see-through TP.
He made it!
Our first brief Skype:
He popped up in gmail instant messaging asking where I was. I asked where HE was! He meant he was trying to connect on Skype but I wasn’t logged on. My laptop lost its webcam somehow so I can only use the iPad, iPhone, or desktop computer…so I logged on with my phone!
It was just about two minutes—long enough to say he got there with no issues and he loves us! The connection wasn’t great—there was a big lag and I could still only make out about half of what he said. But it’s a start!
I love technology. 🙂
Goodbyes
Tom’s unit wasn’t scheduled to depart until 6:30-7, but we went about 4:30 because the waiting was just THE WORST. I knew we wouldn’t stay the entire time (to actually see them off) because I knew I couldn’t keep from breaking down that long. And it was about eleventy billion degrees and humid and the kids needed to eat dinner. Tom was perfectly okay with an early goodbye.
This is what the staging area looked like (forgive the bad pictures—I only had my phone)—piles and piles of bags and gear, hundreds of people, and lots of trucks.
Of course, now that Katie can walk, she really did NOT want to be held…so we just let her roam and she had a blast. She had a few tumbles because the ground was fairly uneven—but she didn’t let that stop her!
More than a few people commented on how cute she was, how cute her dress was, and how good she was at walking.
That’s Tom taking her picture.
Then as I was trying to get a picture of Tom and Katie, one of Tom’s buddies stepped in to take a family picture. Amazingly, he took two and one was halfway good!
Hugging daddy before getting in the car. I know he understands that Tom is leaving, but I really thought he’d be a bit more emotional—but he seemed kind of lackadaisical about it.
Then Tom and I hugged and kissed goodbye, he walked off, and I got in the car…and Owen started crying. 🙁 I got out to give him some tissue and a kiss, and of course seeing him break down made it worse for me…
THANKFULLY it didn’t last too long—we passed by a playground on the way off base and he said he wanted to go! Well, it was too late for that one (I wanted to be closer to home if either of them got tantrum-y) so I took a different route home so we could stop at a playground…
Skyping…when all hell broke loose.
Subtitled: No our kids aren’t drunk.
It started off innocently enough with Katie crawling up to see what Tom was doing.
Then she has to sidle up next to him.
Waiting for Owen’s potty break:
I definitely see Uncle Rob in these next two pics (she’s definitely a Hudson):
And just like that, all the fun ended when Katie spit up on me. Katie and Owen had apparently just played and laughed so hard for so long that Katie spit up milk chunks all over me. And not just your run-of-the-mill spit up…but horrid smelling curdled nastiness that required a quick shower to get the stench off my skin.
But overall…a good time!
Sword as light saber
Owen was pretending his new sword was a light saber, so Tom downloaded an iPhone app that makes the sound as you swish the phone. So, if you hold it to the sword as you swish…you get a light saber.
Katie and Charlie Skyping
Tom was Skyping with his mom and brother when Charlie jumped up and Katie just started going crazy with her. Charlie was pretty good—but you can tell she definitely wanted the attention.
Google maps has been overhead recently
I was checking Google maps today to see how many in-ground pools were in our subdivision (for no real reason other than it’s a question that popped into my head while driving to Costco) when I realized that our satellite view has been (somewhat) recently updated.
I love how much I can determine from what we can see:
Previously, our view was fenceless. Now? The shed is there (so, after April 2012) but there’s a dead spot in the backyard grass where the pool was (so, after October 2012) but wait!—that’s not Tom’s car OR my car in the driveway!—whose is it? Aha! Dad and Linda’s minivan! And they were there in February 2013. And from the amount of stuff on the curb, it looks like garbage pickup day so it’s a Monday morning. And Tom’s at work (hence his car not being there) and since my car isn’t there I’m guessing I was running errands.
Looking back at my calendar, Katie had a 9:00 appointment for her flu booster on Monday, February 18…so that’s when Google got us.
Creepy or cool?
