Calvin's Baby Blessing

Sunday, August 31st, Trevor had the wonderful privilege of blessing Calvin back in our ward in Utah. This blessing is an opportunity to give a child his or her name and bestow blessings on that child. This is something men perform in our church who worthily hold the priesthood. Trevor gave a wonderful blessing and it was a great experience for our family. One of the best parts was that Calvin was just smiling and laughing at Trevor the whole time during the blessing. It was like he knew quite well what was going on. :0)

Calvin is sure lucky to have FIVE great-grandparents be able to attend his blessing!




Great-grandma Black with Calvin.



Another four-generation picture. This one turned out really good!



Our family!


After the blessing and sacrament meeting we had a luncheon at Trevor's grandparents' home. It was a nice opportunity to be with family and visit with each other. We love having Calvin as a member of our family!

Calvin being cute

Here's a picture we developed of Calvin and just scanned in. He's such a cutie!

Grandma Black's 80th Birthday Party!

Last Saturday on Aug. 30th we celebrated my Grandma Black's 80th birthday! It was fun to see cousins, aunts, and uncles that I haven't seen for a while.

Calvin really does love his stuffed tiger! This is a typical reaction when we give it to him.

I love the drool action caught in this picture!

My dad with his siblings and mom. Uncle Lester, Dad, Grandma, Aunt Becky, and Aunt Laurie.

Four generations! I'm sure Calvin will appreciate this picture when he is older.

Here is Calvin with his Grandpa Black. He loves his grandpa!

Dad's 60th Luau

My dad turned 60 this year so we had a luau to celebrate on Friday the 29th. My parents were married in Laie Hawaii so this birthday was somewhat in memory of that. Alicey's birthday was a few days before so we celebrated her birthday at the same time. It was a really fun birthday party. Enjoy pictures and a special video of the event!

My dad is so cute!



Hank and Leah are like this in real life :0)




Summer tasting the punch.



Summer, Mandy and Heather (my sisters).



My grandparents Henry and Aurora Florence.



Our little family :0).



My grandpa raises cows.



Calvin perplexed by the camera (as usual).



Alicey and I playing.



Alicey got more presents than she knew what to do with. By the end she told her mom, "No more!" She just wanted to play with her new toys, not open more.



My dad doing a jig.



This is a really special song to my parents. My mom sang this song for my dad when they were married. Enjoy!

How to get a new laptop for free...

Buy a laptop and get the service plan.

Lindsay bought me a laptop from Best Buy our first Christmas together in 2005. I used that laptop for two and a half years until I started having problems with it: the sound wasn't working anymore and it would crash while running certain programs. I decided to get it fixed during the summer because I wouldn't need it for school. Good thing I gave myself all summer to get it fixed.

First I took it into Best Buy in American Fork, UT on May 20th. They sent it out for repairs.

I got it back in Mountain View, CA on June 6th. Although it was working, some of the parts they used to repair it with were the wrong ones (and much cheaper wrong ones). On top of that some of the programs I used didn't work. So they sent it back out to get the right parts.

Two weeks later, I got it back in Milpitas, CA on June 20th. This time, everything seemed fine: the sound was working and it had the right parts. So I took it home and used it for about 10 minutes. The next morning, Saturday, I started it up to make plans with Lindsay for the day. It turned on and 5 seconds later turned off. Try as I might, I couldn't get it to turn back on. So, back to Best Buy. They couldn't get it to turn on either, so they sent it back out for repairs.

Another two weeks later, I picked it back up in Milpitas on July 2nd. Once again, my laptop was starting up, the sound was working and it had the right parts. So I took it home, turned it on and tried to check my email. No dice. My laptop wasn't picking up the Internet at all. I tried to fix the problem on my own but couldn't. So, yet again, I headed back to Best Buy and dropped it off for them to fix the problem at their local store.

A couple of days later, I got a call telling me they couldn't work on the laptop because I had Linux (another operating system) installed as well as Windows. So, on July 9th, I picked it back up to remove Linux. On my own, I figured out what the problem was and it wasn't what I expected. So I removed Linux, made a back up of my files, and went back to Best Buy for the fifth time. I explained the actual problem to them and they sent it back out for repairs.

Now into August, I heard back from Best Buy that my laptop was a "lemon" (basically, a dud, a busted computer) and that I was eligible to get it replaced with a new computer. So on August 8th I made my 10th and final visit to Best Buy and picked up a new laptop.

To give you even more perspective as to how ridiculous this whole thing was: we bought the original laptop for $1,099 plus $200 for the service plan. Every time they repaired my laptop, they replaced the entire motherboard (which is one of the most expensive parts of a computer). Collectively they spent $1,839 just on parts for the repairs. The new laptop I received was $1,000. Taking into account shipping costs and the time spent by employees working on my laptop, they spent over $3,000 on getting my computer repaired!

I got the better end of the deal. My new laptop is a much better computer than what I had before! It's faster, has much more memory, more storage, better graphics, and comes with Vista.

The moral of the story isn't that you should buy your laptops from Best Buy, but that you should spend the money and get the service plan!

Here's a shot of my new laptop:

One of Calvin's fascinations

Calvin loves to have blankets, stuffed animals, or anything soft by his head. I think it is very comforting to him. Whenever I go in to check on him during a nap or play time, many times I find him in this state:



Many many times I have to check and make sure he is breathing and has an air passageway for his nose :0).

Our trip to Alcatraz!

So I have some catching up to do with our blog! Things have been crazy with moving, school starting, and lots of fun family events going on!

Trevor finished his internship on Aug. 22nd and we didn't have to leave for Utah until the following Wednesday so we had some time to pack and visit some more sites. On August 25th we went to San Francisco and visited Alcatraz Island! It was a lot of fun despite all the wind! This is us on the ferry to the island.

There is an audio tour that you take while touring the main prison building. They describe what went on there and told stories of famous people there and some escapes.

Can you imagine living your life in this little area?
One thing that really stood out to me while we were there was how the prisoners talked about not having freedom and not being treated like human beings, and I just kept thinking to myself, "Yeah, well I'm sure that person you killed (or whatever their crime was) felt the same way except was probably treated even worse by you."
Calvin didn't like the wind too much which I can understand.
After Alcatraz we went to Fisherman's Wharf which was also a lot of fun. We bought a Boudin sourdough clam chowder bread bowl which was very good!