Finally finished painting Bumpy’s room. It can be considered either a Comic Book Room or Cartoon Room. It’s like you’re actually in a cartoon or comic.
BEFORE:

DURING:

AFTER:

Basically we picked this theme because we thought it would be different and fun. There are so many cute ideas out there! We didn’t know how it would turn out, but we love it. I want to go in there all of the time, it’s such a happy room and the only room in the house which is painted a different color other than white. To create this look we picked bright comic book colors and then lined every corner and angle with a thin, hand-drawn, black line – whether on the ceiling, on the crib (thanks to our neighbors for the cute awesome crib!), or around a plug.

We thought of the idea and then did a search online for it and loved how this Hotel in Berlin did it. It’s nothing fancy. I think for the most part we’re done with the room except for the blinds and of course adding a few organizational bins with labels.

In order to save space and money, we had Steve from Revolution Builders build us a built-in toy box / window seat and bookshelves around the window. Then we painted it yellow. Don’t worry, we will be adding protection to prevent falling out of the window. We also had him redo the closet shelving to add a changing table and additional hanger space, so we didn’t have to purchase drawers, toy box or a separate changing table. The changing table can be used as a desk when he gets older. Steve was super fast too, did all of it in 2 days. If you want to get a great deal on built-in shelving call Steve at 801-450-9387.

So, today is Hoby’s real birthday. Happy Birthday Hoby! Feliz Cumpleanoz Hoby!

10 Things I love about Hoby (My Grandpa)

1. He’s loving and caring (always wants to know how we’re doing and loves us unconditionally)
2. He’s smart (he gives me some tips on how to run certain things about my biz and it works.)
3. He’s crafty (when we were kids he used to make toys out of tin cans, not they didn’t have sharp edges.)
4. He’s funny (randomly dresses up as different characters and does their voices too. So funny!)
5. He’s generous (what grandpa isn’t?)
6. He’s encouraging and supportive (always loves and helps with any business I want to run.)
7. He’s over 70 and doesn’t have any gray hair! (um…I hope I never go gray.)
8. He’s hard working (He’s worked all his life, he still has a job to this day, no dead-beat Grandpas over here.)
9. He’s our refuge away from home. (In FL his condo had a pool so when we were kids, we’d go there all the time. We had a lot of fun memories there.)
10. He’s a cute videographer (Loves to film everyone and anything having to do with family and then gives us a copy of it. If it weren’t for him we probably wouldn’t have funny home videos. LOL)
11. Oh and he loves Chinese food and so do I.

My siblings and I were fortunate enough to at least have 1 Grandpa growing up (we don’t know where our other grandpa is and have never met him either), but 1 Grandpa was enough for us because he was so good to us. Hoby you’re the best Grandpa any kid could have! We love you Hoby! You’re going to be the best Great Grandpa to our Son.

Here’s a picture of him yesterday, see I told you he’s funny.

So, after only seeing our little baby boy in an ultrasound at 20 weeks, we couldn’t wait an entire 20 more weeks or D-Day (Delivery Day) to see him again. So…we scheduled a 3D Ultrasound roughly around the middle, at 28 weeks, and we’re glad we did. We got to see him again! He’s so cute and tiny and I think he looks like Clark. Here’s some of the pictures we got from the 3D Ultrasound which was done at the 28 week mark on Tues. Oct 28, 2008.

They are a little weird at first but you get the idea. You can get 3D ultrasounds at Fetal Fotos or ask your Dr. We just got ours done at our Dr.’s office.

We also got a 12 min video (split up into 2 parts), it doesn’t have music but it’s pretty cool to see how the 3D stuff works.

Can’t wait to see him in person! (but we don’t want him to be early, just on-time.)

On friday my boss, Chris, offered to lend me another book. I already have two of his so I told him I’m reading too many books right now, and that I’d have to finish a few before I took on another. He asked me what I was reading and when I couldn’t even remember all of them, I realized that I might have a problem with starting new books before finishing what I’m reading. Over the weekend I decided to tally up everything I’m “reading” right now. Here’s the list (in no specific order):

1. Patriots*
2. Guards, Guards*
3. Prophesy - Key to the future*
4. Uncommon Genius
5. If You Want To Write
6. Elements of Style**
7. Pirate Hunter
8. Bonds that Make Us Free**
9. Book of Mormon Student Manual (Religion 121–122)**
10. The Brothers: A Novel*
11. Guerilla Marketing**
12. Don’t Make Me Think**
13. Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads
14. Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It

We all got together to celebrate my younger brother’s 15th birthday. Wow! I can’t believe it. I used to baby sit him when he was a baby and now I’m having a baby and he’ll get to babysit for us. Sweet deal!

Quick fact: Jonathan gave our Grandpa the nickname of “Hoby.” In spanish Abuelito = Grandpa and of course Jonathan couldn’t say that when he was a baby so he called him “HOBY.” Our Grandpa does not go by any other name, so feel free to call my Grandpa “Hoby.” In fact I don’t know who you’re talking about unless you call him Hoby. LOL our family is silly.

My mom made green spaghetti and of course she made her famous Dominican cake (even though she’s not Dominican) and decorated it all professionally too. It was soooo yummy! Both the spaghetti and the cake.

Here’s some pics which were taken to document his birthday. Usually for peeps birthdays, on my side of the family, we’ll take group pics with everyone’s cameras. It’s pretty funny actually. We end up with a ton of pics.

To my family, click here to order 4×6 or 5×7 prints of these pictures or get the high resolution pics too.

Wow, today was a busy day. These are some things to do on Halloween.

1. Do work for the Dead, that’s right, the best one of all and appropriate too. You guessed it, attend the Temple!
2. Get Candy! Get Candy! Get Candy! Purchase loads of Candy for the kids.
3. Put on a costume or disguise.
4. Dress up your dog.
5. Make treats
6. Go to a Potluck Neighborhood Party
7. Trick-or-Treat with your kids (nope we didn’t do this one this year but we saw some cute costumes)
8. Give Candy out to some kids
9. Eat Candy
10. and take lots of pics.

Here’s the pics which document today’s happenings.

BTW, Will Farrell didn’t trick-or-treat at our house, that’s Tad! Awesome costume.

Click here to order 4×6 prints or to download a high resolution picture for the pictures shown above.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve written any blog posts, and I don’t entertain any delusions that anyone has really missed my posts; nevertheless, I feel the need to explain my absence from the blogosphere.

Since January of this year, I’ve spent most of my free time working with some friends to develop a new service for creative-minded people. Well, the service is finally to a point where I’m ready to share it with all of my loyal blog readers (that’s you Linda).

It’s called Review Fuse (www.reviewfuse.com) and it’s a service for writers, aspiring writers, or even writing dabblers who want to get some good feedback and constructive criticism for what they’ve written. The basic concept is that you submit what you’ve written and other members of the service give you detailed reviews and feedback. In return, you then review the work of other members and tell them what you think. The cool thing we’ve found out about this method is that you often learn as much or more by reviewing others as you do having your work reviewed.

Of course there’s a bunch of other stuff we think is cool like our peer matching technology which attempts to match you with other members with of similar preferences and skill levels, our review frameworks which make it easier to write a review by guiding you through the process, inline commenting so you can write your feedback while you read, and private writing groups which are coming soon.

So, if you like to write please visit Review Fuse and try it out. In fact even if you don’t like to write, you can visit the site and read some great short stories. Also, if you know anyone who likes to write, please help us spread the word. Tell them in person, or better yet, add the Review Fuse blog to your blog links (assuming you have a blog of course). And, of course, if you visit the site, please tell me what you think.

If you don’t like to write, but wish you could get feedback on what you love to do, don’t worry, our ultimate plan is to take over the world expand Review Fuse so that it can be a service for facilitating other types of peer-to-peer critiques. Let me know what you think would be cool to get reviewed in an online community.

Check our “How it works” vid below for more info.

signed,
Clark

So, we just got back from our ward’s Halloween party and trunk-or-treat put on by the Activities Committee and the YM & YW and it was great! We had a ton of fun, ate some popcorn, saw some pretty sweet costumes and gave out a lot of candy. I felt bad cause we didn’t wear costumes but that’s okay considering next year we’ll have to make/buy 3 of them. So as per several requests here are the pictures we were able to quickly take during the party. Sorry, if I wasn’t able to get all of you, everyone looked so amazing, but I didn’t want to interrupt anyone too much just to get a picture. Thanks for letting me take pics!

Click here to order prints for any of these pictures.

On Clark’s side of the family we have 4 nephews and 1 niece. Every year we get together to see their costumes and Clark’s parents (mainly his Mom) always brings the best Chilli, decor and games for the kids. They all came over on Saturday to eat, play games and especially show off their costumes. They all looked so cute! Bumpy is going to love being their cousin. Here are some pics we took of them, the ones we took in Bumpy’s room are my favorite, for obvious reasons.

Click here to order prints for any of those pictures. Yes, it’s true I couldn’t stop taking pics, I guess I took too many, but they are sooooo cute.

So, we got to make some of these cute Martha Stewart Pom Poms for a party and we even put lights in them, so they have a little more pizazz. Thanks Michelle, for helping to make them!

Here’s the Real Pom Poms from Martha Stewart: (click here for instructions)

Here’s our version of the Pom Poms, we used different colors:

Here’s the Napkin Ring Pom Poms, they’re so cute when they’re tiny.

The table cover was easy to make, just use kraft paper and different colors of acrylic paint and paint circles on the tables and let dry for 30-60 min. (maybe less if you need to hurry.)