Learning to Dance in the Rain

Archive for November, 2007

Here are some pictures of Luke climbing his first stairs, and eating his first Thanksgiving meal!

For Family Home Evening tonight, we made a list of the things we are thankful for.  Here is what we came up with.

1. Super-Luke, Luke-ee-spook, Louie-Luke
2. Microsoft benefits, especially health insurance
3. Family
4. Home
5. Full-time employment
6. Freedom of religion
7. Reliable car
8. That Cheryl can be a stay-at-home mom
9. Rain because it makes everything so fresh and clean, or muddy and wet depending on how you look at it.
10. Different perspectives
11. Sleep (when we can get it)
12. Food, and food storage
13. Friends, who are so generous in helping us get ready for our baby
14. Sarah had a baby
15. Rebecca is pregnant
16. Mike got a new house
17. Sean got into BYU
18. That Isaac got into BYU too
19. Nathan got himself a woman
20. Matthew can teach Andrew stock market research techniques
21. Andy is going to be the first Mackrory to become a citizen (in December)
22. Hannah’s entertaining book
23. Jared has interviews with Stanford and Wharton
24. Our health
25. Luke is developing well
26. The Ric & Lisa Lewis’ family is having a baby
27. Our opportunity to go to South Africa next year

Here are some pictures of us at the ward Halloween party, and a few other random photos of Luke.

This also serves as a demonstration of how to get a slideshow of photos on a blog, so a single post doesn’t have to be so tall because it’s chock full of pictures.  Yay.

So here’s how you do it.  Upload your photos to PicasaWeb using Picasa.  Then look at your online photo album within PicasaWeb and click the "Embed Slideshow" link on the left.  Follow the instructions and copy the HTML code into a blog post.  And you’ve got an instant photo slideshow of that album as I have above.

While I’ve come to like Windows Live Photo Gallery far better than Google’s Picasa, I don’t like the ads or links to other people’s photos that are on Microsoft’s or Flickr’s photo sharing web sites.  Google’s on the other hand doesn’t try to draw your viewers to others’ photos, making the web a slightly safer place to those looking at your pictures.  So what I do to bring in the best of both worlds is I use Windows Live Photo Gallery for all my photo work, and then I just start Picasa long enough to upload the photos to the web and then keep using Photo Gallery.

I learned recently that physical therapy is for the young as well as the old.  I injured my back while helping a friend move some exercise equipment a few months ago and it has gotten steadily worse.  I’ve been to the chiropractor several times, and recently I’ve been to physical therapy to learn some specific exercises to build up my "core strength," or my lower back muscles.

Meanwhile I sit with pillows and back supports attached to my chairs. 

This isn’t quite as good as the Star Wars or Lord of the Rings videos, but it’s still amusing.