raising heller

you read that right. an entire lake… FULL OF RATTLESNAKES.

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we went on our 2nd weekend hike this saturday to a place called franklin falls. it’s somewhat near our last hike at snoqualmie falls. this is probably one of the coolest hikes that we’ve been on as a family. it was about 2 miles, round trip and filled with some of the most lush foliage i’ve seen in a long time. the entire trail ran along the river, generally from about 100-200 feet above it. it made for some very beautiful views. i tried to take some pictures (as seen below) but i don’t think they captured the majesty of it all. i know it sounds like i’m being a little exaggerative, but i promise you i’m not. i’m really stoked that we’ve started doing these weekly family hikes as i think it’s been great for the kids to see what the northwest has to offer.

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a family that we go to church with has a six year old daughter that got very sick recently. they didn’t know what the problem was and very quickly were told that she needed a liver transplant. fortunately, everything went well and she’s still with us. the downside of this whole story is that this whole process was very expensive for them and they now have a financial burden that they (and Annie) will carry for the rest of their lives. they enlisted my help in creating a video to tell their story and try to raise money to help cover Annie’s ongoing expenses. you can visit www.COTAforAnnieR.com to learn how you can help. they have a goal to raise $10,000 by June 30th. watch the video below. warning: it’s a bit of a tear jerker.

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so, recently my parents were in town and we went to the REI corporate headquarters in seattle (that place is AMAZING). we found a book on hikes in the northwest that are good for kids. this is what i love about living in seattle. there’s SO much to do and it seems like we’re always discovering new things. well, yesterday we decided to go on our first family hike of the year. since i’m really big into documentation, i’ll be using the runkeeper app on my iphone, along with the runkeeper website to document our hikes. i’m not being paid for my endorsement of runkeeper, but (and i think i’ve mentioned it before) it’s one of the most amazing apps. anytime you’re going on a hike, walk, run or whatever you start the app on your phone and take off. when you’re done, you stop the app. it tracks your entire activity mapping it out using GPS and even tracks your varying speed and elevation changes. it will then sync that data back to it’s website where you can login and view your activities (along with being able to see it in the app on your phone). if you decided to snap some pictures from your phone on your hike, it will sync those to the website as well posting them to the exact location where the pictures were taken. how rad is that? you can also share that data with the world as we did below by embedding it into a website. if you click on the “view details at runkeeper.com” link, it will take you to the activity page where you can see all the details and view it in satellite view (something they’ll hopefully allow us to embed soon).

so, this summer we’ll be posting our hiking exploits along with photos. for this last hike at snoqualmie falls, i accidentally left my phone in the car so i created the hike manually on the runkeeper website.

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hello. my name is steven, and i’m an early adopter.

if you haven’t seen the most recent episode of modern family, do yourself a favor and check it out. check out this scene, it’s one of my favorites (it will probably be up for a limited time so check it out while you can).

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this is a sad post for me. let me first start off by way of explanation. we have 2 dogs that have been part of our family since shortly after jana and i were married. the first dog we got was a white chihuahua/jack russell terrier mix. that’s roxy quiksilver. a couple months later, we were worried that roxy was lonely so we bought a black chihuahua. morgan le fay. fast forward about 8 or 9 years later. roxy is a pretty normal dog, while morgan has a lot of quirks. she has snaggly teeth, she’s gone blind, she has a propensity for escaping the back yard and she’s extremely frightened of high pitched noises. she’s escaped several times but she usually just goes around to the front yard and hangs out by the front door. a few times we’ve found her wandering up the street, but we live in a pretty quiet neighborhood and she always comes back.

Read more…

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warning to parents: you can probably tune this one out…

musically speaking, i’ve had 2 experiences that fundamentally changed my life (once again, musically speaking). the 2nd was sitting in melissa garriott’s car. she told me she had an album that i just HAD to hear. i can’t tell you the number of times that i’ve heard that only to be met with some crap that i knew i would soon forget. she threw in fevers and mirrors by bright eyes. after getting over the shock of just how good this music was, i remember thinking, ‘oh man, this changes everything.’ and it did. for a while, at least, until bright eyes (and conor oberst) went to crap.

the first experience occurred about 12 or so years ago. a fairly new found friend of mine, ethan smith, introduced me to pedro the lion. well, he told me about pedro the lion. i never actually heard them. but he swore that i would like it. ethan seemed to have some musical creditability so based on his suggestion i bought their debut album, it’s hard to find a friend. once again, after a couple of listenings i was hooked in a BIG way. i knew that this album was going to be in my personal rotation for years to come. the band continued to release albums (and i’ve loved each one) but recently disbanded. the singer, david bazan, continued to release solo material. this wasn’t a big deal as bazan wrote all of the music for the band (which was just a constant rotation of his friends) anyway.

i’ve been heavily into his newest release, curse your branches. thematically, it’s pretty heavy as it’s about bazan becoming disenfranchised with modern Christianity and questioning all that he was brought up to believe. that having been said, it’s a GREAT album. in support of the album he’s been touring, but in between tours he’s been playing these small house shows. they sell a max of 40 tickets and it’s usually in a large living room or some other very intimate setting. well, i saw that one of his upcoming house shows was in renton, wa, our town. i knew i couldn’t resist seeing him on home turf so i bought tickets for jana and i. apparently not a lot of people like to make the trip to renton as we were among about 14 other people that were there at the show. i set up a camera (Canon 5D Mark II) and shot another angle with a hand held camera (Canon T1i) and managed to catch the whole show. i’m really happy with how it turned out. i’m posting it here for your enjoyment (or curiosity).

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asher’s always been a curious boy. if he sees something that he deems interesting, he’s quick to dive in. not really a “look before you leap” kind of kid. the other day i was home alone with him while jana was out with lily and jack. he was watching a show while i was on the computer. he quietly snuck upstairs. i (incorrectly) assumed that he was just playing in his room. turns out, he was playing in our bathroom with some hair stuff. surf hair, if you’re curious. i walked in on him trying to wipe it all off with a towel. it was pretty awesome. then this morning, the kids were playing downstairs while we were still in bed. asher found some lipstick (i still have no clue where he got it as jana doesn’t really wear lipstick) and tried to make like a clown. check it all out:

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so, i’ve known for quite some time now that i need to start working out (holiday lbs, desk job lbs, etc…). because of some recent changes in my schedule, i now have the time and desire (read: jana’s subtle encouragement) to get the job done. i’ve decided to do P90X. for those of you unfamiliar with P90X, it’s pretty much the system that really kicks your a**. there’s no shortcuts or tricks. you just do the system the best that you can for 90 days and reap the rewards. i’ve also decided that for me to really be successful with this thing, i need to blog about it so that everyone will know about it and help hold me accountable. i will be posting an accounting of my week every friday with a short, day-by-day report of how the week went. so, without further ado…

monday, jan, 11th – day 01 – core synergistics – this workout is supposed to work your core. it did. i hurt. and if i hurt now, i can’t imagine what it will feel like tomorrow. P.S. – opening weight before starting the program: 215.5 lbs. ughhhhhhh.

tuesday, jan, 12th – day 02 – cardio x –i’m sweating bad. or good. i guess it depends on your perspective.

wednesday, jan, 13th – day 03 – shoulders & arms – this one felt good. typing this is difficult right now as my arms feel like jelly, but it hurts good.

thursday, jan, 14th – day 04 – yoga x –by far, the hardest workout so far. unfortunately, it was a lot longer than i had anticipated (90 minutes!) and i had to cut it short since i had work to do. i’m not sure i could have finished it anyway.

friday, jan, 15th – day 05 – legs & back –this one was a fun one. it hurt, but i didn’t feel totally wasted at the end. don’t get me wrong, i was sore in all the right places but, once again, it hurt good.

so, there we have it. my first week with P90X. well, i still have to workout tomorrow, but i’ll include that in next week’s report. wish me luck!

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so, i’ve been a pretty devout user of dropbox for quite sometime now and felt like i wanted to write about it since it’s quite easily one of the best services i’ve used in a LONG time. dropbox is an online storage solution that lets you store your data in the cloud. but the really cool feature i9s it’s ability tro sync with multiple machines. if you have 2 machines and they’re both running dropbox, you can easily set it up so that folderts between the 2 stay in sync. so if you put a file in your dropbox folder in machine 1, it will immediately show up on machine 2, and vice versa. there’s also a public folder. you can drop files in the public folder and if you want to send them to anybody, just right-click on the flder and choose “copy public link”. you will now have a link that you can email to somebody and they can just click on it to download the file from the dropbox server. this makes it SO much easier to send files to people. no more annoying email attachments.

the dropbox account is free and gives you 2 gig of space to use for your personal storage. check it out by clicking in the link below. plus, yoiu can always upgrade to more space if you want for a small fee. alos, you get an extra 250meg of space for every person that you refer. so, when you click on the link below, you’re also helping me grow a little bit. in all sincerity, i’ve been using it for a long time and have found it invaluable.

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTMwMjE2Nzk

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