Up and running

We bit the bullet and got a new printer today.... another HP and it is incredibly fast. Even better, it is networked so that Brian can print something wirelessly from his laptop. We were never able to do this before; we always had to unplug the printer from my desktop and connect it to the laptop. This is just too cool.

It was a nice day today. The kids all enjoyed a lot of outdoor time with their friends. I helped Brian get the shed put together and also managed to get a couple of loads of laundry folded. In addition, I got to visit with one of the neighbors and help her finish a jigsaw puzzle she'd been working on for a while.

We were so busy with all the running and doing that we opted for takeout for dinner (Godfather's... mmmm). Tomorrow instead of eating out after church, we'll come home and Brian is going to grill.

The kids are all bathed and tucked in for the night, and I will be following suit very soon.

Some day my prints will come

So I am still learning the ins and outs of life with a Mac. My old HP printer (old as in 6 or 7 years old) isn't doing too well with the Mac. I cannot use it with it hooked up to the Airport Extreme, which is sad, because we really wanted to put it on the network so that Brian could print wirelessly from his MacBook Pro as well. It took some searching to find a driver I could get to work even with the printer connected directly to the IMac, and even still, it is incredibly slow to process the print job. I think we will be looking for a new printer. I had kinda been wanting one that does duplex (two-sided) printing, but I don't want us to spend too much money on it. We'll have to see what we can find. We've always had good experiences with HP printers in the past, but I'm wondering if there are other printers that work better with Macs.

Still left to do: get all the pictures and documents off of the old Windows desktop and onto this one. We may just get an external hard drive so we can have a safe place to keep extra copies, just in case anything were ever to happen. We can transfer the files to it and then copy them to this computer.

I guess the only other dim spot in this new computer life is that Messenger for Mac isn't as full-featured as the one for Windows. It doesn't offer video chat, which was something I was looking forward to doing with my mom and my sister. It does have IChat, which I think uses AOL screen names, so if they will sign onto AIM, I might be able to video with them there. Of course, neither of them have web cams (at least, I don't think they do), so they'll be the lucky ones who get to see and hear the goings-on around here!

We had the first rain of the season last night and today. Too bad the shed Brian bought is still sitting in the box in the back yard! If the weather is nice this weekend, maybe we can get it put together. I am enjoying the cooler weather; our days are in the 70s and nights in the 50s.

Mac mama

I know... where have I been? It has been crazier than usual around here. The end of last week was fairly busy, what with Emily gone to her school retreat from Wednesday till Friday. Then Brian and I had the Celebrate Recovery kickoff at church on Friday night. We got there early to help set up, so we were basically there about 4 1/2- 5 hours.

Saturday was Joel's 7th birthday. We had a great time at the base bowling alley with a few of the neighbor kids, a couple of friends from church, and a couple of kids from our "backyard neighbor" family from the first house we lived in out here. Joel said it was the "best birthday ever." He even rated it higher than the one he spent at Disney World!

In news almost as big as Joel's birthday.... my IMac arrived yesterday! It is up and running with no trouble at all and I've managed to get my bookmarks and email addresses all transferred quite easily (thank goodness for Plaxo). I kinda miss my "right-click," but have begun learning the Mac way of doing things. I have so much more space on my desk now. Hopefully I can keep it uncluttered.

Monday night, Halle and I both went up to the church for rehearsals for the Christmas program for church. She is going to be part of the kids' musical and I will be singing in the adult Christmas choir. I missed the first rehearsal last week, but it won't be difficult to catch up. Thankfully, I don't have to learn it all by ear; we all have songbooks with musical notation. That certainly makes it easier for me, especially since I sing alto.

Tonight, Halle attended her first AWANA meeting while Brian and I attended a "growth group" from church. Our group is made up of about 6 couples... not too big and not too small. I'm looking forward to getting to know people better. Halle had a blast at AWANA and is busy working on learning her memory verses so she can get her first book and t-shirt. She has several "checkpoints" to complete, each with 2 verses to learn.

Tomorrow is hump day and means we will be on the downswing.... Brian has a meeting tomorrow night, though. Thursday will be Emily's early-out day at school (1:45), I may be attending worship team rehearsal that night, and then it will be Friday and time for Celebrate Recovery again. Oh yeah... no shortage of things to do here. Hopefully I won't put off blogging for another week!

Oh, I just remembered more news... Emily was chosen for Daybreak, the select choir at her school! Yay, Emily!