Goin' To Minnesota

JoLee and I are off to Minnesota today to visit uncle Jim. We'll be back on Sunday with plenty of pictures to post.

In other exciting news, Mom and Dad have found their new home, and it looks like it might be for real/rills this time. That means that this Christmas would be our last in our current home.

Apple Nano

I made a recent post regarding the coolness of the new Nano. Well, it turns out that many users are having problems with the LCD screens of their new toy. Specifically, the Nano is prone to scratching. I imagine that a recall is in the near future.

This isn't the first time Apple has had problems with the iPod. Some years ago, users found out the hard way that the battery in their first generation iPod was irreplacable. That meant they had to replace the whole unit instead of only the battery. It just goes to show that the latest and greatest is sometimes merely the latest.

Popular Blog

Hey everyone. It's been fun to get all these posts on the Blog. I'd like to welcome Jenny to the contributors list. I just wanted to mention here that we have now reached the point where we have posted more material than will be displayed on the blog. To access old posts, you'll have to use the archive links. Currently, there is only one archive link (September 2005). It is located at the bottom of the links section on the right hand side of the screen. Happy trails...

We're in California!

Hey Family!
Rod, Savannah & I are in California right now, having a BLAST!!!
When we arrived in San Francisco, Rod commented, "I forgot how nice weather can be!" So true...it's just great here.
We had a fabulous time on Sunday, celebrating Aaron's birthday with Brooke's family.
Yesterday, we visited Mamoo, Dad's office, "the property", and, of course, Sunflower Drive-In.
We had Savannah's pictures taken last week. If you want to see all of the proofs, you can check out www.yourkidsreally.com. Click on "your photos" and type in jennifer hinze. The pictures are pretty cute. I'm posting my favorite one here for you all to see. To me, this picture is SO Savannah. She seriously is the funniest kid ever.
Love you all tons!!!

Hoops and Yoyo

I just got out of a meeting with Yoyo from Hoops and Yoyo. He was hilarious. He showed us the first animation of H&Y. It was very, very simple. He made it in his basement in 2001. It was initially called the Yellow Bunny, but he said that he liked all the O's in Hoops and Yoyo.

I didn't get to meet Hoops. He has the more creative voice. Some of the ecards are done without any rehearsal. It's just made up on the spot. In the meeting we got to see H&Y out of character. There were some animations where they were mean and violent. They had us all laughing.

Anyway, if you ever want to learn more about them, here's the link: www.hoopsandyoyo.com.

Goodnight

I just want everyone to know that Savannah has broken the mold for perfect children. She is so much fun and has THE BEST parents, (and aunts, uncles and grandparents) of any child I know.
Seriously, I mean it and I am being totally unbiased.

Aaron was celebrated to the point of exhaustion. We had one last hurrah at Lake Natomas on Family night. Happy 33rd, Aaron. #32 was a banner year for you-with a nice, complete ending.

The Amazing Omaha Zoo

Before we went to St. Louis Nate and I took a trip to Omaha (yes, we are all about visiting mid-western cities). This was our end-of-summer trip before I went back to school. In all of these picture we are at the Henry Dorley Zoo, which just might be the coolest zoo in the country, and I've been enumerating its wonders ever since we got back.

In this first picture, Nate and I are standing in the horribly long line waiting to get into the zoo. The long wait was not a waste because we had a nice chat with the group behind us in line. They happened to be from Overland Park too, and they were at the zoo with their grandsons. They were kind enough (understatement - they were from Kansas the niceness capital of the world) to take this lovely picture.















The Omaha zoo has a huge collection of cats. Here I am being watched by a lioness.




















The zoo had a really great penguin exhibit with many species of penguins. They had Little Blue Penguins from New Zealand and Blackfoot Penguins from Africa, but the best was the large exhibit of Arctic penguins. The penguins featured in this picture are King Penguins. They are the second largest penguins; only the Emperor Penguin is larger. (FYI: After watching the penguin movie I became a little too curious about penguins. I was rumored to have been looking up websites about them in my spare time.)















The zoo also has a pretty cool aquarium. Here I am with all the jellies.




















The Henry Dorley Zoo has the largest indoor rainforest in North America. It's divided into Asian, African, and South American sections. Here I am in front of a waterfall. Props to Nate for taking such a nice picture. We saw a lot of animals in the rainforest, but I decided not to include the picture of the sloth.

Our favorite part of the zoo was the Nocturnal Exhibit, where it was too dark to take pictures. The animals' day and night cycles are reversed so all the animals are active during the day. We saw lots of bats, a bunch of wallabies, and tons of alligators. Also, we never knew that beavers could be so cool.

If any of you are interested I'm ready for another visit.

St. Louis

I told Nate that I would post some pictures from our temple trip to St. Louis. It's a really nice temple and we had a good time driving with fellow ward member Lexie Lockrow. She kept us very entertained discussing everything from Il Divo to the BYU Mustache club.















Obviously, it's a beautiful September day.















In front of the Temple (and the fountain.)




















We're on our way home.

Hope all of you are having a good time in California!

JoLee

The Hot New Toy

JoLee and I stopped by our local Apple store while walking through the Plaza last Friday Night. We wanted to check out the newest iPod which is called the Nano. I was wooed by it's design and functionality. If you haven't seen it yet, you're going to, because it's one cool toy. Here's an article that I thought hit the mark on their assessment of the Nano. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/09/19/BUGBPEO73N1.DTL

Posting a Profile Picture

Some of you have not yet linked an image to your profile. If you want to, you'll have to be tricky about it. Here's what you do.

1. Post a picture of yourself on this blog or some other blog.

2. After posting the picture, go to the blog and click on the picture. This should show a page with the PICTURE ONLY.

3. Copy the URL in the address bar. (It may look something like this: http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/478/1589/1600/Top29-1.jpg)

4. Go to the dashboard and click on "Edit Profile".

5. Scroll down to the Photograph section and past in the URL.

6. Hit the save profile button.

Note: After you have posted the picture you can actually go back and delete the original post from the blog without loosing the linked image. This is because that web image is not deleted when you delete the post.

--Nate

Hi From Kansas

I just wanted to say hi since I'm the only one not part of the party this week. I hope everyone is having a good time. JoLee and I are looking forward to the holidays with you.

Bedtime

I guess it's time for me to go to bed. I've been pretty excited to see Rod, Jen and Savannah-haven't been able to sleep the last 2 nights. Welcome to California! Rod is the trooper -flying solo with Savannah. However I have to admire Jen for packing-sounds really hard. We are looking forward to visiting this week and it just is NOT complete without Nate and JoLee.

Happy Birthday Aaron!

A big Happy Birthday to Aaron! It looks like you had a grand time going through your old stuff. I've got lots of old stuff in the garage-anytime-you are all welcome to browse.....(my little pony junk, dead computers, tyranno-toes, law school blue book tests,).....ANYTIME!

Note from Mom

I'm looking forward to seeing Val and Jen and Rod join the blog!

Aaron found some cool stuff

So, last Saturday, Brooke and I were going through some of my old files. We wanted to document the event:


First I found a bike tire, and a beanie to keep my head warm on cold bike rides. I was so happy.


Then I found an inflatable neck pillow and a used ziplock bag. Brooke was especially happy that I found the used ziplock bag. She was smiling a lot, and then later we bought some more at the store.


The good stuff just kept on coming: ski cap, wide brimmed river hat, sleeping bag bag, nalgene bottle, and first aid kit. You can see how happy I was!!

New Comments

Hey Nate, is there a quick way to see if there are new comments to existing posts?

Template Change

After talking with Mom last night, I decided to change the template of the blog. There are several to choose from, but this one looked nice. We can always change it in the future. Also, Savannah was nice enough to join the family blog, which was ambitious considering she can't talk.

--Nate

Hi from Mom

A big thank you to Nate for setting up this blog. I have to admit that I requested it and thought it might be fun. I love you all, mom.

Latin Nerds

Okay, Brooke and JoLee have both told me they know latin. But they still haven't said anything about the formulae (notice, that's a latin plural). It sounds like Aaron and I married a pair of smarty pants, if you ask me.

--Nate

Posting Pictures

Instructions for posting pictures. Please note that your image will take longer to upload if it is large. I would recommend working with pictures that are less than 1MB. If you need to, you can reduce the resolution through Picasa (http://picasa.google.com/index.html).

1. Login into your dashboard

2. Click on the plus to add a new post to the "The Stephens Family". This should bring up the posting interface.

3. Enter a title for the new post.

4. Click on the picture icon (it's right next to the spell check icon). This should bring up the upload images window.

5. Click the browse button.

6. Find a picture on your hard drive.

7. Click Add another image if you want to add another image, and repeat the process.

8. Otherwise, click "Upload Image".

9. Wait for the picture to upload and then click "Done".

10. You should see the picture in the compose window of the posting interface.

11. Finish typing your message and hit "Publish Post".

12. Wait for the post to be published.

13. Click on "View Blog" to see your new post.