tonyandkirsten.org

Our latest collection of pictures has been posted!

Pictures of Madeline from May (including pictures of her wielding a light sabre!)
Pictures of the Ladybug Cake
Pictures of Madeline’s 1st Birthday party

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Today was the big day…Madeline turned one year old. We celebrated by, among other things, allowing her to smash cake in her face and generally make a huge mess of herself. I chose a theme of Ladybugs for the party, and made a three-dimensional ladybug cake complete with red and black frosting. This, of course, combined with chocolate cake, made for an incredibly messy baby. She also got lots of cute toys and clothes from generous relatives, and overall had a great time. Plenty of pictures coming soon!

My last z37 mailing is ready to go out the door. Once I hand the newsletters off tomorrow to be stuffed in envelopes, my task is complete. Whew! I am glad to have devoted myself to serving and producing all those things, but it feels good to be done as well. I think I have been to Staples about 6 times in the past week.

Now I can finally do some of the things I have been looking forward to, like finishing Madeline’s baby book in time for her birthday party on Saturday. And getting our house ready for the party…that’s not as much something I am excited about, since cleaning is pretty low on my list of favorite activities. But with lots of friends and family stopping by on Saturday, it would be much worse to have a dirty, messy house!

By the way, feel free to stop by our place on Saturday any time between two and four pm for Madeline’s 1st Birthday Party. We’ll do the cake thing at 3pm. No obligation to bring a gift (but Madeline certainly wouldn’t refuse you if you absolutely insisted on giving her something).

After weeks of anticipation, Madeline took her first steps on her own yesterday! While at this point she is still finding crawling to be a more efficient means of travel, she at least has the ability to walk if she wants to. I’m sure it won’t be long before she is running around!

Given the popularity of the last puzzler, I decided to publish another one. This is a take-off of an old math problem (extra kudos to the person that identifies the original mathematician).

This previous Mothers’ Day, there were two unrelated thieves who conspired to procure last-minute gifts for their mothers. Colluding late at night on Saturday about the perfect gift, the two thieves eventually decided to steal a bottle of perfume that was the common favorite of both mothers. Now, this is expensive perfume, running around $1000 per 8 oz. bottle, and so it’s quite rare.

After breaking into five department stores, the two thieves manage to find one 8 oz. bottle. Since morning was getting close and the thieves had already pressed their luck by intruding into four other stores, they decide to simply split the bottle. Fortunately, one of the thieves had a three oz. bottle, and the other a five oz. bottle. So between the two of them, there were three bottles capable of containing: 3 oz., 5 oz., and 8 oz.

After thinking a little while, the first thief realizes that they can split the 8 oz. of perfume into two equal portions exactly. How is this possible?

Well, that was easy.

I just upgraded from Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.4 (Panther to Tiger). So, this website is now running on the latest Macintosh Operating System.

I just popped the disk in my drive, double-clicked “Install”, and let the installer run. I told the installer to upgrade my computer, and then walked away. By the time I came back from my meeting, it was done. The computer had rebooted, and was running Tiger.

Everything works great!

I can’t believe it was that easy!

I saw the thing about the Time Traveler’s Convention earlier in the week on Slashdot but since Matt posted about it first, I will point you in the direction of another interesting internet sighting. Not only is today a very special holiday, something else interesting will be happening tonight. Check out this site…and make sure you click that you are…well, not human in order to see the site.

So, there was once a poor college student who was quite adept at creating and solving puzzles. His name was Chris. At the end of his first year of college, Chris realized that in order to further his education, he was going to need a little more money. Thinking cheap, Chris bought a postcard to send home. After thinking about what to write, he though of a message that shows simultaneously his intelligence and his exact need. In a flourish, Chris scambles his message on the postcard and sticks it in the mail. The message was:

    SEND
  + MORE
  ------
   MONEY

After solving the puzzle, Chris’ parents promptly sent him a check for the amount specified. How much money did his parents send?

As any of you who have seen Madeline in the past few weeks know, she is “just about to walk.” She has been “about to walk” for at least two weeks and maybe longer. She has all the skills down — pulling up to a standing position, “cruising” along furniture, standing for quite a long time without any support, walking while holding someone’s hands, and even squatting down and standing back up again. But so far she has been too hesitant to take that first step un-aided.

After seeing Madeline today at church and then again at Rachel Bovenmyer’s graduation party, Stacey Trytek was so convinced that Madeline would be walking by next Sunday, that she made a bet with us: If Madeline isn’t walking by next week, she’ll make Madeline a cake for her first birthday. Tony agreed to the bet and then asked what our end of the deal would be if Madeline does figure it out this week. Stacey sat there thinking about it for a moment, so I jumped in and said that I would make Stacey a cake if we lost the bet.

It sounded good to everyone, so the bet is on. Whatever happens, I have been trying to decide on a theme for Madeline’s first birthday party on the 21st of this month. I am thinking about doing ladybugs, but I haven’t made a firm decision on that yet. I’m sure whatever we pick, Madeline will enjoy smashing her cake into her face and eating lots of it!