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12 Facts About the Twelve Days of Christmas

A few weeks ago, I signed up to participate in a Christmas table decoration contest. I decided to decorate around the theme of the twelve days of Christmas. So, I purchased a template online and...(more)

Pic Tac Toe and a Theme CD!

If you have been reading my blog for a ridiculously long time, then you might remember that I once created a Pic Tac Toe puzzle, inspired by Ken Jennings's blog. In case you haven't been reading my...(more)

The Chief Requirements for Scholarly Dialogue

I'm taking a break from copyright law for just a moment to post this checklist that Chris and I developed about a month ago for me to share with my students. These are the ideals I hope to strive...(more)

Adventures in Copyright Law Part Five: Art is Inherently Free

This is the another installment in my blog series about copyright law. See Part One, Part Two, Part Three and Part Four for my earlier entries on this topic. NOTE: In this blog entry, I frequently...(more)

Copyright Law Quickie: Linky Links

I've been working on my latest copyright law blog entry for a long time, but it's still not quite ready yet. For now, here's a video of a fascinating discussion about copyright law by CGP...(more)

Adventures in Copyright Law Part Four: Copyright and the Class Warfare

This is the next installment in my blog series about copyright law. I'm going to stop saying it's my final post because I keep finding too many things to say about it. See Part One, Part Two and...(more)

Adventures in Copyright Law Part Three: The Dark Side of Copyright Law

This is the penultimate installment in my blog series about copyright law. See Part One and Part Two for my earlier entries on this topic. In this blog entry, I will philosophize on the purpose of...(more)

Adventures in Copyright Law Part Two: The Bumpy Road to Compliance

This is a continuation of my three-part blog series about copyright law. In Part One, I explained aspects of copyright law in simple terms--specifically how the defintion of "fair use" applies to...(more)

Adventures in Copyright Compliance Part One: Copyright Law for Dummies

I started out this year with a New Year's Resolution to try to be fully compliant with copyright law this in my professional life and (for the most part) in my personal life. Little did I know what...(more)

This Relationship is OVER: Breaking up With Your Favorite Bands

I really enjoyed the recent blog and podcast from All Songs Considered about breaking up with your favorite bands, so I thought I would run with the metaphor and talk about my own break ups. The...(more)

Film History 101: An Introduction to Soviet Montage

At the request of a teacher in Minnesota, I've been updating my film curriculum on the Media Education Database. I recently created this article about Soviet montage. I find this kind of thing...(more)

My Most Common Comment

This was the second semester I assigned my students the documentary film Expelled as one of the possible films they could write a response paper about. (It's a film arguing that the theory of...(more)

My "New" Religion

I mentioned in my previous blog entry that I am part of an ecumenical Google group that discusses "creative religion." As part of this group, members are encouraged to create their own conceptual...(more)

We went sledding last Saturday and had a great time. Here are some of the pictures. Snow Day!

Just a quick catch up on some of the pictures we took over the past couple of months. Boys: Winter '10

Interim Writing: Transcendence vs. Absurdism

I was recently invited to join an ecumenical Google group that discusses "creative religion." Last week I was engaged in a conversation that I had about the topic of holding daily devotionals (e.g....(more)

Interim Writing: A Response to An Inconvenient Truth

As I mentioned in my previous blog entry, I've been doing some interim writing in other places. This piece is one that I figured came out decent enough to share. I wrote it to give my students a...(more)

I'm Not Dead, Just Busy

I haven't added a new blog entry for a couple of months for a few reasons. One is that the Fall Semester started and I took on a much larger course load. I've realized that even though I...(more)

Thanksgiving Weekend

Happy Thanksgiving everybody! We spent a quiet weekend with just our little family. I was looking forward to cooking a nice Thanksgiving meal. Instead of turkey, we did Cornish Game Hens. Yum! ...(more)

• 10/26: Ethan in his new church clothes....
• 10/26: At the Bean Museum, just wandering around...

• 10/5: Someone loves big brother's bed....
• 10/5: We've been fencing along with Princess Bride today....
• 10/5: He ate his sucker all gone....

10 Pieces of Classical Music That Stop Me Dead in My Tracks

I remember in 6th grade I was talking with a friend in the library once and she asked me what my favorite type of music was. I paused for a moment to consider my answer. And just as I was about to...(more)

• 9/7: All the Star wars characters are going to the zoo....
• 9/7: I came in to find him trying to plug in my laptop. ...
• 9/7: Looking good in his new clothes....

• 9/1: Ethan's favorite thing to do lately is to climb to places he can't ...
• 9/1: Alex wants to go down the slide!...
• 9/1: Ethan playing in the sand at the dinosaur museum....

Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?: A Response (Part 5)

This is a continuation of my response to Jana Reiss's article "Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?" (See Part One, Part Two, Part Three, and Part Four.) This is Part 5 of 5. The...(more)

Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?: A Response (Part 4)

This is a continuation of my response to Jana Reiss's article "Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?" (See Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.) This is Part 4 of 5. The fourth reason church...(more)

Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?: A Response (Part 3)

This is a continuation of my response to Jana Reiss's article "Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?" (See Part One and Part Two.) This is Part 3 of 5. Reiss's third reason church is...(more)

Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?: A Response (Part 2)

This is a continuation of my response to Jana Reiss's article "Why Are Church Meetings So Dull?" The second reason our church meetings are boring, according to Reiss, is because we think...(more)

Why Are Mormon Church Meetings So Dull?: A Response (Part 1)

A month or so ago, Jana Reiss wrote a provocative essay entitled Why Are Mormon Meetings So Dull? that generated a lot of discussion among the bloggernacle. Reading the essay, I found that I agreed...(more)

Top 5 Most Frequent Things Chris and Alyssa Say to Each Other

According to three full back-breaking minutes of Internet research, the 6th anniversary is the iron anniversary. Yesterday was our 6th anniversary so I snatched this little picture from one of my...(more)

• 7/19: Ethan is playing Indiana Jones and has the medallion (or as he calls it, th...

Motherhood Feminism

NOTE: This is the last entry in my series about feminism. Also, this blog entry warrants a heavy, heavy disclaimer at the outset. Although in this entry I will be discussing some of the...(more)

Marriage in the 21st Century

Back in May, I attended a mother's retreat organized by one of my fellow ward members. Some of the presenters at the retreat were informative and helpful, but there was one speaker whose message I...(more)

Post Script

I received a loving but concerned email from a loved one about yesterday's blog entry and I thought I would post my response as a blog entry to clear up any misconceptions people might have about...(more)

I'm a Feminist, Ask Me Why

NOTE: I began writing today's blog entry back in March, but I delayed posting it because I was worried that I would offend some of my more conservative readers. I've decided to just go ahead and...(more)

• 7/8: Ethan's close encounter with a gorilla at the Zoo...
• 7/8: Ethan riding the elephant at Hogle Zoo....
• 7/6: I pulled out my guitar one Sunday and started playing. Ethan decided to sin...

We recently went to Denver to visit Grandma and Grandpa Rock. We did a lot of fun things, including the Butterfly Pavilion, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, the Denver Zoo, and a local park. Trip to Denver 2010

• 6/28: Making "Ethan tracks"...

• 6/15: Someone tried to fetch a dropped binkie from a full tub....
• 6/15: Climbing up "slide rock" at Alyssa's grandparent's cabin...
• 6/15: Ethan fell asleep in his chair!...

My Top 10 Beatles Songs

My Mom asked me what my top 10 Beatles songs were. I'm don't know everything about the Beatles and their music (although I've learned a lot since marrying Alyssa), so I knew that I couldn't...(more)

That is SO FAKE

'Tis the season for season/series finales and it's admittedly left me a little disgruntled. The finales for Lost and Glee both had childbirth scenes in them. And I gotta tell you: TV and movie...(more)

• 6/10: Alex is taking his first steps!...

Stop Motion Super Mario Bros.

Man, the world is full of talented people with a lot of time on their hands. ...(more)

• 5/29: While Chris was trimming the grass, Ethan said, "Ouch! You're hurt...

I can't quite explain why, but it's true...

...(more)

• 5/14: I used to sing this to him all the time, but didn't realize that he was pic...

The Mormon Women Project

Since Mother's Day is a day honoring women, I figured it would be good to highlight an interesting website/blog I've been reading called The Mormon Women Project. About once a week, the project...(more)

Why Speed When There's No Need?

Anecdote #1: Recently, Ethan wanted to go for a drive as a family because he felt like listening to some music in the car. So we took a quick little trip to see the windmills at the mouth of...(more)

• 4/28: I put this song on a mix and it came up in the car. Ethan started laughing!...

Home-school Divided

I’d say the average person has a knee-jerk negative reaction when you bring up the subject of home-schooling. The instant you mention it, most people start talking about how they knew some...(more)

• 4/6: Since seeing the rocket show at the planetarium, Ethan started saying 5-4-3...
• 4/5: He just started doing this one day so we named it and encouraged it. Now he...

Ethan Dances When He Gets Excited

Here are a couple of videos showing Ethan dancing because he's so excited. This was a favorite game of Ethan's for a while. Dad has to have patience with the noise, but it's worth it to see how...(more)

• 3/26: Alyssa to Ethan: C'mon! We're getting bored just watching you throw dynami...

The Liahona vs. The Iron Rod

In this blog entry I want to address something that I consider to be one of the fundamental tensions involved with membership in the church: the importance of listening to and obeying our church...(more)

• 3/16: I'm wearing two sets of headphones. The sound is awesome!...
• 3/16: Ethan split his lip open last week. The picture doesn't capture how bad it...
• 3/15: Yay! It's getting warm enough to play outside! Alex enjoys crawling aroun...

• 3/13: Playing on the dinosaur skeleton model at what Ethan calls the "Mall H...
• 3/13: It's the Earth!...
• 3/12: These slides are staticy!...
• 3/11: Ethan opens the passenger side and says, "This one for daddy," th...
• 3/9: "Big Shark!"...
• 3/8: Together in the shopping cart...

Rock Kid Video Catchup Extravaganza!

It's been a while since we posted any videos, so here's a bunch at once. ...(more)

Reasons To Believe in Global Warming

In the interest of fairness, I thought I'd make a counter-post to my previous post about Global Warming. In that post I tried to imagine some of the deeper biases that a Global Warming denier would...(more)

"You Like Me! You Really Like Me!": The 2009 Whippy Awards

Since there's a quiet little awards show going on tonight, I thought I'd take a moment to give out my own awards for the best of 2009. I call it the Whippy Awards...(more)

• 3/5: Ethan and Alex playing at the park...

Reasons Not to Believe in Global Warming

When searching for answers, we all tend to have confirmation bias, which means that we're likely to seek out answers that support conclusions that we've already come to. There are plenty of...(more)

Preaching to the Choir

This week there was a minor difference of opinion about where the ward choir should meet. Because I have a tendency to stick my nose where it doesn't belong in choir matters (I'm not the choir...(more)

Where Have All the Blog Entries Gone?

You've probably noticed that I haven't written a blog entry in a pretty long while. I went from doing a blog entry once a week, then downshifting to once a month, and now to never. There's a few reasons why...(more)

• 1/26: Ethan on Mars...
• 1/26: Ethan on the moon....

• 1/21: Ethan says that Alex is "saying prayers."...

• 1/3: Look at all the Christmas packages delivered by UPS today!...

Games, Games, and More Games - part 4

The latest in a series (see part 1 and part 2 and part 3) describing the games that we've purchased. Munchkin Impossible Alyssa has wanted this ever since we played it with our friends in CA,...(more)

It took us a while to get up this year, but our family Christmas newsletter is finally up. You can read it here.

• 11/30: Ethan (holding Baby Jesus): That's Alex!...

• 11/20: Ethan QOTD: Go hug the spider! ...
• 11/20: Look who's doing a little tripodding today! (Finally.)...
• 11/20: Ethan drinking "Zombie Juice" (soda) at IHOP...
• 11/18: Alex + rice cereal = cute...
• 11/18: Ethan put Mr. Potatohead together all by himself. He says its his homage to...
• 11/18: Sham-wow!...

• 11/13: Ethan at the 3D IMAX show "Oceans of Wonder". His first real mov...
• 11/13: What is this thing called snow?...
• 11/8: We bought Alex his first book at the Museum of Ancient History. He enjoys ...
• 11/8: Ethan playing at the Museum of Ancient History (or as he calls it, the "Din...
• 11/8: One of Ethan's favorite things about the Dinosaur Museum is the dark room f...

• 11/4: This is what we found on our walk to the park. Yikes! Ethan was fascinate...
• 11/4: We're eating at Winger's tonight. Ethan is loving the popcorn....

Happy Carl Sagan Day

Today is Carl Sagan's birthday. He would have been 75 years old today. In celebration, here are two music videos that use clips from his epic documentary Cosmos. These were made using...(more)

A couple extra Halloween shots of Ethan, plus some cute shots of the kids at the park on a lovely autumn evening. More Halloween and Autumn Pics

• 10/29: Chris: "Ethan, what's that?" (expecting 'dinosaur') Ethan: -pause- "...
• 10/29: Ethan loves musical greeting cards. This Star Wars one played the theme an...
• 10/28: Ethan's really into planets lately. Now he can name them all....
• 10/27: He will emerge as a beautiful butterfly...
• 10/27: Orca plays the guitar!...

We thought about creating a Twitter account for the boys so we could put up cute little tidbits of their lives without having to create a whole new blog entry. But instead, we did our own version (Chris is a web developer, after all) that allows us to put up pictures and video as well as just text. We even set up a way to upload photos we take on our cell phone to the site automatically. We hope you all enjoy the new additions.

The "Nibbles" are displayed on the top of the left nav bar on the home page in the dark blue box. Click on the View All link to see them.

We went to trunk-or-treat and Ethan had a great time. Didn't have much of a chance to take pictures, but got some cute ones anyway. Also included a couple of nice fall-colors portraits of the boys. Fall is a great time to photograph kids! Halloween '09

We went to the Bean Museum last weekend. We started at a pumpkin patch, then went to the museum, then to BYU Campus to play with the science demonstrations at the Eyring Science Center. Bean Museum - Oct '09

A photo shoot with just Alex. He's such a cute kid (and much easier to photograph). Alex Only

Luke, I Am Your Father!

Ethan's latest obsession is with Star Wars. He loves playing Lego Star Wars and he throws a bit of a tantrum every morning if he doesn't get to wear his Star Wars shirt. NOTE: He is wearing the...(more)

He Did the Mash!

My sister Marin made this funny Jib Jab card of all the Whipple grandchildren for Halloween. Funny stuff. :) Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today! The stars (in order of appearance): Ethan Rock, Ted...(more)

Photos of Ethan and Alex. Ethan and Alex - Oct '09

A trip to the zoo when Grandma Rock came to visit Utah on her Birthday. We went with Nathan's family and we all had a great time. Hogle Zoo - Oct '09

Why Liberalism? (Part Five)

The topic I wanted to address today is the need for government oversight in capitalist systems. A large number of my right wing-ish LDS friends prefer to identify themselves more as Libertarians rather than as conservatives....(more)

Here are some cute pictures that we had of Ethan and Alex. Wanted to share them with everyone else. Hope you enjoy! Ethan and Alex - Sept. '09

Ethan and Alex Videos

This first video is of Ethan reading a 123 book the Grandma Rock got from him. He was reading each number in several different ways/volumes. We caught the end when he was reading about the number...(more)

Videos of Ethan

Just getting a few of our videos up online. This first one is inspired by the video game Street Fighter II. After doing this with him, I showed him the actual game. For a while he loved watching...(more)

Can't Buy Me Love... But You Can Buy Me Rockband

As I mentioned in a previous blog post, Alyssa and I were eagerly awaiting the release of Beatles Rockband, which was released last week. In the months before its release, we geared up for it with several Beatles-themed activities... (more)

Another trip to the zoo because Ethan insisted. This time we went with Grandma and Grandpa Whipple. We had a great time and, like always, Chris had a great time taking pictures of the animals.

Pachinko Machine

My parents bought a pachinko machine a number of years ago at a garage sale. We played with it when we were kids, so when we went to visit, I got it out for Ethan. He liked it. Seeing as I'm...(more)

We visited the Denver Zoo during our trip to Colorado. It took us two days to cover everything, and Chris had a great time taking pictures, and Ethan had a great time running around. Click here to view

If I Ever Lose My Faith in You

A few years ago, I began keeping a list of the key spiritual moments that inform my faith---moments in which I could clearly see the influence of God's hand in my life. I kept this list because...(more)

D is for Drums

Ethan really likes drums. He's always walking around hitting things and saying "Play the Blums! (drums)" One of his favorite videos on his They Might Be Giants DVD is "D is for Drums" (video...(more)

Alex 0.3 - Baby Blessing, Hands, and Smiles

Dear Alex, It was a big month for you. We blessed you on July 5th. You smiled through the entire blessing. Lots of family came down to enjoy this occasion with you. At the gathering afterward,...(more)

Ethan 2.3 - Keep Talkin' Happy Talk

Dear Ethan, Your language skills are really improving this month. You're really good at parroting what Mom and Dad say to you. This has led to some interesting times--for instance at IHOP when...(more)

Beatles Rockband Countdown

As many of you know, Alyssa and I are big Beatles fans and we anxiously awaiting the upcoming release of the Beatles Rockband game. ...(more)

Know Your Calling

I was the substitute teacher in Relief Society this week and it was a lot of fun. I haven't taught RS since I was in the singles' branch right before I got married. Teaching today made me remember why it's one of my all-time favorite callings...(more)

Presents!

My aunt made some new pajamas for Ethan and Alex. You can pictures of them on her sewing blog, Sew Forth and Sew On. Recently they went to Sea World and we got some nice postcards from them. They...(more)

How It All Ends - Global Warming

I just finished watching a number of videos created by a science teacher from Oregon, in which he discusses Global Warming and the approach that we (the laypeople) should take concerning the debate...(more)

Ethan 2.2 - The "Better Late Than Never" Edition

Dear Ethan, Since I last wrote to you, there have been a lot of changes in your world. You got a new brother, for whom you have mixed feelings. And you also moved into a new house. Moving into the...(more)

Welcome Alex!

Dear Alex, You'll be two months old in a couple of days and this is the first blog entry we've been able to write about you. We promise we love you very much! It's just been a busy couple of...(more)

Mowing the Lawn

Now that I'm a home owner, I have the responsibility of taking care of my lawn. Our house is on a corner lot and the previous owners idea of landscaping was to lay grass--lots and lots of...(more)

Star Wars with 80s Show Openings

Alyssa came across these gems today. Alyssa like the Magnum P.I. one, but Chris is partial to the MacGuyver one. Bonus: Star Trek as the A-Team ...(more)

The Beatles: Rockband

Alyssa and I are huge Beatles fans, so seeing this is totally tempting me to buy a Playstation 3. Total awesomeness! But for something even more impressive, check out the commercial for it. ...(more)

Having just purchased the Dr. Horrible DVD last week, Alyssa thought it would be good to share her review of the film along with a few other great Internet films of the past that are currently in our DVD collection:

• Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
• BMW Films: The Hire
• George Lucas in Love

Enjoy! (P.S. Sorry that we currently lack a comment ability for reviews.)

Photos of our new house in Springville. We still need to unpack stuff and figure out where to put all our decorations, but we're starting to feel settled in now.

Photos from our trip to the Hogle Zoo in April. It seems that every time we go to the zoo, I forget my camera, or my telephoto lens, but this time I had both and got some really good shots.

Because Not All Realtors Are Created Equal

Today we signed on the dotted line and officially became the owners of our first home. In our original plans for the future, we hadn't intended to become homeowners for another couple of...(more)

Wolf and Pig

Really cool stop motion animation. Thanks to Brandon for sending me this link. ...(more)

We welcome the latest member of the Rock family: Alexander Ashton Rock. Born April 18th at 9:45ish. 6lbs. 3oz., 18 inches long.

Ethan 2.0

Dear Ethan, Congratulations, you're two years old! With your new year comes new growth and new challenges. Your vocabulary has really increased this past month--mostly because you've taken to...(more)

Why Liberalism? (Part Four)

This blog entry is a continuation of my series entitled "Why Liberalism?" In today's entry, I'll focus on the environment, which is one of my highest priorities as a voter...(more)

Easter Leftovers

Special thanks to my aunt Jill for tipping me off to these amazing Peeps Shows. For the last three years, the Washington Post has sponsored a contest to design a diorama depicting Peeps (those sugary...(more)

Sheep Herding with LEDs

I was really impressed with this video. ...(more)

We went to the North America Museum of Ancient History yesterday. We got to take a lot of great photos. For the full story of our trip, be sure to read all the captions. Dinosaur Museum Photos.

Ethan 1.11

Ethan, You are really close to becomming two years old. Only one more month to go. When people would talk about the "terrible twos" I'd try not to believe them. But this month you've become...(more)

Why Liberalism? (Part Three)

Looks like I'm averaging one post a month these days. At this rate, it will take me a whole year to finish this blog series. Oh well. Today is the continuation of my series entitled Why...(more)

My Little Ponies: Not Just For Little Girls Any More

My Little Ponies just got a whole lot more hip. Check out this awesome list entitled 25 Inspiring My Little Pony Mods from the Toy Zone Blog. Here's the Edward Scissorhands My Little Pony to whet...(more)

Validation

This is a great little video. A little long, but totally worth it. ...(more)

Ethan 1.10

Dear Ethan, You've been really fun to be with this month. Your personality is really starting to develop, and we are beginning to see what you're going to be like. This month you seem to be...(more)

We just updated our RSS Feed. Now you should receive the full text of updated blogs so that you can conveniently read them within your feed reader.

He Who Is So Wise in the Ways of Science

A quick video just for fun. ...(more)

Why Liberalism? (Part Two)

When you ask Mormons why they tend to be Republicans, many of them will point to the two political issues about which the church has taken an official stand: abortion and gay marriage...(more)

One Little Monkey Playing on the Bed

Lately, Ethan's favorite place to play is on our bed. It's a little scary because the bed is taller than he is, but he hasn't fallen yet. There's no much to do up there, just play with the...(more)

Why Are You So Angry?

Halfway through this video, the boyfriend asks, "Why are you so angry with me?" The girlfriend says, "Because...." That's when the video gets really impressive. ...(more)

Why Liberalism? (Part One)

I personally don't feel that Mormonism and liberalism are as mutually exclusive as some of my fellow church members may believe. As such, I wanted to write a series of blog entries exploring how I've come to identify I identify myself as leftist-leaning...(more)

Guess the song

You can check out some of his other songs on his YouTube channel. ...(more)

Victory Button

Alyssa got me one of these for Christmas and it's one of my favorite presents--ever! Many of you might be familiar with the Staples "Easy" Button. You press it and it says, "That was easy!" ...(more)

Cammie came to visit a friend in Utah and Mom came along, which gave us the rare opportunity of having all three kids together again. Her are some picture from that day.

Puzzles

Today Ethan got a new puzzle. Alyssa had noticed that he enjoyed the puzzle he got for Christmas, and we like giving him toys that improve his cognitive skills. Here's a video of him putting it...(more)

Lang-8: Great Site for Language Study

I haven't been posting here recently because I've been posting a lot at a new site called Lang-8. It's a site to help with language learning. The idea is this: post a blog entry on the...(more)

Apple Beer

When I was still in college, my roommates got me hooked on Apple Beer, a non-alcoholic soft drink that's really fizzy, but tastes great and is lots of fun to drink out of a bottle. Recently we...(more)

Ethan 1.9

We haven't written a monthly letter to you in a few months. During that time you've grown substantially, especially in you ability to communicate with us. You've learned a number of new words,...(more)

All Dogs Go to Heaven

Wow... It's been almost a month since I posted a blog entry. I've literally been swamped with work from my job at UVU. First there was all the end-of-semester grading I had to do. Then I spent the...(more)

Playing Around

Ethan is getting more and more active. Here are a couple of pictures. The first couple show him playing outside. He's got the idea of basketball down. Ethan has been doing this pose since...(more)

Playing Inside - The Little Gym

Alyssa signed Ethan up for a semester of "The Little Gym," which is a place where little kids can go to play. They have all sorts of structured activities for toddlers and it's a good place for kids to learn social skills...(more)

Playing Outside

Ethan loves to play outside, but as it's gotten colder, he hasn't had as many chances. In early November, the leaves had all fallen off the trees giving our driveway a nice, late-autumn scene,...(more)

TV Addict

Ethan loves to watch TV. His favorite shows are Sesame Street (especially the honkers), Pitagora Switch (which he calls "ball"), Veggie Tales (especially the Silly Songs), and Wall-E. Ethan...(more)

Two Month Catch-up

It's been a while since we posted last so here are some things to catch us up with what's been happening with Ethan. Halloween Ethan was dressed as a Meerkat for Halloween and was really cute. ...(more)

40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 minutes (the Answers)

Matthew Belinki, who made the montage of inspirational speeches we featured in our previous Today's Special, had this to say about why he decided to make this video: So way back in April, I first...(more)

Back With a Bang: Movie Montages and a GIVEAWAY!

My good friend the Internet and I have been having some "time apart" while I was busy with teaching and while we were having issues connecting our wireless network. But now I'm back with a great...(more)

Merry Christmas to everyone! We've made another online newsletter this year and we hope you all enjoy it. Rock Family Newlsetter - Christmas 2008

Three Men and a Little Lady

We just got our ultrasound a few days ago and it looks like Rock #2 is going to be a boy! We're excited! There are lots of great things about having a boy. For one, I think Ethan might enjoy...(more)

Photoblog: Zoo Lights

We went to the Zoo Lights yesterday at the Hogle Zoo. I brought along my camera so take some pictures. Here's how they turned out. There were standard Christams-type decorations like the...(more)

Our trip to Temple Square over Thanksgiving weekend with Alyssa's family. Ethan and Alyssa couldn't make it because of bedtime conflicts, but Chris went and got some nice pictures.

Headphones

Ethan Modeling My New Headphones Recently I bought a set of Sennheiser HD 485 headphones. I had been experiencing headphone envy working with my co-workers who all seem to have a nice set of...(more)

Monster-peice Theatre

Hooray for another joint blog. Alyssa is writing her version and I'm writing mine. For the past few Octobers, Alyssa have tried to watch as many scary movies as possible. To tell the truth, I'm...(more)

Belated Review: October Scare Fest

Chris and I have a tradition of watching scary-esque movies all during the month of October. I say "scary-esque" because Chris doesn't actually like watching scary movies, so we tend to just...(more)

Honker Duckie Dinger Jamboree

Like we said in a previous entry, Ethan really likes to watch Sesame Street. His favorite is the Honkers. He gets really excited whenever he sees this clip. Now he has his own sign for Sesame...(more)

Pumpkin Carving

A couple of weeks ago, Grandma Whipple took Ethan and us to pick out pumpkins. I really enjoy carving pumpkins. Every year we do it, I try to do something new and original. (See a previous...(more)

Why Global Warming Matters

Recently I was talking with a co-worker who didn't believe that Global Warming was human caused. "I believe that the Earth is warming," he said. "I just don't think that man is the primary...(more)

Take a Quick Survey

I'm a member of a Google group devoted to LDS Earth Stewardship. One of the members recently put together a survey geared at church members to get a sense of current LDS attitudes towards the...(more)

Morning Walk

Ethan and I went on a little walk this morning while Mom was sleeping in. He really likes to be outside, even when it's a little chilly. He first explored the recycling bins right next to our...(more)

FYI, I hate the word "preggo"

In case you missed Chris's subtle announcement a few days ago, we're having a second baby this April. For some reason, this pregnancy has been harder than Ethan's was. I've felt a little more...(more)

Is There a Doctor in the House?

Lately, I've thought a lot about becoming a doctor. Which is not to say that I plan on becoming a doctor, but just that I've thought about what it would be like to be one. Here are some of the...(more)

One for McCain, One for Obama

Even though I'm sure most of you are sick of hearing it already, here's a couple of videos about the presidential race that I found enjoyable and thought-provoking lately. These first two videos...(more)

Ethan 1.6 - Enhancements, But Few New Features

Editors Note: This month's edition of the Ethan Letter will be done by Chris, because Alyssa isn't feeling very well. For those of you who don't know, we're expecting our second child, who will...(more)

Choose the Right

I've recently become a Steve groupie. Steve is a BYU science professor who writes a great blog called The Mormon Organon, which is mostly devoted to convincing fellow saints that...(more)

Come see the results of the Halloween Costume Poll we've had on our site for the last few weeks! Honestly, I had no idea that this particular costume would be as popular as it was, but we bought it for him today. Chris is really happy this one won!

Truth With a Capital T and that Rhymes with P and that Stands for Pool

For those who are wondering where I've disappeared to... I started teaching night classes (Beginning and Intermediate Writing) at Utah Valley University at the beginning of September. It's taken...(more)

Ethan 1.5 - The "You Are 17, Going on 18" Edition

Dear Ethan, Looks like you've decided that there will be no more gender neutrality for you. You are most emphatically a BOY. This month you've started taking a keen interest in cars. Our...(more)

Photoblog: The Living Planet Aquarium

We took a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium today. It technically wasn't Ethan's first trip to an aquarium, but the last time he was still a fetus. Even so, it was probably still a little...(more)

This is a little late, but we wanted to share some of the pictures from our trip to Idaho on Labor Day. It was great to be with everyone. Labor Day in Idaho.

New Computer

The New Machine (or "Some Assembly Required") Our old computer was having some troubles recently, so we decided to get a new one. In situations like this I guess it's custom to post all the...(more)

We want to dress Ethan up in a cute costume this year, but with so many cute ones to choose from, we've been having a hard time deciding. So help us out by casting your vote here.

So Much to Say, So Little Time

I used to always write a blog post pretty religiously once a week every weekend. That's pretty much gone by the wayside over the last few months. Lately it hasn't been for a lack of things to...(more)

He Can Talk!

Here's two new videos showing Ethan's latest linguistic development. First of all, we were teaching him how to say "on" and "off" yesterday morning and he did a pretty good job with...(more)

Best. Cards. EVER.

Somebody get married or have a baby right now so that I can send you on of these greeting cards from Line Upon Line! Oh my gosh I have never laughed so hard in my life! Here's one to whet your...(more)

I can't BELIEVE I'm about to admit this publicly

I used to suffer very badly from insomnia. Ever since I was a tween until the tail end of my college years, I had a lot of difficulty convincing myself to fall asleep. (For some reason, student...(more)

Post-mordern YouTube Remixes

My friend Garth found this little animated gem through Reddit the other day, a must-see for any Beatles fan: I've also been enjoying the new Internet fad of ironically re-cut movie trailers that...(more)

Mmmm... Silky Anniversary

According to Wikipedia, the 4th Wedding Anniversary is the Silk or Linen Anniversary. We just had ours yesterday. We took Ethan out to eat with us to the Macaroni Grill. And, thanks to our awesome...(more)

About a month ago, I learned that the photographer for our wedding was closing his business and that we could purchase the negatives and copyrights for our wedding from him for a nominal fee. I was really excited to finally own my own pictures! In honor of our 4th anniversary, which was yesterday, I'm posting some of our wedding photographs. Man we look so young! And skinny!

Ethan 1.4 - The "Okay, People---We're Walking, We're Walking" Edition

Dear Ethan, The big news this month is that you've officially joined the world of the walking. Last month you had started taking small walks from object to object. (What's funny is that whenever...(more)

Whipple Fun in Park City

This last weekend, the Whipple family got together in Park City. We all had a pretty good time just hanging out together, playing SingStar and Wii, sitting in the hot-tub, and putting on a talent...(more)

Stuffed Peppers: The Recipe Creation Process

Some people have asked me how I come up with certain recipes. When I tell them that I just thought about it, then came up with it, they're generally not satisfied. So...(more)

Scientists find 125,000 Gorillas in Deepest Africa

Being the Gorilla-fan that I am (see my recent blog entry) I was thrilled to hear this. Scientists at the Wildlife Conservation Society have found 125.000 Gorillas in the Congo. This is more that...(more)

Visiting Teaching Rant

Why do visiting teachers feel like they have to bring a gift when they come and visit me? My visiting teachers came by a few days ago and brought me a scented candle. Don't get me wrong: it was a...(more)

Rejected Talent Show Act

Next week we're going to another family reunion that will involve a talent show. I was trying to come up with something funny or cool that Chris and I could do and came across this absolutely...(more)

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

I've been getting really bored with the haircut I've had for the last ten years. My sister Noelle recently graduated from beauty school, so I asked her to give me something new yesterday. Scroll...(more)

Recent Videos That Made Me Laugh, Made Me Cry

More than a few of my friends are aware of my intense dislike for Comic Sans. (Go Helvetica!) And they pointed me to this funny little film by the folks over at College Humor, who have done a few...(more)

Mamma Mia!

Who knew that movie advertising for last week's musical was targeted at toddlers? For the record, we only own 3 songs by them, so I have no idea where this came from. :) ...(more)

Ethan 1.3 - The "I'll Walk When I Feel Like It, Dangit" Edition

Dear Ethan, Sorry for getting this blog entry out a week late, little buddy. For some reason, blog-writing has felt like mentally trying to swim through a pool of peanut butter the last little...(more)

Tri-blog-athon

If I took the time to write in my blog more, these would likely be three separate entries. As it is, I'm cramming them into one to clear my queue and start over, hoping that I'll take the time to...(more)

Deleted

As any stay-at-home Mom will tell you, naptimes are a sacred. They are a time of personal freedom and renewal. Today I chose to spend naptime composing a blog entry. Only to have the...(more)

Cellulose: The New Biofuel

I read an article from ScienceBlogs called Biofuels: The Next Generation. Here's a quick quote: You see, what most folks don't realize is that corn ethanol is a means to get the infrastructure in...(more)

Well, if Chris won't post this, I WILL

A few Sunday mornings ago we received a knock from our next-door neighbor. With a great sense of exigency, she asked us if we wouldn't mind substituting for her Primary class (the 7 to 8 year-olds) so that she...(more)

Walking Man

Ethan's been taking a few steps on his own lately! Take a look at a few videos of him standing on his own and walking a little. Ethan also loves to go to our neighbors and play with their two...(more)

We got together to celebrate Marin's birthday. Afterward, we used some sparklers and time-lapse photography to trace pictures. We experimented a little with flashlights as well. Then on the Fourth, I got some fireworks photos, which didn't turn out all that well. Marin's Birthday and Fourth of July

Happy Independence Day

This one's for you, Susie: ...(more)

Twitter: Hot... Blogging: Not

That's how I personally feel right now, anyway. I'm just having a hard time coming up with anything interesting to say that could fill a whole blog---which is why my usual weekly entries have been...(more)

The Benefits of High Gas Prices

Since the recent increase in gas prices, there has been a lot of talk about how terrible it's been for the country. To demonstrate, here is a map of gas prices per county in the US. However, the...(more)

Problems with Perfection

Recently. Alyssa and I watched a movie about a font: Helvetica. The documentary was fascinating, and it was interesting to see how ubiquitous the font is. Now we see it everywhere. Which is...(more)

We decided to go on an impromptu picnic today to Bridal Veil Falls. We all had a great time, especially Ethan, who loved the water. Picnic at Bridal Veil Falls

We went to a couple of reunions this month, one for the Rocks and one for the Whipples. The one for the Rocks was in Idaho, just outside of Rexburg. We rented a lodge and had a great time. The Whipple reunion was at Marin's complex's clubhouse. We had a great time swimming with Ethan. June '08 Reunions

Hawkeye

While at the recent family reunion in Idaho, I went for a walk along the grounds of the lodge we were staying at. I heard a loud screeching call and looked up to see a hawk circling me. I circled...(more)

The Ants Go Marching

Fortunately, the ants are only marching one-by-one at this point, but it's still not something we want to say "Hurrah! Hurrah!" about. We found the ant in the picture crawling through our house...(more)

Put Down the Credit Card and No One Will Get Hurt

As a good liberal, I pride myself on being an anti-consumerist. It's fairly easy to do since I strongly dislike shopping. (Maybe I should just go ahead and say that I hate shopping. After all,...(more)

College Level Writing: My Teaching Philosophy

I'm warning you that this blog entry is going to be pretty boring. I wrote out my teaching philosophy this week because I was interviewing to be a writing instructor at UVSC. It was also inspired by...(more)

My sister Marin gave me the film Little Fugitive for my birthday. This is a classic that I've wanted in my collection for a very long time. Come read my review of the film!

Related film reviews:

• The 400 Blows
• A Hard Day's Night

For a full list of our film reviews, see the hyperlinked items in our DVD Library.

Ethan 1.2 - The "Happy Father's Day" Edition

Dear Ethan, Well, we've been trying to teach you sign language since you were 6 months old with only moderate success... Until now! This month your use of sign language increased dramatically....(more)

Awesome Snopes Entry

If you're like me and you have one of those friends who forwards you every "interesting" email he or she receives, you better bookmark Snopes.com right now. It's a website devoted to verifying or debunking...(more)

Mormon Cinema in Three Lines or Less

I absolutely loved this piece called "Film School in Three Lines or Less" on McSweeney's a few months ago. This week I felt inspired to make my own---Mormon movie style. Hope you like...(more)

Games, Games and More Games, Part 3

The latest in a series (see part 1 and part 2) describing the games that we've purchased. Citadels We first played Citadels with the Madsens. The Gist of the Game - Players pay to build...(more)

New Apartment: Orem

Now that we've moved in (finally), got everything unpacked (almost) and finished decorating (mostly), we decided to put up some pictures of our new place. Alyssa wanted to add some new colorful...(more)

Why I didn't post last week...

I turned another year older on Monday and I gotta tell you... I dread my birthdays. It's not because I don't like getting older or anything...(more)

Looks Like I'm a "Superior" Wife, Circa 1939

I came across an interesting quiz posted on the Marriage Blog at Families.com. It's a test from 1939 that will determine your "performance" as a wife. Let's see how you measure...(more)

Back on the Soap Box... Again

It's been a little while since I put up a post about the environment, so I figured it was about time. I want to get on my soap box and talk about two great environmentally-friendly things that I've...(more)

Ethan 1.1 - The "License to Pig Out" Edition

Dear Ethan, This month started off with a little bit of a scare when we took you in for your 12 month checkup. When the nurse put you on the scale and told us that you only weighed a little more...(more)

Salt Lake City on the Move

Forbes Magazine recently named Salt Lake City the second best city for commuters. (Buffalo, N.Y. was first.) I guess it's a good thing that we moved since San Francisco was voted #10 on the top...(more)

Perspectives on Inactive Single LDS Women

Shortly after General Conference weekend, the Salt Lake Tribune held a press conference with the new church leaders that had been sustained. In their report on the conference,...(more)

The Budget of the Average American

I'm an avid fan of the blog Get Rich Slowly. The author, J.D. Roth, brought my attention to a really great interactive chart published by the New York Times last Saturday. Check out this very...(more)

SEO for Newbies

While Chris's parents were here visiting a few weekends ago, we had a conversation about how search engines work. They were surprised to find that the order in which Google/Yahoo displays search...(more)

Playing Catch-up

It's been over a month since the last Today's Special, but it's not because of a lack of things to post. Here's a collection of interesting things from the web that I would have posted if our...(more)

Ira Glass is My Hero

Chris and I have been fans of the radio show This American Life for a very long time. So, when Ira Glass announced that they would be broadcasting one of their shows live in movie theaters across the nation, we knew we had to go....(more)

What Chris Will Miss About California

Top 5 Things Chris Will Miss About California 5. Beaches/Mountains Although we didn't go that often, I really enjoyed going to the beach. This was the first time I've ever lived really lived...(more)

What Ethan Will Miss About California

Continuing our three-part series about California (see my entry from yesterday), Chris and I developed a list of the things we thought Ethan would probably miss about California. So, without further...(more)

What Alyssa Will Miss About California

Yay! The Rocks are FINALLY back online. Sorry we weren't able to update in a while. We had some technical difficulties on our website that made it so we couldn't login and update our site. Plus, we've been pretty busy....(more)

Grandma and Grandpa Rock came over for a visit so we spent the weekend with them at Nathan's house in Tooele.

Although we've been really really busy with the move and everything, we also haven't posted recently because the server our site was on changed and it left us unable to update our site. No worries now though because it's all fixed!

Ethan 1.0 - The "Let Them Eat Cake" Edition

Dear Ethan, You turned one year old today. Congratulations! You've come a really long way in just one short year. That was then and this is now...(more)

Happy Birthday to Me!

Today I turned 30. The big three-oh. To celebrate, Alyssa bought me this cake from a Japanese bakery located near the Japanese grocery store we always go to. The cake is beautiful. I was...(more)

Late Night Conversations With Chris

Chris: What should I have for dinner tomorrow when I go to school? Me: I don't know. Is there anything we need to get rid of? Chris: Ramen. We have a ton of it. Enough to fill a swimming pool...(more)

Say Dada

Ethan is getting a little better with his words. Check it out. ...(more)

April Fool's Day Round-Up

April Fool's Day is probably my favorite day of the year to surf the web. Here's a round-up of some of the April Fool's Day jokes that were out there yesterday (and our rating of them)...(more)

Ethan's First Steps

It's not "officially" walking yet, and he needs to use support, but he can take a few steps on his own now! (more)

Hodgepodge Developmental Steps

Ethan had his first taste of ice cream this week. As with all things, he made a face when first trying it, but he soon got used to it. Ethan is also crawling all over the place now. He hardly...(more)

Happy Blogiversary to Me!

Yay! Tomorrow morning Sounding My Barbaric Yawps Across the Rooftops of the World will officially turn three years old. To celebrate these past three years on the blogosphere...(more)

18 Again

Alyssa tagged me into writing "6 things every person should accomplish before they turn 18". I tried to come up with an interesting list, but because i wasn't a very interesting person, the list...(more)

The Dark Side of the Internet

This week's topic: internet communication (e.g. emails, comments on blogs, electronic guestbooks, etc.), specifically between strangers. I've always been a big champion of the comment feature on blogs. The main reason I decided to switch my blog over to caferock...(more)

Photos from a St. Patrick's Day visit to the duck pond and of his new Easter outfit. St. Patrick's Day and Easter

Playing with the Keyboard

66666666 ffff d cc cccccccccccccccc ccccccccccccccc cccccccccccccc ccccccccccccc mk7777 7777777 77777777 77777f zx zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz xxxxxxxxxx Dad's Note: Ethan loves to...(more)

When I'm 64---Errr, I Mean, 18???

My good friend Kathryn tagged me a little while ago. Since it was a new blog tag thing that I haven't done, I figured I'd respond to the call. My task was to come up with a list of Six Things...(more)

Ethan 0.11 - The "No Animals Were Harmed In the Making of This Blog" Edition

Dear Ethan, T-minus 1 month until you're 1 year old! Yay! This last month has been fun and busy. I was worried we were going to go another month without any "real" crawling (as opposed to army...(more)

We recently went to Utah for some job interviews and while we were there we visited family. While we were there, we took lots of pictures.

A Happening, Busy Kind of Week

Unlike Chris's brother Nathan who has the most uncanny luck of anyone we have ever known, I don't win contests or drawings very often. But this week, I won a seriously cool prize: an autographed...(more)

A photo collection with pictures of Ethan in places that you wouldn't normally expect a baby. Hey, You're Not Supposed to Be There!

Disaster at the Circus Peanut Circus

I have a real soft spot for photo blogs of people's artwork. Today I found a really funny artwork blog called Bent Objects by a guy named Terry. He typically makes his art using food and bent wire....(more)

Ask the Readers: Does Rich Equal Righteous?

I've been having a discussion with a friend of mine about the status of wealthy people within Mormon culture. My friend feels that Mormons tend to equate being wealthy with being righteous. His argument is...(more)

Ode to Rube Goldberg

A while ago, a friend of mine from DI sent me a video of this cool Rube Golberg contraption that inspired me to create this Today's Special. Since I now have a copious supply of free time, I spent...(more)

The Truth About Economic Mobility

A few weeks ago, Chris and I got into an online debate with our well-meaning fellow ward members about the virtue of paying taxes for public education. As a home-schooling family, they felt that it...(more)

New Do; New You

The big news this week is that Ethan got his first hair cut. Chris needed one too, so we went to Great Clips to get one together. As you can see, it was getting a little shaggy. Mom sat on the...(more)

Star Wars Summary and Darth Vadar Tribute

This is incredibly cute! "Don't mess with Darth Vadar, he'll get ya!" Speaking of Darth Vadar, NPR did a short segment on him for their series about famous fictional figures called "In...(more)

Instructions for the Care of Your Baby

I don't know if these educational graphics are meant to be serious or not, but Chris and I thought they were pretty hilarious. You have to check them out...(more)

A Lovely Visit From Grandma - A Photoblog/Travelogue

I have this little application on my computer called Ding! that lets me know about cheap flights on Southwest. A couple of weeks ago, Ding! came up with a great deal: Salt Lake City to San Jose...(more)

Ethan .10 - The "Pandora's Box" Edition

Dear Ethan, It's official! This month you started crawling! Uh... sort of. You've been doing this thing that we call "army crawling" where you drag yourself forward on your belly with your...(more)

The Mystery Spot

While Alyssa's Mom was visiting us, we decided to take her to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. The Mystery Spot is a place where things don't behave like you think they should, as explained in the...(more)

I finally have some real news to report!

Looks like I'm one of the lucky thousand whose number got picked. Yep. I got laid off at Yahoo today. Even though I kind of had a hunch that this was coming, it's still been a pretty emotional...(more)

Valentimes

Latest rumor on the Yahoo-Microsoft deal: Yahoo expected to say "no deal" on Monday...(more)

Peek-a-Boo

Ethan's really gotten into "Peek-a-boo" lately. He's even been able to initiate a few games himself. Ethan Fan Club Bonus Video: "No Camera's Please" ...(more)

MindTrap

Our ward recently had a swap meet, so Alyssa and I took it as an opportunity to get rid of stuff. While going through our games, Alyssa suggested we get rid of MindTrap and MindTrap II....(more)

Why I'm a Democrat

So, I'm a Democrat. It's shocking, of course... but I've known I was a Democrat since high school. First, it started out as just a way to "rebel," to assert my identity as a...(more)

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We've included a few of the photos we've taken over the past month or so. There are a lot of cute ones in this set, so we hope you enjoy them! Ethan at Nine Months

Green Jello

Here's Ethan showing off two of the new skills he learned this week...(more)

Some news to report, still more rumors

Proof that Yahoo's home page is increasingly relevant... Not sure if that was someone at Yahoo's idea of a joke, but it seemed a little too funny not to share. In case you hadn't heard, Yahoo...(more)

Each Life That Touches Ours For Good

Of course everyone has since heard that President Gordon B. Hinckley has passed away now. I thought I would mention a few interesting tributes to him that are out on the web right now. First of all,...(more)

Come on Baby, Do the Locomotion

Ethan has finally figured out that he can use these new pushing and moving skills to get places that he wants to go. He can't technically "crawl" yet, but he can "creep" or "army...(more)

No definite news to report, only rumors

From the Onion this week... FYI, one of the main editors/writers for the Onion has a brother who works for Yahoo, so he's probably naturally concerned. Well, just to set the record straight...(more)

I Never Thought I'd Want to Learn to Knit.... Until Now!

Aren't they cute? They're from the new They Might Be Giants podcast for kids. (Technically, it's a vodcast. Oh well.) I really wish I knew how to make cool puppets like this! If anyone has a...(more)

One Thing I Miss About Utah...

In addition to being in the thick of the Sundance Film Festival, I really miss attending the annual LDS Film Festival. For those of you who weren't able to make it (like me), one of my favorite...(more)

Is this too much to ask?

Even with his big win in Michigan, I'm still confident in my original prediction that Mitt Romney is not going to make it past the primaries. And to be honest with you, I won't be all that upset about it when that happens. (more)

Exclusive Entry for Ethan Fan Club Members Only!

This entry is full of cute videos of Ethan, but they're kind of long and might be a little boring to anyone who isn't a hard-core Ethan fan. First up, we have Ethan's attempts at crawling around....(more)

If You're Happy and You Know It

Ethan Learned to clap this week. At his most recent doctor's visit (no shots!) we were asked if he could clap yet. I had noticed him banging blocks and things together, so I knew it would only be...(more)

I've been inspired by my friend JP to write more film reviews, so here's a few from our DVD Library to whet your cinematic appetite:

• Buster Keaton's "Sherlock Jr." (silent film)
• The Fog of War (documentary)
• Heima (documentary)

The Pocket Snails in Review

At the risk of my single friend accusing me of having now become an "old married person whose only joy is to...(more)

Ethan 0.9 - The "Reluctant Crawler" Edition

Dear Ethan, Another month older and you are no closer to crawling! What's up with that?! You often get up on your knees and rock back and forth. You can swivel your body around on your stomach to...(more)

Marathon Man

You'd think that after 3 years of marriage that you'd pretty much know everything about a person, right? Apparently not...(more)

Secret Admission: I Like Old-School Computer Games

If you are a child of the eighties like me and you happened to have a personal computer back then (or, as in my case, a friend who had one), then you surely must remember that the first really cool...(more)

Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends

This week's picture is a little older, but I thought it was appropriate given the common New Year's Resolution to lose weight. It's entitled "Only in America": As for me, I have two...(more)

Alyssa overhauled her links page to include links to some of the websites and blogs for the (gasp) 57 RSS feeds that she reads. (Not all of them---just the best.) Plus, she's updated her list of "Sleek Websites."

California Christmas v2.0

This was our second Christmas in California and our first Christmas with Ethan! These are a set of bubble lights that my brother got us for Christmas. I loved the set that we had growing up (we...(more)

"You've Been Razzed!"

As I mentioned in my Christmas post last year, my family has a tradition of giving each other "Razzie gifts." Every year we draw names out of a hat and give our assigned family member a Razzie...(more)

Pic Tac Toe Winners!

SPOILERS ALERT! If you are still trying to figure out the answers to the Pic Tac Toe I posted last week, this blog entry contains the answers...(more)

The Bee's Knees

Ethan is fast approaching mobility. He's figured out how to get up on his hands and knees. He's been doing it for about a week now, but we've finally been able to capture it on...(more)

That's Sick!

Ethan has had a pretty bad cold since last Saturday that gave him a raging fever and put him in a sour mood for several days. On Thursday he started to smile again. Yesterday he started to sleep on...(more)

Japanese Drama Reviews

As promised, here is a review of some of the Japanese dramas I've seen. You can download them at D-Addicts.[1] or you can email me and I might be able to make a copy for you. 鉄板少女アカネ...(more)

We decided to go digital with our Christmas newsletter this year. You can check it out by following this link: Christmas 2007 Newsletter

Reasons Japanese TV is Better than American TV

I've been watching a few Japanese dramas lately and I've been really enjoying them. It's interesting to compare to American TV. The biggest difference is the format. American shows are created...(more)

A Christmas Puzzle: Pic Tac Toe

As part of our family's Christmas traditions, my parents always put together a jigsaw puzzle every December 25th+. In honor of that tradition, I thought I'd post a fun "puzzle" that I made. I'm...(more)

Wired

Recently, I discovered a way to download Japanese television dramas from the internet. Watching them is a nice way to pass the time while I'm feeding Ethan or eating lunch. I really enjoyed some...(more)

Musings on Men's Journal

So, this December hopefully marks the last issue of Men's Journal that we're going to receive. Why do we get Men's Journal? Well, last December two enterprising, yet utterly evil high school girls came by...(more)

Ethan 0.8 - The "Give Peas a Chance" Edition

Dear Ethan, Yesterday you turned 8 months old. Congratulations! In terms of big milestones, this month you started eating solid foods exclusively. You like just about everything we've given you...(more)

Nothing to Say...

This is a sculpture by Kacey Wong entitled "Writer's Block." And, incidentally, that's what I have this week, so...(more)

7 Facts For 7 Months

My mom tagged me a little while ago, so now it's my turn to share 7 facts about myself. 1. My Aunt Marin and Uncle Ammon came to visit me this month and so we got out the blow-up bed for them to...(more)

I pity those poor reindeer that have to play Monopoly

Chris and I are writing joint blogs this week about Christmas music. So, I've developed a theory about the reason people like Christmas music. I came up with this hypothesis when...(more)

Killer Christmas Carols

Like I said in my last post, I hate Christmas songs. It's not that I hate all Christmas songs, but most of them are cheesy, sappy, and some are downright dumb. Here are a few of the things I hate...(more)

The Christmas Jibblies

That's what Chris gets every time he sees this video of the Rock Family as elves: Come see us as elves! You can make yourself and your family an elf too at Office Max's Elf Yourself. ...(more)

Seven Habits of Highly Chris-like People

Alyssa challenged me in a blog she wrote a while ago to write seven little-known facts about myself. Here they are, in no particular order....(more)

30 Things That Change When You Have a Baby

Okay, this was admittedly cheesy, but I'm a mom now, so I now have an "Enjoy Cheesy Stuff Guilt Free" card. From babycenter.com, here's 30 Things That Change When You Have a Baby by Rebecca...(more)

I'm Thankful for the Internet. No, Seriously, I Am.

I just found the perfect t-shirt for me from Despair.com: So, I love Instant Messaging. I've been regularly chatting with friends since 1998. IM is probably my favorite way to communicate...(more)

Ethan's First Day at the Beach

On the day after Thanksgiving, Alyssa's coworker Bob invited us to visit a beach house that he and his family were renting for the weekend. We stopped by and got to spend some time on the beach...(more)

The Beatles Cover Project

I was in high school when the Beatles Anthology came out. It caused a renewed interest in the Beatles (especially among the younger generation). My high school friends caught the Beatles fever and...(more)

Complete Redesign

On a whim we decided to rearrange the furniture. Here are some pictures showing the new layout. As you can see, we've completely rearranged everything. This arrangement makes the...(more)

Ethan 0.7

Dear Ethan, Today you turned 7 months old and it's amazing how far you're coming along. In terms of big milestones, you've learned how to sit up all by yourself. What was really sweet was that...(more)

Little Known Facts

My friend Lori tagged me last week, so I'm going to answer the call... Here are the rules which must be posted on your blog if you are tagged: Link to your tagger and post these rules. Share 7...(more)

That's Some Serious Sit!

Ethan's getting better and better about sitting up on his own as evidenced by this video. However, he's not quite perfect. ...(more)

I took Ethan out for a Fall Photo shoot to test out the new camera. You can view some of the pictures at this album: Ethan Six Months

Lights, Camera!

Alyssa and I have been saving up for a nice camera ever since Ethan was born. The video one is good, but we wanted a nice still camera to capture some of Ethan's cutest moments. This year we...(more)

Wow! He Found Her!

Okay... you gotta go to the site is site today before it disappears, just because it's a cool love story... Yesterday during my idle surfing, I stumbled upon the site NYgirlofmydreams.com where...(more)

Hallowethan

We had big plans for Ethan on Halloween. We picked his costume out a while ago. In case it's not immediately apparent why we chose a lobster, listen to the following song. Alyssa's costume...(more)

I Often Go Walking

This cartoon by Matt Groening pretty much sums up my week... But I don't want to dwell on negative things, so I'd like to write my blog this week about something that is a source of happiness...(more)

They Might Be Halloween

First of all, check out this amazing pic: So, if I were to choose a band who represented Halloween, I would definitely say it was They Might Be Giants. They recently came out with a...(more)

We had to leave town unexpectedly for a funeral, so there might not be any updates for a few days. We'll be back soon!

Is My Vote For Sale?

So, as promised, this is my follow-up to my previous blog. I've thought about it long and hard. I think I would never, ever sell my vote for...(more)

Is Your Vote For Sale?

I realized the other day that I have developed a pretty rigid daily routine. I wake up at around 6 or 6:30, leave home precisely at 7:35...(more)

Ethan 0.6

Continuing with last month's tradition... Dear Ethan, Today you turned 6 months old. Milestone-wise you got your first tooth a couple of weeks ago and today your second tooth should break through...(more)

All Hallow's Eve Speedily Approacheth

Looking for unique ways to carve your pumpkin this year? Why not carve one of the presidential candidates using the templates from Des Moines Register!...(more)

Sometimes Behave So Strangely

I've recently been listening to a really neat radio show called Radio Lab. I enjoyed one of the programs so much that I had Alyssa listen to it as well. Here's a clip from it. To listen to...(more)

A Conference-Inspired Memory

People often associate Conference Weekend with flowers. I think I can see why... Prior to the weekend, I felt like I was a wilted flower, head drooping with my many...(more)

New Tooth and Sushi

Ethan's got his first tooth recently. We thought that two of them were coming in (and one is still one the way) but only one has broken through so far. Here's a picture of it. Another...(more)

On This Lovely Conference Morning

According to the LDS Web Guy, the Church Public Affairs office has created a new YouTube channel. To inaugurate the new channel, they've posted eight short videos of Elder Ballard answering some...(more)

'Dem Bones

Okay, folks. I've been seriously saving this very awesome Today's Special for several months for the Halloween season. Now that it is officially October, I can finally share one of my favorite...(more)

This Monkey's Gone to Heaven

Do you find that when you know someone long enough, you begin to develop your own language that is specific to the two of you? Like a simple phrase becomes shorthand for an event or concept that would require more than 5 minutes to explain its background...(more)

Sitting Up and Eating Solid Foods

Ethan's reaching some new milestones lately. He's getting better at sitting up all by himself (but he's not perfect yet). We also introduced him to solid foods. Here's a video clip of his...(more)

Ramadan

Our neighbors are Muslim and they invited us to a Ramadan feast last night. Ramadan is the month (on the Islamic lunar calendar) in which the Qur'an was revealed to the prophet Mohammad (peace be...(more)

Just Another "Meh, Meh" Monday

The beautiful blog entry that I had planned for this weekend just isn't going to happen. We stayed out a little late with friends last night, so my blog didn't get written. I was going to do it...(more)

The Art of the Book

"Brian Dettmer carves into books, revealing the artwork inside, creating complex layered three-dimensional sculptures." Pretty amazing. Check it out: Brian Dettmer: Book Autopsies I...(more)

Games, Games, and More Games - Part 2

It's been only five months since my last entry about all the games we've bought. Since many people ask us about game recommendations, here are the games we've bought since...(more)

Avast, Ye Land Lubbers!

Arrr! Today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day, scallawags! Would you bilge rats like ter know yer Space Pirate name? Then take a gander at: The League of Space Pirates. My name is...(more)

Fight for Kisses

Fight for Kisses This is apparently a game that's recently come out. You can view a trailer for the game at the link above, which is hilarious. I imagine that most of marketing will start...(more)

That Darn Ethan

Ethan's been going through a few changes this week. He's starting to take a long nap in the morning (which is nice), but he's fighting every bedtime in between (which is frustrating). One of the...(more)

All Creatures of Our God and King

Last night Alyssa started working on her lesson for Young Womens: The Importance of Life. It starts out talking about how wonderful nature is and how God has given us such great natural...(more)

Month Five

I regularly read a blog by dooce. Every month where she writes a letter to her 3-year-old daughter.* I think I'm going to try doing this for Ethan, so here's my first stab at it. Dear...(more)

Japanese Hornets vs. Honeybees

Bringing a foreign species into an area is rarely a good idea (see Cane Toads for another good example of this). Japanese people brought European Honeybees to pollinate their crops, but didn't...(more)

Laughing Till It Hurts

Ethan's becoming more and more responsive to our efforts to make him laugh. He loves when we talk to him by going "Huh-huh-Hi" over and over, as you can see in this video: He also likes being...(more)

Roll the Bones

This week I wanted to write about the new method that Chris and I now use when deciding how to spend our evenings. Since we're pretty much house-bound after Ethan goes to bed every night, we've gotten a little crazy...(more)

So THAT's Mr. Whipple!

Before I was a Rock, my maiden name was Whipple. As my Whipple elders are constantly fond of reminding us "young'uns," in the 70s or early 80s there was a series of Charmin commercials about a...(more)

It's the Devil! The Freakin' Devil!

I've chosen to do a nutrition theme for one of my classes, so I made a graphic that I thought would be appropriate. I recently listened to a science podcast in which the interviewee was saying that...(more)

It's Fun to Charter an Accountant and Sail the Wide Accountancy

In honor of the Labor Day (yes, I know I'm a day late), here's a delightful little film I thoroughly enjoyed about the mass revolt of hard-working British accountants: The Crimson Permanent...(more)

Blogging Along, Singing a Song

As you can see, I've redesigned my blog page. I did this for a number of reasons. The title was obsure - The previous title (tail life.txt | grep interseting) was a Linux command that...(more)

Monkey Shines!

I know that I just posted something about monkeys (chimpanzees rather) but I came across some interesting videos involving primates. The first is of a robotic arm that has been attached to the brain...(more)

Three Views of Ethan

We had three quick videos of Ethan I put them all together in one video montage. The first is of Ethan stretching. Every time we unwrap him he does a cute little stretch. The next shows his love...(more)

In the Warm California Sun

California weather, tired of being called "boring" has punished me by raising the temperature of boring to 90° plus this last week (the forecast above is for next week, which looks like it...(more)

Love on a tin can string telephone

Today's blog is about the (lost?) art of the email. For some reason yesterday, I found myself sifting through my archives reading old emails that I had thought were good enough to save as separate Word documents. And it's got me thinking about how much my use of email has changed...(more)

Heima Trailer

So, are any of you fans of Sigur Ros---the indie rock band from Iceland? (Hollow sound of crickets chirping.) I guess not. But you SHOULD be. They're a great band and there's a new documentary...(more)

Short-term Memory in Chimps

I can't help it, I love documentary science videos! Here's an interesting one I found from Slate.com which talks about research involving short-term memory in chimpanzees. ...(more)

I Can Touch My Toes 1-2-3

On our walk this morning I noticed Ethan playing with his toes. It looked so cute that I had to take some pictures. You can see the pictures on our photos page here. ...(more)

Gerald McBoing Boing

The other day I was playing Scrabble with Chris and it reminded me of a charming little Canadian animation short called The Big Snit. I looked to see if it was on YouTube and, sure enough, there it...(more)

I Am Your Father!

Partially inspired by my friend Bruce's blog in which he includes his daughter in a Star Wars scene, I thought I'd try my hand at a little image editing myself. Mouse over the image to see the...(more)

Ethan Video Extravaganza!

Three videos of Ethan today. The first is a short video of his "Tummy Time." He's getting really good at holding his head up when he's on his tummy. This second is a vocal performance...(more)

The Cost of Bringing Up Baby

Happy New Year, everyone! This weekend marked the end of our fiscal year. That's when I get all freaky with the spreadsheets and make a very detailed analysis of how we spent our income over the...(more)

Fleep

This is a link to a long comic sequence titled "Fleep": http://www.shigabooks.com/strips/fleep/scrollindex.html The comic series is a little long a takes a while to read, but I found it...(more)

Mom Sells Pokemon on Ebay

This eBay action for a set of Pokemon cards was really amusing. I've copied the entire text here because I eBay things don't stick around for long. You can read the original post here. I'm...(more)

Gifts from Grandmas

Here are a couple of pictures of Ethan wearing some of the clothes that he got from his Grandmas. A wiener dog onesie from Grandma Whipple. A Curious George sleeper made by Grandma Rock. ...(more)

My Brother on Television

For those who might be interested, you can catch glimpses of my brother Nathan on this Fox News report on the demolition of the Key Bank building in Salt Lake City. Watching the Rise and...(more)

More Audiobooks

Here's an update of the books I've been listening to while I'm watching Ethan. The Assault on Reason by Al Gore - This book talks about the American culture's drift away from logic and reason. ...(more)

Many Me's

I just got back from a four day trip to Milwaukee for Destination Imagination. It was really hard to be away from Chris and Ethan. I missed them so much. It's good to be home. Due to the trip, I...(more)

My Life as a Cartoon Character

There are a couple of places on the web where you can create an avitar for yourself as a character in that show. Here are a couple of mine: Chris as a Simpson's Character Chris as a South Park...(more)

My Week as a Single Parent

Alyssa left for Milwaukee on Wednesday afternoon. By Saturday, I was going crazy. Most of the week was fine. I took care of Ethan, I baked bread, I cleaned the house, I even got a couple hours of...(more)

Today's Blog is Brought to You by the Number 1,537,920

Why 1,537,920? That's the number of minutes Chris and I will have been married at 9:30 PST (10:30 Utah time) tomorrow, August 13th. ("1,537,920 minutes" just sounds cooler than "3 years.")...(more)

Ethan Tubeyhands

Fun with trash! For some reason, he really liked this. ...(more)

Developmental Milestones

Ethan has been a busy boy lately. He's learning to manipulate objects with his hands and he's learned to roll over to his stomach. Here are some videos showing his progress. ...(more)

Meta-Internet

For Today's Special, here's two pieces that self-reflexively play with the culture of the World Wide Web we all know and love. The first is for all of you who love Instant Messenger and chat...(more)

The Great Midwestern Ice Cream Story

I found Fred Gratzon's blog (called The Lazy Way to Success) because Fred wrote an entry singing the praises of Destination Imagination and a friend pointed it out to me. It was a cool entry, so I...(more)

The Different Types of Environmentalists

What does it mean to be an Environmentalist? I've considered myself to be an Environmentalist for a long time, without really stopping to think about what that word meant. Environmentalism has...(more)

Envrion-mental

It's been a while since Chris and I wrote a joint blog (a blog where we both write about the same subject), so we thought we'd do it again. This blog's topic: a hodge-podge of my recent thoughts...(more)

Tree Watchin'

I had mentioned before that one of the things Ethan and I do to pass the time is do go outside and lie under trees. We do this because the bright bright sun bothers Ethan, and the trees shade us...(more)

Shiny Happy Baby

Ethan is just full of laughs lately, making him a lot of fun to be around. Here's an example of him laughing at Dad's funny faces. ...(more)

It Took Me a Whole Week to Finish Hary Potter... Sheesh.

But now I'm finally done! I enjoyed the last installment immensely. Did you?... A while back, Chris's mom gave us an LDS-themed card game called "Split the Ward" because she knows we collect novelty Mormon games. Most LDS games are pretty lame,...(more)

The family went to see the 7-11 converted into a Kwik-E-Mart. It's done as a promotion for the new Simpsons Movie. There's only eleven converted stores in the country so, we were excited to have one close by. Check out all our photos!

Rolling Rock

Ethan has started to do a sort of half-roll lately. I caught this on camera for those who would like to see, although it's really boring. Ethan is becoming more and more high-maintenance. He's...(more)

Post-release Harry Potter Items

This is a video from the opening of The Colbert Report, a news show on Comedy Central. Normally the host introduces the show and gives a few quips on what the topics of the night will be. Here is...(more)

From My Inbox

A few people have been sending me interesting stuff via email that could be considered "Special." Here's a fabulous video my Dad pointed out to me. Talk about hidden talent: And here's...(more)

Can't Blog... Reading

This week's image is the Yahoo Hawk. Last Wednesday I was walking back to my desk from the cafeteria when I noticed a bunch of people were milling about watching something. I looked and saw that...(more)

Sad Songs and Etch-a-Sketches Aren't Selling This Year

More Harry Potter coolness... If you like that, check out the etchasketchist's Flickr album for more. And here's another great link I found this weekend: please check out Fredo Viola's Sad Song...(more)

Gifts from Aunts

Ethan's Aunt Noelle brought this hammock back for us from her mission to Brazil. We've been enjoying it a lot so far. Yesterday, Ethan got a package from his Great-Aunt Lanita. More...(more)

It's All Gone to Potter

In honor of final installment of Harry Potter being released tomorrow, we present to you a collection of humorous and interesting links related to Harry Potter. Enjoy! First is the collection of...(more)

Squirrels

While growing up my mom would go walking at a park while my siblings and I played there. There were squirrels there that were fascinating to watch. Ever since then, I've had a soft spot for...(more)

Charlie Brown Meets Japanese Manga

I found some interesting drawings while surfing the web today. I really like the Japanese art style and the Peanuts gang has special childhood nostalgia for me, so these drawings are especially interesting. All artwork done by gNAW. My favorite is Marcie. ...(more)

Well, it took a little while, but I rewrote the comment code so that it would do a better job at fooling spammers. The quiz questions may look a little strange now, with accents and stuff over some of the characters, but don't worry, that's just to fool the spammers.

Parent Envy

As most of you know, the family arrangement Chris and I have worked out for now is I'm the one who's working and he's the one at home taking care of Ethan. We did that mostly out of necessity. I had a contract with Yahoo...(more)

Ooshy Gooshy Mushy Mush

Alyssa and I were snuggling with Ethan one evening and he was enjoying it so much that we decided to get it on film. ...(more)

This Is What Happens When Your Religion Forbids Drinking Coffee

As a diligent Beehive teacher, I was doing an Internet search for object lessons about prayer for my lesson tomorrow. I randomly stumbled upon this audio recording that Chris thought was funny enough...(more)

Someone beat our rock, paper, scissors trick (not that it was that hard). Rather than figure out something better, I just used some code from someone else. That worked for about an hour. So I reinstated our old one, but now you have to type in the correct answer.

They'll probably break this one soon too, so I'll have to come up with something else. Grr.

Fluffy Zoo

I took out some of Ethan's stuffed animals to see what he'd think of them. He had so many that by the time I was done, he was surrounded by them, and I knew I had to take this picture. He...(more)

I Love to Laugh

I was playing around with Ethan and I got him to start laughing. It was so cute! Luckily I was able to film it later. ...(more)

I Want My MP3

I recently purchased an mp3 player. Now that Ethan's here, I spend a lot of time holding him and walking him and feeding him. I figured this time could be put to good use if I had something to...(more)

Swimming and Sleeping

This week we took Ethan for his first swim. In the end, he wasn't too excited about it, but we hope that he'll get used to it soon. Doesn't he look so cute in his swim trunks? WARNING: This...(more)

Some Weeks Are Like That

Throughout each week I usually think of several different topics that I could potentially write my blog about on the weekend. Well, this week I'm feeling kind of exhausted. So, rather than write an...(more)

Baby Geniuses: The Gentle Revolution

I've wondered about how to help Ethan learn and I've been interested in the development of the brain in these early stages, so I've been reading some books on baby intelligence. One series that...(more)

This Week in Ethan

This week we left Ethan with a babysitter for the first time. This is a picture of Ethan with Sarah, who watched him while Alyssa and I went to a movie. She did a really good job. Life with...(more)

This One's for Ammon

So, on this 4th of July week, I want to dedicate this week's blog to my brother-in-law Ammon who is serving in Iraq right now. We all miss him a lot, especially my sister Marin. I knew Ammon many years ago, long before Ammon had even met my sister...(more)

Alyssa to the Internet: Stop Being So Interesting!

Some of you may have heard that Yahoo's CEO resigned the day after my last blog entry (Monday). So here's the way the Yahoo chain of command looked before I left for maternity leave a little more than two months ago...(more)

Ethan Cooing

Ethan is starting to get more and more vocal. His attempts at communicating with us are so cute. Here is a video of him making his cute little sounds. ...(more)

Microsoft Surface: The Future?

Okay, I found this to be really interesting. Microsoft is going to release a new method of computing. It seems to be focused on computing as a more public, shareable activity. Check out the...(more)

I couldn't help myself! They were just too cute! These are photos of Ethan with Alyssa's stuffed panda, Tai Shan.

Alyssa's cousin Shana took some excellent photos of us while we were in Utah. We were really pleased with the way they turned out. Thank you Shana!

Utahoma!

So, remember how a month ago I was talking about how the changes at Yahoo were making me nervous? Uhhh... unfortunately, things have gotten worse. In December, our COO resigned. Just before I left...(more)

Amen Brother

I had Alyssa listen to this after I had found it. We both thought it was interesting and we're including it as a Today's Special because we keep referring to it. It's quite informative and...(more)

The World's Healthiest Foods

I ran across an interesting site a while back entitled The World's Healthiest Foods. I especially like the site's "Food of the Week" which showcases a particular type of food and talks about...(more)

Welcome Home!

Alyssa and I just returned from our two-week vacation to Utah. We went for the wedding of my sister-in-law, Noelle. While there, we did Ethan's blessing, so everyone came down for a visit. Whew!...(more)

My Evil Twin

So, we've been in Utah for a few weeks (which is why we haven't been updating our website very frequently). We came for my sister Noelle's marriage to the wonderful Clayton Toone + we blessed Ethan in my parent's ward...(more)

My New Favorite Site

Oh my gosh. Timothy McSweeney's Internet Tendency is a hilarious website. Why have I only now discovered it? Chris and I stumbled across it as a result of Ken Jenning's recent blog entry about a...(more)

"Photoshopping" Should Not Be a Verb

I've been playing around with image editing tonight. Thought I'd share some of my creations. This one was created from a picture of me and Ethan. I was playing around with color, but couldn't...(more)

Bad Timing

The year was 1997. The British returned Hong Kong to China. Princess Di was in a fatal car accident. Tiger Woods became the youngest golfer to win the Masters. And I graduated from high school...(more)

We've finally updated the banner for the "kid rock" section. It now has a cute picture of Ethan's toes.

Ethan's First Sacrament Meeting

We took Ethan to church for the first time today. Everyone in the ward was excited to finally see him, and we got lots of comments on how cute he was. Here's a photo of Ethan and Dad taking a...(more)

We've added a favicon. Check out the tiny cocoa cup that should appear at the left of the address bar. Also when you bookmark our page, it should use the new icon for it. We've also created an RSS info page, although we're not sure where to link to it, so if you have any ideas, email me.

Teacher for Hire: Homeschooling Update

I just finished teaching another science lesson to the Homeschool kids. This will be the third 'official' lesson that I've taught, so I thought I'd put up some of my thoughts and...(more)

Here's something for everyone who's been begging for more pictures of Ethan. Grandma and Grandpa Rock took lots of pictures while they were here and so we've uploaded some of the best. We hope you enjoy Ethan - One Month.

Cast Not Away Therefore Your Confidence

I was feeling strangely unsettled about working at Yahoo earlier this last week. This sense of unease was caused by a couple of different things that have happened lately...(more)

Mom Gets a Raise in 2007

In honor of Mother's Day, Salary.com has released their annual Mom Salary. Based on its survey of more than 40,000 mothers, Salary.com determined that the time mothers spend...(more)

The Answers, My Friend, Are Blowin' in the Wind

Here's the answers to the game I posted on my blog last week. Sorry this is kind of a cop-out blog entry, but I devoted the bulk of my allotted "blog composition time" this week to writing reviews for these films.(more)

Our photos site now has AJAX capabilities. The site looks exactly the same, but now when you click on a specific photo, it will change the photo without reloading the page. Trust me, this is really cool.

Also Smiled Ethan

Like I mentioned in our last post, babies first "learn" to smile and giggle in their sleep. We were lucky enough to get one on film. He's doing really well. He eats a lot and sleeps a lot....(more)

Like Asking Me to Choose My Favorite Child...

Alrighty, for this week's blog I'm totally going to borrow from a fun blog entry that my friend Maryanne posted this week: “Head to IMDB.com and look up ten of your favorite movies....(more)

What do you dream about?

I'm sure that you're all wondering where the latest updates of Ethan are. Well, we've been pretty busy with taking care of him, and all he really does is eat and sleep, so there's not much to...(more)

Not By the Hair of My Cheney Chin Chin

Wow! It's been a long time since we put up a new Today's Special. This is a photoshopped image of Vice President Cheney as The Penguin. Many of you are aware that Vice President Cheney delivered...(more)

Labor Dabor

A few people have been asking to hear the story of the labor and delivery, so I figured I'd devote my blog to it this week. Well, I had to be induced on Friday the 13th because my blood pressure was still high when I went into my doctor's appointment on Thursday...(more)

Fun Time with Ethan

Grandma and Grandpa Whipple just left yesterday and now it's just the three of us. It's nice to be able to spend time as a family, but because Ethan is so small, we're limited in what we can...(more)

Splish Splash

Ethan had his first bath a couple of days ago and I recorded part of it for those who would like to see it. His next bath went much better, although he still didn't like it very much, as you can...(more)

Dr. Mario and More Hiccups

Alyssa chose her OB/GYN based on the recommendation from a ward member. We've loved having Dr. Medina and we're so grateful for everything that he's done for us. He has a great bedside manner...(more)

The Ethan Channel

Ethan and Alyssa came home today. We're excited to be home, although Ethan has been just sleeping and eating the whole time. He's been a really easy baby so far, let's hope that it...(more)

Here are just a few more photos of Ethan. He's such a great little guy!

Ethan's Third Day

Ethan Report: Day 3

Just another video that describes what's been happening with Ethan and Alyssa. He got his picture taken by the hospital today, a well as getting circumcised (ouch!). ...(more)

Hiccups: The Rock Family Curse

For some reason, our family has been cursed with severe hiccups. My Dad would get really bad hiccups and each of the three kids would as well. We're also noticing that it's been passed on to...(more)

Rock A Boy

It's a Boy! Chris and Alyssa are proud to announce the birth of Ethan Christopher Rock. Birthdate: Friday, April 13, 2007[1] 9:53pm Weight: 6 lbs. 5 oz. Length: 20 in. Description: Brown,...(more)

We've uploaded a few of the photos I took of Ethan the day that he was born. We're so excited to have him here. He looks a little strange in some of the photos, but that's because all babies look strange when they're first born. Ethan's First Day

Games, Games, and More Games

Alyssa and I love playing board games. When we lived in Kansas, our apartment was often used as a tour apartment for those who wanted to move into the complex. The management mentioned that almost...(more)

Linux Lessons: My Attempt to Help Out

Like I mentioned in my last post, I've been working on a website that will contain lessons/articles/HowTos about Linux in general and Kubuntu specifically. Well, I've finished it and it can now be...(more)

Clothes, Glorious Clothes!

The Young Women leaders in the ward threw a very thoughtful baby shower for me yesterday. The food was excellent and so was the company. We had a very nice time and some good laughs over the games....(more)

A Visit to El Camino Hospital: Sorry, No Baby Yet

On Thursday we went in for the routine weekly doctor's visit. It wasn't with my normal OB/GYN because he was out of town all week. Anyhow, we tested my blood pressure and it came out pretty high. So, the doctor ordered me to be on bed rest all day Friday and to come in and check my blood pressure again.(more)

Just as an FYI, we were playing around with our website and we accidentally deleted some of the comments from our blogs. If you made a comment after April 4th, it unfortunately got lost in the interweb. Our apologies! Please keep commenting!

Samurai Sword in Action

I came across these films from a blog entitled TV in Japan. The following clips are of samurai swords slicing through various things in slow motion. Pretty amazing. An egg A bottle A...(more)

Ethan's Latest Haul

We just got a package from my parents today containing a number of baby-related items contributed from friends and family. Here's a picture of most of the items. This kid is going to be...(more)

Chris says, "Yay!"

I've been using Linux for about three years now. Along the way I've picked up a lot of information and a lot of experience in dealing with the operating system. It's an exciting time to be a...(more)

Provo Temple Liftoff Successful

So, I hope everyone enjoyed Conference Weekend as much as I did. General Conference is awesome. As my boss at the BYU Telefund used to say, "What's better than church in your jammies?"... (more)

Of Ninjas and Mormons

We're overdue for a new Today's Special, so here's a pretty good one: the Ninja (of AskaNinja.com) interviews Jon Heder about his upcoming movie Blades of Glory. Oh, and I guess Will Ferrell's in it too...(more)

PhD: Please Hire. Desperate.

I got a call a little while ago from Brad Barber, a friend I knew from Tennessee and from the old BYU film school days. He had made it to the final round of interviews for a position as the Assistant Professor of Documentary Film at BYU...(more)

Hike #6: Skyline Ridge with the Homeschoolers

Last Friday I went on a Nature/Science hike with the Homeschool families. I decided to take them to Skyline Ridge because the trail isn't all that challenging. As you can see, we have a wide...(more)

Ask Mr. Rock

When I was young, I loved watching Mr. Wizard's World on Nickelodeon. That may have been one of the reasons that I wanted to become a science teacher. The Intro to Mr. Wizard's World My...(more)

New Camcorder

Alyssa's been saving for a camcorder ever since we found out that she's pregnant. Yesterday we finally purchased it. After much research and deliberation, we decided to go with the Sony...(more)

Baby Room Tour

We recently purchased a new video camera and one of the first things we did was to video the baby room. The video didn't turn out that well, the color balance is a little off (too dim, I think) and...(more)

We just purchased and watched this movie. It's one I've been wanting for a while, but just haven't gotten around to buying until now. To read my (Chris's) review, check out the entry in our DVD library. Medicine Man

Baby, Baby, Can't You Hear My Heartbeat?

During a recent doctor visit, we recorded the heartbeat of the baby. Since we don't have a real recording device, we had to use the laptop with a microphone attached. It was kind of awkward to...(more)

Ultrasound Pictures

Here are the latest ultrasound pictures of Ethan. Ultrasound pictures are kind of hard to distinguish, so if you hold your mouse over these pictures, an outline of what it should look like will...(more)

Welcome to the Sandbox

With the arrival of Rock Kid #1 looming just on the horizon (only 4 weeks away!), Chris and I have created the Sandbox, a blog where our friends and family can come to find out the latest stuff...(more)

We created a blog that will be just for the Rock kids and what's going on with them. All graphics created for this blog were made from scratch, and the look might change sometime soon. We'll be posting some content really soon, so check it out sometime. The Sandbox

Keith Merrill Is Stalking Me!

Well, my blog title is only half true. Keith Merrill isn't stalking me per se, but his personal assistant keeps flooding my inbox with emails trying to get me to join his new pyramid-schemey motion picture studio project. (more)

Yesterday Alyssa was complaining that if you forget to answer the captcha rock, paper, scissors question, or got it wrong, it completely erased the comment. So now there's a javascript reminder to answer (and check) the question if you forget. Also, if something screws up, then the comment is still there to edit. Also, I put a "Latest Blog Entries" on my personal page so that people could find the latest entries more easily.

Hike #5: Los Trancos Open Space Preserve

We've been having gorgeous (albeit boring) weather lately, and I'm finally getting over the cold I've had recently. Sounds like time for another hike. Los Trancos is located across the street...(more)

IDODI

We had our Destination Imagination (DI) tournament in my region on Saturday. (That's the reason why this blog is a little late in coming. I was just too tired to write.) For those of you who...(more)

The Evolution of Homeschoolers

A group of parents in our stake have formed a homeschooling co-op that meets every Friday. I volunteered to teach a science lesson to them every two weeks. Today was my first lesson. I decided to...(more)

The Algorithm March

The Algorithm March is from a children's show in Japan. NOTE: You gotta be patient with this video in order to get the joke. You need to watch it all the way through! Chris and I would like to...(more)

What's Up? Docs. (Conclusion)

This is a poster advertising a mockumentary about the Mormon filmmaking process. At the end of the day, it's not a very great film, but it has a few "shining moments" as it were. Why Mormon...(more)

Chase Scenes

Nothing like a good chase scene to create some drama. Another one: this one from Japan. Now we know where all those Power Rangers come from! ...(more)

Well, it was bound to happen, I guess. Someone is sending robots to our site to add spam comments. So I added a "Captcha," a question that must be answered to prove that you're not a robot. It's pretty simple for now, and will probably need to be updated later, but it should keep the spammers away for a while.

What's Up? Docs. (Part Three)

The above is a series of images from two of the films in the Fit For the Kingdom project. This is a project run by my friend Ben Ungren. FFK distributes short documentary films via the web about...(more)

Added a "Recent Comments" section to the blog pages. Now when you go to the home page of the blog, it displays the five most recent comments on the sidebar.

What's Up? Docs. (Part Two)

This is a flash Chris made while he was developing a website for a recent LDS documentary entitled "Sisterz in Zion." It's a wonderful documentary about the clash of cultures when several young...(more)

What's Up? Docs.

Apparently there's supposed to be some huge, prestigious film event tonight. Something about giving away a few big awards or something. So, I figured maybe I'd write about a film topic today. I have a lot of opinions about the LDS film movement. I really care about its survival and hopeful maturation... (more)

3D Glasses Required

I heard that Sports Illustrated did some of the swimsuit models in 3D for their latest issue. I told some friends that I was thinking of buying the issue. "I don't care about the swimsuits, I just...(more)

Some have wondered how Alyssa is looking these days, so we took some pictures of her in all her pregnant glory. We can't believe that it's happening so soon!

Alyssa - Eight Months Pregnant

Put Your Hand as the Puppet Head

This is an interesting commercial that shows some of the cool things that can be done with shadow puppets. Along the same lines, someone has painted his hand to create his own brand of hand...(more)

Rocket Man

Inspired by Chris's latest blog and a recent conversation about William Shatner with a friend, I would just love to present this wonderfully campy rendition of Rocket Man for your enjoyment (please...(more)

We just added our new theme CD, Magic and Mystical Creatures. We both had a good time making this CD, so check out the tracks and what we had to say about it.

Anecdote of the Jar

This is just an interesting photograph I found of a wedding in the 1920s. I just think it's interesting to look at old wedding photographs. To see more interesting wedding photographs from the...(more)

We visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium yesterday. We didn't take a lot of photos, and not all the photos we took turned out well. But after some color adjusting and brightness tweaking, some looked okay and where uploaded to our photos site.

Monterey Bay Aquarium

Alyssa and I went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium yesterday with our friends, the Madsens. We had a really good time, although the aquarium was really crowded. Also, there we fewer benches and...(more)

Titan: Moon of Saturn

Saturn's moon Titan with Saturn in the background. My parents bought me a telescope when I turned 8. It was too small to be anything more than a spyglass, but it came with an awesome poster of the...(more)

I really cleaned up the apartment the other day and then took photos of the place. We've only had one family visitor since we've moved here, so this might be the only way some of you will get to see this place I guess.

Apartment in Santa Clara

Hike #4: Skyline Ridge Open Space Reserve

This trail is in the same general areas as hikes #2 and #3, so I'm getting used to the road there. It's used by a lot of bicyclists, so I'm sometimes stuck behind a cyclist going uphill on a...(more)

Happy Valentine's Day (From Google)

A lot of people have been complaining on the internet about today's Google logo, saying that Google left out the L in this design. Google leaves a cryptic explaination, which invites further...(more)

The Sealed Portion of the California Driver's Handbook

When you move to California you have to read the Driver's Handbook and pass a written test. (Incidentally, I passed with flying colors, only missing one question---a random one about whether it's...(more)

Embarassing Medical Stories

Now that Alyssa is pregnant (approaching her eighth month) we've been spending a lot of time in doctor's offices. I found the following stories to be quite humorous. Embarassing Medical Stories ...(more)

Rain

This is the view out of our apartment this morning. It's been rainy most of the week, but it's really coming down today. When we first moved to California, I was a little disappointed in the...(more)

Hike #3: Monte Bello Open Space Reserve

I had decided to go on a hike today, even though the forecast called from rain. I packed an extra sweatshirt, my gloves, and earwarmers just in case. I arrived at Monte Bello (near Upper Stevens...(more)

My Watch

I used to work in the Mens shop at the BYU Bookstore. One of the items we sold were watches. Most of the watches were traditional wristwatches, but some of the watches we sold could clip to your...(more)

In the Season Thereof

Alyssa and I were talking about food recently. We have a desire to eat healthier, but it seems that healthy food costs more. This reminded be of the following websites: What Does 200 Calories...(more)

Toilet Humor

With Sincerest Regrets by Russell Edson Like a white snail the toilet slides into the living room, demanding to be loved. It is impossible, and we tender our sincerest regrets. In the book of...(more)

Happy Groundhog Day - A Quick Post

A.O. Scott of the New York Times is my favorite movie critic. (And, incidentally, Manhola Dargis of the NYTimes is my least favorite.) Anyhow, today in one of his reviews, Scott wrote: "[I]t is a...(more)

Stealing From Jeff

Chris and I had a mutual friend before we got married. His name is Jeff Gustafson (he was Chris's roommate and my co-worker). Anyhow, Chris might get mad at me for totally stealing, but Jeff always...(more)

Hike #2: Upper Stevens Creek

For this hike I wanted to find a place that was further away from civilization, with more trees. Most of my information for the trails around here comes from the Bay Area Hiker, and while looking...(more)

Panda explosion!

Chris put me in charge of finding today's special since he'll be gone all day. So, here it is... an explosion of cuteness: This is a picture from The Sichuan Wolong Panda Protection and Breed...(more)

I redid the graphics for the Today's Specials page. There's more attention to detail here (notice the shadows, etc.) and the content area is much wider, allowing for larger embedded graphics and other items. All graphics were made from scratch.

Welcome to My New Blog!

Hi everyone! Up until today my blog used to exist on my Yahoo! 360 page: http://360.yahoo.com/barbaricyawps. But now, I've officially transferred my blog over to our family website, caferock.org....(more)

We've moved Alyssa's blog officially from Yahoo to this site. This change came only after months of convincing, and after meeting all Alyssa's qualifications (include a way to upload pictures, include a display for the number of comments, find an easier way to cycle through the blogs, and a host of other small changes). We designed the site to be similar to her other site and I think the new blog looks great. The best part is, now eveyone can comment on it (not possible on her previous blog).

The History of Religion in Under Three Minutes

This seemed like a good one to share on a Sunday perhaps. It's a flash animation showing the history of the expansion of the world's major religions throughout the world from the beginning of...(more)

Hike #1: Almaden Lake Park

Since the doctor told me that I should exercise more, I thought I'd try checking out the hiking trails around the south Bay area. First up, Almaden Lake Park Trail. This trail was nearly...(more)

Can't You See I'm Burning, Burning

I've always been cautious about going to the doctor. If I can put it off, I usually will. Alyssa always asked why and my answers have been unable to explain my real feelings. I went the doctor...(more)

Life of Birds: Crows

Alyssa and I finished watching The Life of Birds recently. It's a documentary series about birds done by the BBC and David Attenborough (who also did Life of Mammals and Blue Planet: Seas of Life) ...(more)

I just added a review of The Life of Birds. We finished watching all of them the other day and we really enjoyed them. We didn't appreciate how amazing birds were, but now we really notice them as we're out walking around.

This theme was all about Animals. We've put up our playlist for the CDs and our reviews of the CDs as well. Enjoy!

Monkey Shines

Our friend Wayne is an excellent painter, so we commissioned him to do a painting for Ethan's room. If you don't know already, we've decided to do a safari theme and we love the painting that...(more)

US Bunk

While cleaning for and getting ready for the baby to come, Alyssa and I came across a jar full of change (mostly pennies). I was going to the bank yesterday, so I thought I'd deposit them. I went...(more)

Make Cupcakes, Not War

In this morning's issue of the New York Times, Michael Toner, chairman of the Federal Election Commission, stated: "We're looking at a $100 million entry fee" in reference to the presidential race. Ouch! ... (more)

Science at the Beach

We've lived in California for about six months and we've never really been to the beach before. So today we went to a beach located just a few miles south of Carmel (near Monterey). (When I told my parents, my Mom, who is in Colorado said, "It's 14 degrees here and you're going to the beach!") The trip was great and we even got a few pictures (you can see them in our photos). (more)

Alyssa and I visited a beach near Carmel (which is near Monterey). It was great fun and we took some pictures, which can be seen in our photos page.

Changed the blog naviagation system. It's now based on the entries themselves, rather than the dates. This removes the calendar function with was comfusing and complicated. Now blogs can be browsed in a Newer--Older manner.

Created achive pages for all the blogs.

Blog entries now list the number of comments made on each entry on the blog home page.

Created a new Blog, Deeper into the Mist.

Changed blog page to include new blog.

Changed a few things about the blogs: added feed icon for RSS feeds, fixed a calendar bug, changed email on comments to not display, set title to link to blog homepage.

Added Blogs page to give more direct links to Chris and Alyssa's blogs. Just a filler for now--eventually planning to add features to show the lastest entries.

Created a new look for the Today's Specials page. Check it out!

Added the "What's New" page and the "About Us" page. The "About Us" page is probably just going to be a filler for now and we'll improve is as we go along.