Moved my Blog/ Update your RSS Feed

I wanted to give you a heads up.  I hope that it doesn't become an inconvenience to you either.  Due to the Preece's and my sister Clyda, I have become hooked on Blogs.  Yet I found myself frustrated with what Blogger had to offer for me.  There just wasn't enough features and flexibility that would carry me to where I wanted to go. 

So I spent the last two weeks researching other options, I found one with wordpress.  You can still get to my blog by going through blogger, because  I have pointed my blogger URL to my new blog.  (A nice feature in blogger).

Here is a list of some of the new features that I have placed so far:

1. Comment Replies:  You have the ability to comment to anyone's comments.  The reply comment is held differently so that you know who has commented.
2. E-mail Replies:  When someone replies to your comment and e-mail is sent to you notifying you of the reply.
3. Ton more templates:  Wordpress has a ton more templates over blogger.  Everything under the sun and you have the ability to go in and tweak the templates even further as I have done with the current template I am now using.
4. Ton more plugins:  Wordpress as entire world of plugins that can enhance your blogger.  You will see me adding more and more as new ideas come to mind.

The biggest thing you will need to do and the reason I am typing this is you will need to update your RSS feeds to my new blog.

The new domain name is:  blog.marvls.com

The new RSS feed is:  feed://blog.marvls.com/?feed=rss2

One thing you will have to do is login to comment or create a new account.  You can use the same login as blogger so that you don't have to remember something different and tell the browser to remember your login and it will be seamless for you.

Let me know what you think.

My brother is a father!

Last night Ben and Melissa Ellis became parents at 9:12 p.m. "Henry" as the nickname will probably forever stand was born on December 14th, 2007. He weighed 6 lb. 13 oz and was 19 inches long. He came very healthy and had a good set of lungs as we sat in the hallway listening to him scream. I do not want to steal the thunder of Ben and Melissa talking about the experience on their own blog, but I will leave you with a few pictures that I took last night so that you can see what he looks like.

	Ben talking to his sister Clyda about the birth. He just kept walking around in circles telling her all that had happened. He had his other sister Jana on hold waiting to hear what he had to say as well.
	Melissa showing us "Henry". This is about an hour after he was born. They hadn't settled on any names just yet.
	Melissa showing us "Henry's" big feet. She says he has big hands and feet. He did not like her doing this, because just after I took the picture he cried real hard until Melissa covered him back up. I think it was just a little too cold to have a foot outside of the blanket.
	Ben holding "Henry".

I know these two proud parents will have a lot to say on their blog about "Henry" including what his real name will be. So make sure you checkout their blog in the next week once they get home and settled down.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is up by 3.1%

A large part of what I do for a living is pick investments for my clients, which requires me to watch the markets.  You might find it interesting that the cost to do the Twelve days of Christmas has gone up by 3.1% from 2006.  On a series note, this is a true reflection of a rise in inflation and market analysis series look at these figures to get a feel of what the economy is doing.  

What I think is outrageous is the cost of "Calling Birds" has gone up 25% this year.  It costs more to get Calling Birds then it does Five Gold Rings.  I don't know about you, but we should picket the bird store and force them to lower their prices.  =0  (I'm kidding if you didn't detect the sarcasm in the last paragraph.)

PNC Christmas Price Index - 2007

Traditional

	2006	2007	% Change 2007/06
One Partridge in a Pear Tree	$144.99	$164.99	13.8%
Partridge	$15.00	$15.00	0.0%
Pear Tree	$129.99	$149.99	15.4%
Two Turtle Doves	$40.00	$40.00	0.0%
Three French Hen	$45.00	$45.00	0.0%
Four Calling Birds	$479.96	$599.96	25.0%
Five Gold Rings	$325.00	$395.00	21.5%
Six Geese-a-Laying	$300.00	$360.00	20.0%
Seven Swans-a-Swimming	$4,200.00	$4,200.00	0.0%
Eight Maids-a-Milking	$41.20	$46.80	13.6%
Nine Ladies Dancing	$4,759.19	$4,759.19	0.0%
10 Lords-a-Leaping	$4,160.25	$4,285.06	3.0%
11 Pipers Piping	$2,124.00	$2,213.40	4.2%
12 Drummers Drumming	$2,301.00	$2,397.85	4.2%
Total Christmas Price Index	$18,920.59	$19,507.25	3.1%
True cost of Christmas in song	$75,122.03	$78,100.10	4.0%
"Core" index, excluding swans	$14,720.59	$15,307.25	4.0%

Home Situation / Fresh Christmas Tree

Just cut down tree and checking out the kill. The old man in the back is not my dad, he owned the farm. Nice man, lots of nose hair.

To give you an update on our home situation, we have been approved for a new home since August of this year. We have spent a number of months looking too. Nothing has jumped out to say, "this is the place." We figure since home prices have gone up so high, we are going to get the home we want and not settle for something else. It is also tough with the markets pulling off, that if we wait six more months prices will become more reasonable again.

Jolyn is the Primary President here in our ward and so we have this debate of pull her away from her calling, so we look around the neighborhood as well as else where. Mom and Dad have offered their home, which is in our price range, but I struggle with that because I don't know if this house would ever feel like mine. I do not want to by a house and then feel like it belongs to someone else. So that is the home conundrum we are caught in. We spent some time in the temple on Tuesday looking for direction and we both felt strong to be patient and the correct answer will present it self when it is ready.

Loading the tree into the truck.

Since it is looking like we will spend another Christmas in my parents basement, we decided that we needed infuse Christmas more this year in our lives. Instead of setting up the fake tree again, we wanted an experience and most of all the "smell" of a tree. We were going to Evanston and hike around the mountain to cut down a tree, but duty calls us to Vernal so we had to change our plans. We found a local tree farm, walked a good acer till we found our tree. Actually we found three trees we liked, we marked each area with a stick or set of rocks and then drove the truck to each location.  Jolyn and I would jump out of the truck, look at the tree, then drive to the next one. (The truth was, it was getting too cold and I failed to wear a hat.  All my body heat leaves my bald head. burrrr!)

We finally settled on this big plumb bushy tree.  I cut it down, then loaded it into the truck.  The tree standing there before we cut it down, didn't look that big, yet it filled my entire truck bed.  After we drove it home and put it up, it was obvious a bigger tree then what our eyes had observed.  We plan to decorate it tomorrow on Thanksgiving day.  And boy does the house smell so good!

The kids were very excited, they were bouncing around, poking and teasing one another.  I told the kids that when we arrived home that they had to go through the tree looking for spiders.  "We can't have any spiders or chipmunks in the house with us."  After the moans  calmed down, Emily exclaimed that the wind while driving the tree home on the freeway, cleaned all of the spiders out for us.  That was perfect logic and I couldn't come back with a good enough response to tease any further.

The Cookie Thief

We heard this really good poem at church today.  I thought it was good enough to share with you. 

---------------------

The Cookie Thief

by Valerie Cox

A woman was waiting at an airport one night,

With several long hours before her flight.

She hunted for a book in the airport shops.

Bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.

She was engrossed in her book but happened to see,

That the man sitting beside her, as bold as could be.

Grabbed a cookie or two from the bag in between,

Which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.

So she munched the cookies and watched the clock,

As the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock.

She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by,

Thinking, "If I wasn't so nice, I would blacken his eye."

With each cookie she took, he took one too,

When only one was left, she wondered what he would do.

With a smile on his face, and a nervous laugh,

He took the last cookie and broke it in half.

He offered her half, as he ate the other,

She snatched it from him and thought... oooh, brother.

This guy has some nerve and he's also rude,

Why he didn't even show any gratitude!

She had never known when she had been so galled,

And sighed with relief when her flight was called.

She gathered her belongings and headed to the gate,

Refusing to look back at the thieving ingrate.

She boarded the plane, and sank in her seat,

Then she sought her book, which was almost complete.

As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise,

There was her bag of cookies, in front of her eyes.

If mine are here, she moaned in despair,

The others were his, and he tried to share.

Too late to apologize, she realized with grief,

That she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.

How many times in our lives,

have we absolutely known

that something was a certain way,

only to discover later that

what we believed to be true ... was not?

---------------------

The speaker brought up a real good point.  She emphasized how this woman was so bothered and offended that this man would steal her cookies, when the reality was that she was stealing his.  How did he respond?  Instead of getting upset and bothered as she was towards him, he split the cookie and shared it with her.  What an example of how to act.

Support our Troops

I personally do not know anyone at present who is serving overseas in the military, yet I have a deep respect for what they are doing for liberty and for our country.  At times I think, "how I could support them more?"  

My brother-in-law let me know about this website the other day.  It is done by Xerox and I think it is one of the coolest things that someone can do for a soldier.  It is better then doing nothing.

You can go to: http://www.letssaythanks.com and write a personal message or select one of the many pre-populated messages.  Xerox will print the card and send it to a soldier in Iraq for free.   I recommend customizing a message.

The other cool thing is it only took a second for me to send it and they didn't require a ton of personal information.  In essence, Xerox isn't doing this to collect consumer information, they are honestly attempting to support our troops.