Tuesday, July 22, 2008

here and there and on a train and with a cake

Update: I’ve checked the “My pictures” folder several times a day for the last three days and it’s still empty. I keep hoping maybe all the files will suddenly appear again as mysteriously as they vanished. But nope. I did back up my laptop about a year ago. I also have many of the family pictures on another computer so all is not lost. Most of the art images that I use in my classes are also embedded in Powerpoints (and thankfully those were not abducted by aliens or I wouldn’t be typing this right now because I’d be humming show tunes softly to myself in a padded cell). Anyway, life goes on and other such plucky platitudes. I’m shopping for an external hard drive so I can do more regular backups. And maybe a new laptop. Any suggestions?


In more cheerful news, McKay celebrated his 10th birthday this weekend. He’s our resident train aficionado and future engineer, so we spent the day on Saturday riding Trax up to Salt Lake and then the Front Runner commuter rail from Salt Lake to Ogden. Three full hours on trains. We also went to the train museum in Ogden and spent another hour with the trains in their side yard. The boys were all in ecstasy. Nora, after the 30 seconds it took for the novelty of riding in a train to wear off, was bored and stir crazy. Enough of this train scene, already! By the end of the day (and it was a long, long, long day) Ken and I were tired of trying to keep Nora from climbing on everything and running near the doors every time they opened at a new stop and pestering every other passenger on board as if they were her newest and dearest friends. Ken saw a t-shirt on another 2-year old that I just have to get for Nora. It said “My parents are exhausted.”


Yesterday, we had Ken’s family over for cake and ice cream. McKay wanted a train cake (of course) and since he loves to cook, I came up with a plan for a cake that he could help me with. Tahdaah!



McKay really did most of the work. He glued all the cars together with royal icing and attached the wheels and designed the tanker cars. I love how the red and white theme works with the strawberries, which were also McKay’s touch. When it came time to cut the cake, nobody had the heart to demolish the train, so we carefully removed all the cars and just ate the cake. I may have the train on top of my fridge for the next 10 years of his life.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a fabulous cake! Trains run in my family. My dad was a switchman and a brakeman and my brother is an engineer, both for UPRR. UPRR also kindly contributed to my college education in the form of a generous scholarship.

SB

Nan Sheppard said...

WOW! My family would have eaten the train parts FIRST though!

Anonymous said...

I love birthdays for the creativity they inspire. Won't they just remember that cake for life? But, at the end sometimes, I, too want a T-shirt like that cause I admit it is exhausting.

Pale Bear said...

I bet those red Zingers will still be good in 10 years too. I think they could survive a nuclear holocaust. (Or is that nucular?)

Meaghan said...

My boss recommended this site for backups:
https://mozy.com/?ref=EDVDS2
You get some free storage space and it's automatic, so you don't have to remember to back up all the pictures every week!
Good luck with your laptop!

Sandra said...

There is also a program called Ghost that does a daily back up of your hard drive. It is like an external hard drive. Wish I had had it last year when my hard drive crashed and I hadn't backed up all the pictures yet. I was going to do it "tomorrow"