Day 31 - Goodbye Old Blog Style

Goodbye Old Blog Style, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

It's official! My blog now has the new purple themed style. I'm putting this snapshot of the old style in memory of my blog's beginning. It was one of Blogger's generic themes you could choose and it suited me. I wanted something unique though and thought it would be fun to have my own style. I even removed the Blogger header and for all you Firefox type browsers, I have a web icon (it's the purple one with 365 in it). Overall, I really like it and I'm glad that it's finally here.

Day 30 - It's me!

It's me, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I decided to take a picture of me right after being accepted in BYU's MBA program. I'm so excited! I'll be starting this fall, going full-time for two years. After that, I'll work for five years or so and then branch off and start my own company in the entertainment industry. I'll at least have a theater and some studios, but I have some ambitious goals. I've told Heritage Makers yesterday and they are happy for me too. I'm getting a lot of support from them, which helps a lot. I still have a lot of work to do there before I start school in the fall.

Day 29 - Bright Moon

Bright Moon, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

My wife read in Facebook today that tonight was going to have the brightest moon of the entire year. So we had to go outside, of course, and take a look. The first picture I took had some flash and all it had was a white dot where the moon was. So I changed the camera mode to nighttime landscape and I was able to get this picture. It’s a little blurry because I was holding the camera and the shutter speed was really slow. However, you can see more detail like the trees, the mountains and even some stars.

Day 28 - Exersaucer’s Last Days?

Exersaucer’s Last Days, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

The exersaucer is a wonderful thing. It has lots of stimulating toys for our Baby Mandrake to play with. And as a bonus, she stays in one place and we can do things like wash dishes, clean the house, or write blog posts. :) Lately, her attention span with the exersaucer has shortened and I don’t know how long we can continue using it. It transforms into an s-shaped play ground where she can stand up and walk around it. I don’t think she’s quite ready for that, but it’s on the horizon.

Day 27 - Provo Temple

Provo Temple, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, temple worship is very important to me. I feel so close to the Lord while I’m there. This is where I go to receive peace, inspiration, and inner strength. Today, I went with a purpose; I had some important questions in my heart hoping to receive some guidance. As I served there and sought for direction, I felt impressions come to me that answered my questions. I am so grateful for prayer and for the temple.

Day 26 - New Blog Style

New Blog Style, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I commissioned a good buddy of mine to design a new look for my blog. I told him that my favorite colors are royal purple and forest green. Now, those colors don’t go well together since they are both dark and dominant. So we went with the purple. I’m really pleased with the design. It’s fun, elegant, it breathes, and it’s not girly. Now I just need to program it in so it shows up on the blog. :)

Day 25 - Big Ball

Big Ball, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

It’s fun to watch my Baby Mandrake playing with her toys. She’ll open up the shape cylinder and spread all the shapes around her. She’ll roll left and roll right. She can scoot forward and backward when she’s on her stomach. We caught her rocking back and forth when she got to all fours. She’s trying to figure out the crawling thing.

One of her favorite toys is the gigantic blue ball. She push it with her hands. She’ll kick it when she’s laying down. She’ll traverse the room as she follows where it goes. I guess she’s going to be a big yoga/pilates girl.

Day 24 - Monkey Sleeper

Monkey Sleeper, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

This is the first time our Baby Mandrake is sporting her Monkey Sleeper. Why is blue reserved for boys only? She looks pretty darn good in blue and brown and I don’t care what you say. :) It fits her pretty well too with room to grow so we’ll be enjoying this one for a while.

Day 23 - TV Stand

TV Stand, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

When my mom learned that our Baby Mandrake was too close to crawling, she wanted to get us one of our wish list items — a TV stand from Ikea. You may remember my first attempt to get this, but there was plenty of stock this time when I went. This stand actually does a pretty good job. It’s deep and can hold a lot of stuff. We put our DVDs and CDs in boxes and then put them in. We were also able to fit our board games. That’s a bonus. The little area on the right is where we are putting toys and other stuff and we’ll be putting some sort of make-shift wall there to make that corner baby safe. Thanks mom!

Day 22 - First Teeth Victim

First Teeth Victim, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Our little Baby Mandrake is rolling around like crazy. She’s not crawling yet, but it may as well be like that. She’ll go anywhere she wants in the front room. She grabbed a hold of one of her foamy-type books and took the whale out of the first page and started chewing on it. We didn’t think much because we thought it was all that spongy, foamy, easy-on-the-teeth material. Once we started to see the whale’s face come off, we rescued him and realized that it had a paper layer. Oh well, I guess that comes with the territory, right?

Day 21 - Outside Tree

Outside Tree, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I thought this was a cool site with the light snow outside. This was taken just outside my front door. That tree is dying a little as you can see from some of the branches broken and hanging. Actually, there are not that many left because we just had some heavy winds knock most of them off. In the summer when the leaves are on, it’s hard to tell that it has lost so many branches.

Day 20 - Office Barrier

Office Barrier, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Since we’ve rearranged our desks, people love to see the new layout. That’s great and all, but very distracting. So for fun, we decided to create a little barrier of a chair, two desktops, power cords and duck tape. We took it down today because people were getting the wrong impression. On top of that, it was blocking me from my white board (on the left) as my desk is on the right behind that wall. It had to come down so I could use it.

Day 19 - New Desk Again

New Desk Again, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Can you believe my desk moved again? I can. This time it was because we all wanted to sit next to a certain co-worker. Yeah, he’s that cool. The best part of it is that I now have a window next to my desk. It lets me peek into the warehouse and see the busy workers of HM and IM Home with all their furniture.

Day 18 - Too Close for Comfort

Too Close for Comfort, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Each day, my Baby Mandrake inches closer and closer to crawling. We’ve got the front room mostly babified, but as you can see in the picture, there’s still more that needs to be done. I don’t know if I should be encouraging this, but it’s fun to watch her figure it out.

Day 17 - Baby Mandrake on My Shoulders

Baby Mandrake on My Shoulders, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

When I was a kid, I always thought it was fun to be on daddy’s shoulders. Now that I’m a dad, I’m giving the same joy to my daughter. She absolutely loves being up there! She always wiggles up and down and squeals in delight. I’m enjoying now while she’s not too heavy.

Day 16 - On the town at Tucanos

Tucanos on the boss’ tab, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

We finally had a date night tonight! It’s been several months since we’ve been able to get a babysitter and our schedule to match up so we could go out. And this date was already paid for since last September. The VP of Sales and Marketing told me that if I got a certain feature in the big fall release that he would pay for dinner and a movie. Well, we’re finally cashing in! We had an excellent dinner at Tucanos and we saw one of our favorite meat guys, Matt, there as well.

After dinner, we went across the street to see Sherlock Holmes. We had some trouble with tickets though. Apparently Fandango had my tickets for yesterday night instead of this night. I ended up paying for tickets again, but the manager was really nice and only charged the kids price. I called Fandango to get my other tickets refunded and the movie manager also gave us some comp tickets. In the end, it was a good, but it took some headache to get there and I’m not using Fandango again.

Sherlock Holmes was really good. I could have done without some of the details of the dead animals, but it was crucial to the plot. I liked the cinematography and the character development of Holmes. I hope they make another one.

Day 15 - Welcome to Ikea

Welcome to Ikea, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I went to Ikea for the first time today. Wow, what a store! It was like the Disneyland of furniture stores. They had a kids area, restaurant, and tons of furniture. I loved how creative the show rooms are; it stirred some creative juice. Unfortunately, the TV stand that we were looking for was sold out today even though we checked online first to make sure there was stock. I guess we’ll have to go back...

Day 14 - One-armed Eating Monster

One-armed Eating Monster, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I think my little Baby Mandrake is so cute when she eats. She’s so intense and attacks the food. She also likes to have one arm out when she eats (maybe to keep balance). She sure loves her sweet potatoes!

Day 13 - New Work Desk

New Work Desk, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I’m finally settled into my new desk at work. Well, it’s the same actual desk, but we are in a new area. Almost everyone on the floor moved around in some way or another. There’s some clean up that still needs to happen, but we’re almost there. It’s nice to have a book shelf again. :)

Day 12 - The Butt

The Butt, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

I’m on day 2 of the 10-Minute Trainer and my butt is sore! Who would have thought that a measly 10-minute workout would kick your butt so much. That just means that it’s doing a good job, right?

Day 11 - Empty Work Desk

Empty Work Desk, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

After taking a picture of where I work just a couple of days ago, we are now moving across the building. I love how the "EXIT" sign is in this picture. I almost feel like singing the “Empty Chairs at Empty Tables” song from Les Misérables.

Day 10 - The Chronicles of Narnia

The Chronicles of Narnia, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

We’ve starting reading The Chronicles of Narnia together. The last book series we read together was Ender, but we only read the first four books. We still have more to read. I’m really excited about Narnia because I’ve only known about The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe growing up and recently the Price Caspian because of the movie. I have always heard the series was really good, so I’m excited to finally read it.

Apparently we are also reading it in the correct order. I didn’t now that the order was changed in recent prints of the series. Good to know I guess.

Day 9 - Our New Freezer

New Freezer, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

It took us a while, but we finally got ourselves a freezer. We’re excited because now we can store prepared meals so we can just heat them up on days that are really crazy. This will also help with food storage, which is needed to store the food for my P90X program. I foresee days of pain in my future.

Day 8 - Snowflake Sleeper

Snowflake Sleeper, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Grandma gave Baby Mandrake a cute snowflake sleeper to help keep her warm when she sleeps. It fits her pretty well, in face, a little too well. She’s about to outgrow a 12 month sleeper and she’s only 8 months. You gotta love baby sizes.

(Yes, she’s still a girl even though she’s all in blue.)

Day 7 - Almost Crawling

Almost Crawling, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Our Baby Mandrake has been trying to crawl all day. She’ll be almost there except one leg will be off a little. Then she’ll fall forward and be on her stomach again. We’re close to not being safe anymore!

Day 6 - Dentist Visit

Dentist Visit, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Okay, so this picture was taken yesterday, but I already had a post for yesterday. So here you go. :)

I went to the dentist to get a filling redone. My previous dentist did a poor job and it was starting to chip off and it was difficult to floss. I don’t know the number of the tooth, but it’s the first tooth that has four spikes on the lower right side.

On the left, you can see some decay that we found when we stripped the filling away. My previous dentist missed it completely! That also explains the pain I had. Now my tooth looks “normal” and it feels great. Using a microscope makes all the difference. I love Dr. Craig Wright, DDS at Maple Mountain Dentistry.

Day 5 - My Second Home

My Work Desk, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Here’s where I spend a large portion of my day. It doesn’t feel like home, but since I spend so much time there, I’m going to call it my second home. This is where a lot of the "magic" happens at Heritage Makers. I love coding web pages, emails, and brainstorming news ways to help our customers have a better overall experience. Some of my favorite happenings at work are when all the developers just start talking about new and innovative ways to solve problems—it gets your brain juice flowing! Now if only I can figure out a way to lose the extra pounds I’ve gained in this chair…

Day 4 - Hot Laptop

Dell Laptop, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Somehow I didn’t close down my laptop properly at work. So when I get home, eat dinner, and then pull out my laptop, I see that it’s still on and burning hot. I felt so bad for my laptop. I turned it off immediately and let it charge for a while.

Day 3 - Baby Shoes

Baby Shoes, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

It’s a fascinating thing that tiny little shoes can bring such joy. Well, they do! We just got them yesterday and we are already enjoying the cuteness. And you can’t argue that it’s nice to have something on the little one’s feet when she’s outside. On top of that, you can’t beat the sale we got it on either! Oh the simple joys…

Day 2 - Farewell Christmas Tree

Christmas Tree 2009, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

Christmas tree’s are a funny thing. Once you put them up, it feels like you’re already taking it down. We did have fun putting it up and going through all of our ornaments though. So I decided to capture how our tree looked like this year before we take it down since we are going to through this one away for a new one later.

It’s funny because we were at my parents during Christmas, so we didn’t really use our tree. Well, that’s not true. We did put some presents under the tree that were mailed to us so we didn’t have to bring it on the airplane. We opened them up right before we left and had a mini-Christmas of our own.

Day 1 - Head Gear

Head Gear, originally uploaded by joel.tobey.

While playing with our little Baby Mandrake this morning, she was wearing a cute red knit hat with a bell attached on the top with a small strand of yarn. It was so adorable that we started taking pictures of her so that we could show her Aunt Anne the cute hat that she gave. We then put her in one of the knit head bands that her Aunt gave and she just looked so cute.

I don’t know why head gear makes babies look cuter. I see them all the time at church with the bows or flowers. I think girls tend to have them more than boys. Maybe it’s to make sure people know, “Hey, this is a girl, not a boy!” Especially since pink isn’t our favorite color, we have to do something to feminize her.