We had Nolan’s birthday party today at Nani & Pops’ house. I think Nolan had a good time. We sang happy birthday to him twice. I doubt one-year-olds really understand the concept of birthdays, but in any case I think Nolan enjoyed the attention. I also think he really enjoyed the chocolate cupcake and the freedom to just dig in all by himself!

Tonight, after we got the kids in bed, Rachel and I watched a movie. It’s been a while since we’ve watched a movie just by ourselves. We watched Amazing Grace. It was a great movie. It was about William Wilberforce and his efforts and success in abolishing the slave trade in England.

Rachel had a night out with her friends planned, so she didn’t make dinner at the usual time. I guess there was a conversation upstairs that went something like this: Grace: What’s for dinner? Rachel: I don’t know. That’s up to Daddy. Later Rachel was downstairs with me and we heard Gracie calling me, “Daddy, time for dinner.” She eventually made her way downstairs to find me. She said she had made dinner for...

Today was Nolan’s first birthday. We were going to have a party tonight, but no one could make it so we rescheduled for Saturday morning. I had ward counsel tonight and I asked to leave a bit early so I could run to the store and get some cupcakes, candles, and ice-cream to have a little family party before he went to bed. When I got home, I found Rachel had gone to the store and purchased the exact same items. So we put a candle in his...

I was frustrated working today. I’ve been trying to learn Django and Python – new programming language and framework. But it seems just as it starts to make sense, I get side-tracked on some other project then I come back and start from scratch and the framework also gets updated so I have to fix existing code. Today was one of those frustrating days when things were just not clicking. So I stopped what I was doing, bowed my head and...

Gehrig is starting preschool tomorrow (or as he corrected me today, “three schools”) He has been very excited. I gave him a father’s blessing tonight. He really enjoys them. It is one of the rare times he sits still and folds his arms. It was a very nice experience.