Hah! Bet you thought I forgot about my own birthday. Think again!

At dinnertime a couple of nights ago, Aubrey asked the kids if they had any good ideas for a present for Jack for his 1st birthday (only a couple of weeks away). Tess got excited and squealed, "I know, a BABY TOY!"

Noah panicked and shouted, "Tess, Jack is sitting Right THERE!"

Tess ran over to the high chair where Jack was eating some cheerios, put her hands over his ears and said, "I know, a BABY TOY!"

Much better.

Aubrey has been googling for a little while looking for ideas for a Relief Society Birthday Dinner. Let me give you a preview- there's nothing out there. All just terrible terrible ideas. At least that was my take. But luckily for Aubrey, ideas are my middle name. Here are a few, just in case you someday need to help plan one of these too.

One popular idea was reenacting the first Relief Society Meeting. Blah. Rather than that same old same old why not reenact the first Relief Society Commemoration Dinner? Old fashioned cooking is delicious.

Another idea that someone had was to have some people in period dress talk about the founding and other major milestones and events in the Relief Society's history. Who hasn't heard all of that before? How about a fresh take? I think you should get all of those people in period dress to have a rap battle or dance-off to decide who's contributions were more valuable. Talk about memorable.

Another idea is to go all "Masterpiece Theater" on them. Or "Dinner and a Movie." Entertain all of these upstanding women by showing classic church movies, such as "Johnny Lingo" (the old one), "The Phone Call," and to bring the spirit in right at the end, "A Cipher in the Snow". How can you not go Visiting Teaching the next day after that last one?

These are just ideas that came right off the top of my head. I could maybe charge $8 per idea if I wanted to be selfish, but I'd rather save others from the wasteland that is google results for this topic.

I'll bet you're surprised that we are posting more videos of Jack here...

Huh... maybe we should get some video of the other kids...so they think we like them too.

Two and a half weeks ago, I broke my finger playing basketball. It's the pinkie finger on my left hand, and I could tell it was broken and not just jammed. Even still, there isn't a whole lot they can do about broken fingers, normally they just tell you to tape it to a buddy. And that's what I did.

For two weeks I walked around with a taped up finger, complaining to people about it. I kept hearing stories from everyone about times they had broken knuckles in their fingers, and all the casts and surgeries and occupational therapy they had to go through to get everything working right again. These all got me thinking. What if it is my knuckle? My knuckles hurt more than the finger itself does. What if it's that knuckle right at the top of the palm? Why can't I straighten out my finger yet, or make a fist? And why does my pinkie finger still stick out away from my other fingers some?

So two weeks after I initially broke my finger I sent an email to my normal doctor. I asked him, "If I come to you with this broken finger, is there anything you can do about it, or are you going to send me to a specialist?" He responded back that he would like to look at my pinkie himself, so I set up an appointment. Once I arrived, I went and got the lovely x-ray you see above. Pretty clearly a broken finger, knuckles are fine. I take him the x-ray, he looks at it for a minute, explains precisely how it is broken (minor displacement and angulation), refers me to a hand specialist (doh) and tells me to buddy tape it until I can see the specialist on Monday.

All weekend long I wondered what the hand specialist was going to do. Obviously, the reason I was referred was because this is too sensitive a job for a general practitioner. I use these hands for a living, you know, and there are all sorts of things to worry about. When I tell people that I'm going to see a hand specialist for the broken finger, they all ask about casts and pins and things like that. I have no idea what's going to happen, but it must be serious since the doctor couldn't do anything about it.

My appointment for the hand specialist was today. I paid my $40 and sat down in his office with my x-rays in their folder next to me. The doctor was really nice, knew what he was doing. After a quick look at the x-ray, he had me take off the tape, straighten out my fingers, and said, "Good, there's a small hump but not too bad." Then he had me turn my palms over and make a fist. "Great, no rotation at all." He then showed me how he preferred the buddy taping to be done, and sent me on my way with a "That's healing up great, keep taping it up and you'll be fine."

So two copays and who knows how much billed to insurance later, I'm left with instructions to keep on doing what I was doing for free originally.

At least we were thorough.

Last Jack video today, I promise...

Jack is NOT a fan of apples in any form. He makes this same face at apple juice.

Yeah...we kind of like him.