Plug Your Ears

Holly was able to capture this rare musical moment thanks to Brigham and Luc. You may want to plug your ears. The video is here.

Jacob Plays Baseball Wii Style

Jacob got a Nintendo Wii today. He was soooo excited. We had him try it out at a friends house a couple of weeks ago and he really liked it. He especially likes baseball. It was so fun seeing him having such a good time. It is also great because we have finally found something that is somewhat active that he enjoys and that he could do with other kids.

Check out the video here.

Brigham was so excited I thought that he was going to blow up.

Flying Mattresses

Next week we have the full DeVore clan and the Hales grandparents coming into town for Jacob's baptism. In the process of getting ready for our visitors we have had to prepare our guest room and key part of that is getting a bed. Holly perused Craig's List for a couple days and found a good deal.

So we packed up the kids to go get the mattress. We quickly realized that this was a bad idea. We were going to have to carry the mattress down from an apartment. What were we going to do with the kids while we did that? Luckily Sally volunteered to take one for the team and we dropped all the kids at her house.

We arrived at the place and the mattress looked great. The lady was moving to Berlin and was just trying to get rid of stuff so she threw in pillows, duvet, and a bunch of other stuff. Holly had gotten a little confused about the price. She had thought it was $100 when the lady had been asking $150. I had $120 on me and thought that we were going to have to find an ATM. But then I found a 20 euro in my wallet from our trip to Italy. Well the lady was going to Berlin so I gave her the 20 euro, and with the terrible exchange rate, we were even.

Holly and I took everything down the elevator and loaded the mattress and box spring on top of our mini van. We were a little unprepared in this area as well. We had some ropes but bungee cords would have been much better. We got it mostly tied on and headed home. We were coming back from downtown DC so it was going to take about 30 minutes.

Things looked a little scary but we thought we were all right. We were headed down Nebraska when all of the I looked in the rear view mirror and saw the box spring standing vertically behind me. We quickly pulled into the nearest driveway - the Japanese embassy. It had blown off the top but the rope had kept it barely attached so it never hit the ground. We pulled out another strap and got it tied down a little better.

Needless to say, from this point on we went very slowly. We did fine until we got to Chain Bridge and had to cross the Potomac River. It was very windy and our mattress looked like it was going to take flight. The people behind us must have been terrified. We prayed our way to the other side and after that we were home free.

I think that next time we will rent a moving truck.

Macworld

We are finally back from Macworld. What a week. We took off Monday morning for San Francisco with the software still not quite done. After a long night and an early morning the software was finished at about 10:30 am - the booth opened at 11.

It was a very stressful morning as Trevor raced to finish software and went off to pick up posters for our booth. On top of everything I lost may badge so we had to pickup a new one (I spent the whole week losing things - I have never been so absent minded in my life).

The first day went well. Our booth was very busy most of the day (we didn't even get a chance to eat until 3) and people were very complimentary. But it was the 2nd day when things really got exciting.

TUAW, a very popular Apple blogging site did a nice post on us and a video interview that will be published next week. We then had one of the editors of Macworld come over to the booth. He said that they had a write assigned to our booth to check it out but he was just interested in seeing it for himself.

Then it just kept getting better. Several people we demoed it to said that our product had mad the whole Macworld show worth it. One group of consultants came by who were already users of ScreenSteps and went on an on about how easy it had made their jobs. This was our first time ever really showing this at a conference like this and it was so great to see people's reactions.

The absolute best was a guy who came up to our booth and gave us a thank you card and tin of cookies. He told us that we were his favorite developers of the year because ScreenSteps had helped him so much at work.

The whole experience was completely exhausting. We were up very late every night and up pretty early. We thought that things would die down as the week wore on. But they stayed pretty busy throughout. It was by far the largest Macworld that I had ever attended. There were about 50,000 people there.

My Mom came up to see the booth on Thursday afternoon. She was able to get badge from the front desk that said "Dorothy DeVore, Blue Mango Learning Systems", so I guess we have a new employee.

All in all it was a fantastic experience. We met some great people and were able to see some old friends. It was really fun to get to know some of the other developers as well. I think it is safe to say that we will plan on going again next year. Right now we just want to take a few days to sleep.

Holly was busy while I was gone. I got back and she had repainted the whole entrance way. I don't know why she does these things while I am out of town. Maybe she thinks that if I help on the project I will screw it up.

Brigham's New Shirt

Brigham and Holly saw this in a store. Brigham asked Holly to read it
to him. After she did he said, "We HAVE to get this."

Holly was happy to oblige.

Our MacWorld Booth

Here are some photos of our MacWorld booth.

Going to MacWorld

Trevor and I are getting ready to go to MacWorld next week. We are pretty excited. We even have T-shirts - check them out: