we bought this for our nephew samsam this christmas. he’s about almost 2 years old, with a baby brother on the way, so we thought this would be a great gift for him and his baby brother.  he’ll get one more good year out of it, while it waits for number two to turn one and ride as well.

i actually wanted to get this for him since last year because of all the great reviews.  Not only was it aesthetically adorable, but it’s safe!  With a wide base, it doesn’t shake from side to side which will prevent it from toppling over.  It’s also the perfect height for a 2 year old, sturdy for a strong baby boy who violently likes to jump and test its specs. 

Also, if you didn’t know, babies at this age, LOVES to jump and bounce, so this really promotes a lot of active play, as well as entertains with its noise and lights.  It spins and bounces, so it allows my nephew to use his coordination.  He seems to like it, and even fights his 2.5 year old cousin so he can ride on it. 

For the price, it’s great.  It’s like having your own bouncing horse without having to really overtake your home space.  Plus, it just looks really cute.

Age Range: 1-3 years
Price: $40
Bought: Target

we got this for zem for Christmas when she was 2.5 years old.

we wanted something that would be educational, interacting, easy to store, and attractive.  this really met those expectations because she’s recently been learning to read her alphabet so this was another way to supplement and reinforce her memory.  so far, with the week that she’s had it, she’s been able to learn 3 new letters, aside from the letters she already knew. 

it’s nice too because of its 2 option sound settings- ABC’s or animal sounds, which is good because sometimes Emma LOVES to mimic animal sounds.

I think it’s great because she loves animals, and this allows her to pretend play, learn new animals, while subconsciously learning her alphabet.  it also comes w/ 26 animals, all wearing their respective letters. it’s great; plus the animals are plastic, round, and super cute.

lastly, I’ve been looking around for prices and the cheapest I’ve seen was for $41, but we were able to buy it on sale for $30 at Target during Christmas, which is pre-tty good for us!  I think it was really worth it and I’m really glad we found this gift.  it’s something i really recommend for the pro-education parent. plus, it comes w/ its own case for the animals, and easy to store…which is great for me!

Ages: 2-5 years
Ave. Price: $41
Ave. Rating: 4.8/5
Where to Buy: Target, Wal-mart, Toys R’ Us

Building a website from scratch is not that easy, especially for someone who is design challenged. I’m really more of a "function" than a "form" type of person. I stink at color combination that’s why I stick with the safe ones like, blue, black, white and gray.

Marrying Marchesa changed all that.

Now I have to deal with yellow, seafoam, old rose, pink and God knows what other colors there are outside the primary and secondary color spectrum. Maybe Marchesa will someday blog about the theme of the website. But as for me, I’ll talk about something else.

Here are the things that make this site what it is from my perspective.

1. Siteground Hosting - 750GB + a boatload of stuff for $5.95/month
2. Wordpress & Plugins
   • Akismet - Handling Spam
   • Coppermine SC - Photo Gallery port to Wordpress
   • Feedburner Feedsmith
   • Google XML Sitemaps
   • ShareThis
   • Holy Scripturizer
   • Wordpress Automatic Upgrade
   • Wordpress Mobile Edition
   • WP-PostRatings
3. Coppermine Photo Gallery
4. Google Apps + Google Analytics
5. Basic knowledge of HTML, PHP, Javascript, XML, CSS and FTP

There you go, add some diligence , love for writing, and an awesome partnership with your spouse, that’s really all there is to twelvesixteen.net.

 
from our family to yours
merry   c h r i s t m a s

Dec. 22, 2007.
This is my second time conducting the SJBCI Christmas Cantata, with this year’s songs from Unspeakable Joy. 

Joyfully, I was happy to see the church building packed w/ new visitors, as well as new members of the choir that I had not yet been honored to lead.  Also, Perze served as the narrator this year, so it was a partnership that I enjoyed this cantata. 

It’s always a blessing to conduct for the choir, seeing as they perform passionately during the night of the event, and I was very much encouraged and humbled by the pleasant things the audience had to say.  Praise God for being the head director of the evening.

for the complete album of the cantata weekend, click here.

Fox Run apartments have been our home for around nine months now. Considering how nice the Princeton-Plainsboro area is, we’ve had a couple of crazy incidents that happen in our area. Weve had our kitchen flooded, carpets replaced 2 times due to a blockage in the condenser pipe, cable service cancelled and taken by our neighbors, among other things. Last night takes the cake.

At 1 in the morning we hear a girl screaming from outside our apartment, she was screaming “rape, rapist!”. Being the responsible citizens that we are, marchesa and I immediately jumped from where we were and peeked outside the window to see what was going on … then picked up the phone and called 911. A couple seconds later, 4 squad cars and a firetruck came to our parking lot looking for the supposed perpetrator.

Marchesa and myself were genuinely scared. We moved here because it was both safe and convenient. I went to the living room so I can have a better vantage of what was going on, we noticed that there have been a couple of other residents who went out the parking lot to check what was going on.

Next thing you know, you see these cops walking over to our direction, from the peephole on our door you can see that they were looking for the guy living next door. The cops seem to be too candid about it, they went out with the guy and no handcuffs.

Marchesa was getting more worried thinking the perpetrator(s) was still out there. So I called the police station, which is a stones throw away, inquiring about the problem.

Turns out it was the girl who cried wolf. In the words of the officer that I talked to, ‘Nothing to worry about, the girl had emotional problems’.

It sucks when the ‘wolf’ cries wolf. Especially when its resolved at almost 3 in the morning.