Merry Christmas 2011 and Happy 2012!

Easter 2011

Salutations from the Baxley family!  Another year has flown by faster than ever.  2011 brought us a flurry of activity and some organized chaos.  Here’s the annual update on the Baxley clan.

The kids gardening

Nate continues his job at the Univ. of Illinois doing what he loves to do, developing websites for the LAS and Education departments.  He’s still dabbling in a little woodworking and remains our on-call repair guy for our house plumbing, electrical, septic, and computer repairs.  Sharon continues with her domestic goddess duties and mothering 6 children and keeping up the garden and orchard.  Here she enslaves the kids with gardening tasks.  (insert evil laugh here)  No really, some of the kids seem to get into the gardening thing.  Whatever goes and gets them to eat healthy.  Sharon has plans to add more fruit trees to our orchard in 2012 so we can have a business selling produce when the kids are older and we can use the children as employees.  (insert another evil laugh here.)

All the kids are doing great. Noah, 10; Marie, 8; and Calvin, 6, are all doing super in school this year. Molly, 5, is in pre-school a few mornings during the week.  Dominic, 3 and Patrick, 21 months, are both hanging at home with mom and keeping her busy with potty training and diapers.

They all still love being outdoors whenever they can get out. The kids are still happy with our mega playset Nate and his dad built and it gets a lot of use.  This year the kids themselves added a hay bale pile next to the tire swing and began a game to see how high they could swing from the pile.

Noah - Age 10
Marie - Age 8
Calvin - Age 7
Molly - Age 5
Dominic - Age 3
Patrick - Age 1

We made a few nice improvements on our old farmhouse in September which included more insulation, new siding and new windows.  The house doesn’t look too much different on the outside beyond taking the front porch roof off, but we can already tell a difference in the heating bills and there isn’t a breeze blowing through the inside.

Back in June we traded in the minivan for a Chevy 12 passenger van.  So any money we’re saving on propane is spent on gas.  But really, we do love it and it has lots of space to haul all of our family and extra people too.  FYI: the van interior does hold at least 9 bales of straw alongside 6 kids and 2 adults.

In July we took a family vacation down to Camp Ondessonk, a Catholic youth camp in southern Illinois about an hour east of Carbondale.  They hold a family camp every summer and entire families can stay there as campers and do all the camp activities.  As you can see from some of our pictures we had a super time.  Many thanks to our good friend Rebecca Cler and the entire staff at Camp O.  We hope to return for more family camps and the kids are now wanting to attend as regular summer campers.  HEEPWAH!
Dominic catching rain on his tongue
Noah and Calvin master the kayak
Dominic & Molly at Camp O
Noah crossing the bridge
Marie loved the horses
Nate and Calvin on a hike


Here’s a few more pictures from our 2011 year.  Swimming in the pool out back, the Penfield tractor show and meeting Mr. Lincoln, Patrick’s 1st birthday, a trip to the beach on Lake Michigan with the Norths, and my favorite: Calvin dressed up as a storm trooper holding up Molly with a banana.

Nate with Dominic and Patrick in the pool
Noah, Marie, Calvin, and Molly loved the tractors at Penfield
The kids and Abe


Marie and Patrick atCamp Ondessonk
Patrick's first birthday
At the beach on Lake Michigan


An emperial stick-up, monkey style


2011 brought lots of fun family times for us.  We’re looking forward to 2012 and to more traveling and making memories together.  God has truly been watching over us and has blessed us with 6 amazing, healthy, and happy children.   We’re always here out in the country, life is quiet and slow (as slow as having 6 kids can get) so please stop in to say hello any time!

Relationship Half-LIfe

My wife and I have now been dating or married for half my life.  Calculate your relationship half-life with “The Relationship Half-Life Calculator”.  It seems like just a moment hon 😉

Your birthday:

Date your relationship started:

Cloud Services Revisited – Part 3 – Every note in the cloud

In our 3 part series on using the cloud for everyday things you need, we’ve covered backups and passwords, now we’ll cover the simple act of note taking.  The service I’m talking about is a tool/service called Evernote. Evernote is both a web service and a piece of software.  In brief it is a place to take notes that will automatically back them up and make them available through a website and a local client, but it’s much more than that.  It can change the way you keep track of everything from Meeting notes and magazine articles to your bills.

Continue reading “Cloud Services Revisited – Part 3 – Every note in the cloud”

Cloud Services Revisited – Part 2 – Passwords

In Part 1 of this three part series, we talked about using Cloud Services for backups.  In Part 2, we’ll talk about how you can use the cloud to keep track of the myriad passwords you end up collecting and how you can start creating better passwords to protect you from attacks.  All this without risking storing your passwords in the open on someone else’s server, and always giving you a secure way to download a local backup.

Most of us have accounts all over the Internet, and most of them use some kind of username and password to let us access our account.  It may seem that the only way to keep track of them is to use the same password for most of the accounts.  Maybe you use a different one for your bank and a few other places, but it just becomes impossible to remember a different password for each site.  You could keep them all on Post-Its along your monitor, but hopefully you know that’s not a good idea.  So using a tool of some sort is a great way to get around this.  Several years ago I started using the password manager built into my browser to track passwords, and it was a great burden lifted.  I still used the same username and password on many sites, simply because I was lazy and didn’t want to create a new one.  But I used harder passwords more often and they were all remembered for me.  About a year ago, I started using a free service call LastPass to keep track of my passwords, and it has changed the way I work with passwords forever.

Continue reading “Cloud Services Revisited – Part 2 – Passwords”

Cloud Services Revisited – Part 1 – Backups

Last year, I wrote an article about using the cloud for backups and doing it securely.  There have been some big changes in the area since then, and I wanted to return to it and update some of my recommendations and add some new tools to the mix as well.  This is part 1 of a three part series on using Cloud Services.  Part 1 will revisit backups, Part 2 will cover storing passwords securely in the cloud, and Part 3 will show you how to keep track of every thought that crosses your mind and make it available anywhere, all through the cloud. Continue reading “Cloud Services Revisited – Part 1 – Backups”

Parenting Experts?

Are there any parenting experts out there?  I ask because it seems that every parent I know, including my wife and myself, seems to be on a “work in progress” path to being a well-rounded parent.  It’s been said so many times before, but why oh why don’t kids come with an owner’s manual?  Ask most any parent and they’re likely to tell you that they are still trying to figure out what makes a “perfect child”.  The fact is, we parents are incapable of “creating” perfection.  Try as we might, every one of my children (yours too, come on) will leave home both an imperfect and an incomplete project.  I know many parents that really struggle with the fact that their child has this or that flaw or that if only they had done this one parenting thing better, it all would turn out perfect.  In my opinion, one trick to being a better parent is to accept that you can not make your kids perfect and to embrace that.  Don’t get down on yourself or your child because they act up in public or don’t make the grades you wanted, or aren’t the star athlete.  Your job is not to create perfection but to give children the basic core values that they can take out into the world to make their own decisions with.  Trying to inoculate your child from every possibly harmful thing you can think of will not help them be prepared for the even greater number of things they will encounter in their life. Continue reading “Parenting Experts?”

In defense of Nuclear Energy?

The horrible problems happening at the Japanese nuclear reactor have caught everyone’s attention, and have understandably spooked a lot of people about the dangers of nuclear energy.  First, some facts about nuclear energy in the US.  There are currently 104 nuclear reactors licensed to operate at 65 plants in the United States, which generate about 20% of the nation’s electricity.  The plants are located in 32 different states, with the majority of them being east of the Mississippi river.  The state with the most reactors is Illinois with 11 reactors in 6 plants. ((http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/list-power-reactor-units.html))

Continue reading “In defense of Nuclear Energy?”

Andrew and Andrea “On the Ice”

For those few of you that I haven’t told about this, my brother Andrew and his (now) fiancee Andrea headed down to Antarctica in October for 6 months “On the Ice”. We’re so proud of them for taking this leap and letting us follow along. They’ve been cataloging their adventures on their blog, but I’ve pulled together some of my favorite pictures here.
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@thebaxleys – 2011 part 1

What have the Baxleys been up to so far this year, well it’s been a busy time!

Calvin and Patrick had birthdays

We painted the dining and living rooms

We got a new van

Noah, Marie, and Calvin made it through their first year at Unity West with flying colors.

Andrew and Andrea came home from Antarctica

Noah, Calvin, and Marie did a skit at the talent show

Calvin lost his first tooth (2/28)

Patrick is walking (2/28)

Visited Ray and Besty

 

 

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Merry Christmas 2010

Merry Christmas! As you can see, once again mom has taken the easy way out. Or I can disguise it as trying to be “green” and save a few trees by doing our Christmas cards electronically this year. Believe what you will.

So, our biggest news of the year…another baby! Patrick Benjamin was born March 29, 2010. He is a happy and healthy baby boy who loves keeping up with the family tradition of early mobility and is almost walking on his own now. Although he recently learned to sleep through the night, so we’re VERY happy with that accomplishment. The picture on the left is of Patrick and Great Grandma Appleby on her birthday. Note the birthday crown on Grandma’s head made by the older kids.

Molly, 4, began her first year of preschool this fall and she totally loves it. Love love loves it. We’ve never seen a little girl who is so strong she can beat up her 9 year old brother but so cute and little she melts your heart. She’s learning fast and enjoys playing outside in the dirt and inside with her dolls. We’re still not sure where she gets her energy but we sure wish we could bottle it! She still likes to dress up as a ballerina too. Not sure how she keeps so warm when our house is 65 degree and she’s running around in a leotard.


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At the left you can see our Dominic ready to bite into another apple (yes, he ate lots of apples off our tree.) Yes, he’s already 2 years old! It’s hard to believe our #5 is now in the *terrific* twos! He’s now talking up a storm and growing like a weed. One of his favorite things is John Deere. Every tractor is called a John Deere. Thomas trains come in a close second. He has a fondness for tractors, trains, and books. Needless to say he is the easiest kid to buy presents for.

Marie, 7, started 1st grade this year. She is doing great at school and loves every minute of it. She is still in the business of collecting hippos and is now trying to learn to sew like mom. She’s especially into American Girl dolls and reading. Honestly, I think she’s into just about anything and everything any 7 year old girl could be interested in at that age!

Calvin, 5, began kindergarten this year. He is doing so well with his work and loves every minute of school. He just started reading and is taking off and he’s so proud of himself (and we are too of course!) His current interests are Legos, Legos, and more Legos. Oh, and he likes anything to do with knights and castles too. Early this year we went down to Carbondale to a medieval play castle made just for kids. Calvin loved it. You can usually catch him dressed up in his knight costume running around the house looking for dragons or trying to get one of his sisters thrown into the dungeon.

Last but not least, Noah. He just turned 9 in October and continues to impress us with his eagerness to learn and how fun he can be. The school change was a challenge socially for him at first, but now he has settled in and gets along with all his classmates and is excelling in all his classes. He’s so good with the younger kids and always taking care of the babies and playing with them. Now that Noah and Calvin have their own room complete with a Lego extravaganza, we sometimes don’t see him for 2 or 3 hours because he is usually building some fun contraption that he invented. He is really enjoying 3rd grade and being the entertainer for his class.

Nate is still working at the College of Education at the Univ. of IL and liking it. He has a few side jobs he takes on for fun and recently turned out thelistmaker.com so we can keep up with the gift lists for our family across the globe. Sharon is at home with the brood keeping up with laundry, meals and potty training. We’re both loving having a large family and feel very blessed God entrusted us with 6 beautiful, healthy children.

We hope you have a happy, healthy 2011 and drop us a line or stop in to say hi!

Nate & Sharon
Noah, Marie, Calvin, Molly, Dominic & Patrick