I love Facebook!

Last night as I was cooking dinner, the phone rang. I answer it and a male voice says "Hi Laney! How are you?" We talk for a second or two and he asks if I know who it is. I had no idea. He says that he won't hold it against me since it had been over ten years since the last time I heard his voice. It was Jason, a really, really good friend of ours from Ricks! He was actually Rob's roommate when we got engaged and one of the reasons we met. He and I were really good friends even before Rob moved there. Several months ago, we found him on facebook and we've been talking back and forth through the instant messenger thingy on there. His company told him yesterday morning that they needed him to fly down and pick up a contract worker (or something like that) and drive him back to WY. Well, he flew into the DFW airport to meet up with him and the guy he was supposed to meet was running several hours late. He got my phone number off facebook and called us and Rob was able to go pick him up and we got to spend five hours visiting with him! The kids loved him and it was so nice to get to spend some time with him! I love being able to keep up with people online, but there's nothing quite like getting to visit in person!

We have been able to get back in touch with so many people that we have really missed through facebook. I've found friends from when I was in elementary school that I haven't talked to in over 20 years, friends from middle school, friends from each of the high schools I went to, and many of my friends from college. I love being able to see pictures of everyone's families and check out the blogs of those who have them. The Internet is such an incredible thing! I am no good at sending letters. I write them, but somehow they never get sent. I can email though! And they get sent! :)

Things have been going well here. We had a few nervous days this past weekend and the beginning of this week as Fidelity laid off about 1600 people nationwide. We knew it was coming and understood that it was necessary, but were still really nervous, both for us and for all the friends we have that work there. There are at least 13 people in our church congregation that work there too. Rob sat there on Tuesday morning and watched as one person after another in his department was called back. Rob's department lost 8 out of 50-60 people. Rob was not let go. Neither was Christy (my sister) or anyone from our church (from what we've heard). Fidelity was really supportive for those they did have to let go though and everyone will stay on the books (meaning get paid for) the whole month of February, after which they will get 3 months severance. Fidelity also has a team of people that help their laid off employees find other jobs. We really like that company! I'm so glad Rob got hired there!

The kids have been doing well. They have been so good about helping me rest and recover! Jack has been fighting a cold for a few days. He had what I'm pretty sure was an asthma attack the other night, so I think he has the same type of asthma that Megan has - she only gets attacks at night and they are usually brought on by either severe allergies or a virus. Meg only has a few attacks a year, so I'm hoping Jack will be similar in that area as well.

Meg starts her testing for the gifted and talented program soon. They sent home a questionnaire for Rob and I to fill out about her. I read through it and thought we were making a mistake because of the examples they used. The form had us give examples from Megan's actions in specific areas that might qualify Megan for the program. A couple I remember were things like "Expects high results from her activities even though she may not know much about the topic - i.e. builds a robot from items around the house and expects it to actually work, despite not knowing specifics of motor repair" or "recognizes faults in her creations and tries to fix them - i.e. understands that there are not enough solar panels in her model of a solar powered community to support the number of houses there". Megan has not built robots or models of solar-powered communities. Rob just laughed, wondered who came up with these examples, and said it was probably geared towards older children. I hope so, because I don't know any 6 year olds who have done that except for the ones that are featured in TV shows like "Smartest boy in the world" on the discovery channel who graduate from MIT when they are 12.

We filed our taxes by ourselves with the help of TurboTax this week. It's the earliest we've ever filed and the first time we haven't used an accountant in seven years. Our accountant is in MA though and so we've had to mail the forms to him and then wait for a while for him to have a chance to file them. TurboTax was pretty easy to use and we're pretty happy with it :)

Anyway, that's about all that's going on with us. Megan has tomorrow off school, so Rob and I are going to try to go on a date tonight (we try not to go out on school nights), then we have the missionaries over for dinner tomorrow night, then Saturday Megan has a birthday party to go to and Rob is having a friend come over to watch a UFC on tv. Hope you all have wonderful days!