Prius Love

Every so often people ask us if we still like our Prius as much as we did in the beginning. I think this post on Leif's blog pretty much sums up how we feel these days...

Skipping Stones

One day Eliana and I went to eat lunch with Leif at work and see the ducks. But with so many rocks and the water nearby, Ellie had different ideas. She seemed to think that throwing rocks into the water was MUCH more fun than looking at ducks...

And for those of you who are interested, this is where Leif works. His building is on the right.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Let's all join in a rousing chorus to celebrate Leif's birthday... Here we go now....

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday, dear Leif!
Happy Birthday to you!

We're Famous!

Okay, so we're not really famous. But it sort of feels like it lately. A couple weeks ago when we met Leif for lunch one day I very excitedly told Leif that I got interviewed as an active Freecycle member for the newspaper. He promptly trumped my story by telling me that he, too, had been interviewed that morning, only he got interviewed in a sound booth for the radio. Okay. He wins.

The Freecycle story ran in the newspaper this Sunday. Unfortunately, you can't read it online, but I did scan it in, so you might be able to read it here. (Click the picture to enlarge it.)


Leif's interview aired this morning and, fortunately, you CAN listen to it online (or read the transcript if you prefer). So there you have it. Our little smidgen of fame.

What Leif does while I'm at Craft Night...

I think I'm going to start a series of posts about what Leif does while I'm not around. For example, while I'm at Craft Night, he apparently reads to Ellie and the neighbor kids. I went down to Stephanie's to craft last night while Neal brought the kids down to our house. Leif and Neal made dinner and the kids played until bedtime. Looks to me like they had as much fun as we did.

Ellie's First Trip to the Zoo

For Father's Day we went to Billings for lunch with Leif's family. Then we went to Zoo Montana. Fathers got in free, and we'd been wanting to see the zoo, so we took Ellie for her first zoo outing. Zoo Montana is different from other zoos in that it only has animals that are native to our latitude. So there were no elephants or giraffes, but we did see a Siberian Tiger and Red Pandas. The zoo is open year round since the animals' native habitat has similar weather patterns to our own and don't need to be kept in overwintering pens during the cold months. The zoo has paths that wind around through native plant gardens and exhibits. It was really relaxing to spend an afternoon walking around there, which is different from my experiences at other zoos. Most of the zoos I've been to leave me hot, tired, and cranky by the time we go home. This one was different and I dare say we'd be willing to go back there again sometime. It was a nice way to spend Father's Day with the family.

Some of these pictures still need to be edited (for darkness, etc.) but they are some of my favorites from that day:

Ellie was sort of confused by the iguana aquarium in the welcome center at the zoo.

One of the peacocks at the barn was doing a little dance with his tail all spread out, so we had Uncle Eric take some pictures of Ellie by it. I've never seen a peacock with his tail out like that in real life - it was stunning! He let us get really close to him, too...!

Ellie and Daddy enjoyed looking at the big horn sheep display. Ellie preferred sitting on Daddy's shoulders to riding in her stroller. I think Leif preferred it, too.

I thought this was the cutest little river otter! He was one of the last animals we saw, but I'm glad we stopped to look on our way out.

All in all, it was a good day. Nice weather, nice zoo, and a fun outing with family.

Eliana walking with Uncle Eric and Daddy.

My sweeties

I saw this picture taken on Father's Day and I couldn't resist. I love these guys!

GO LEIF!

I just have to brag on Leif for a moment. You see, Leif won an award at work. They only honored three people in the whole international company, and Leif was one of them. He won the Q4 Company Award for Innovation / Bootstrapping, including a plaque and a bonus. Here's the writeup they sent to all the employees:

Innovation/Bootstrapper—Leif Wickland, Product Development in Bozeman

Leif saw a need and used available hardware and personal initiative to find a solution. This solution has saved countless hours in development by allowing people to avoid updates at potentially toxic times and providing an up-to-date build for server side developers to use. Leif set up and installed a continuous building integrations server on his own computer using CruiseControl.NET. The server basically checks out and building the code continuously and provides tools and reports for showing the state of the most recent build and who checked in between builds.

I'm pretty proud of him. He does what he does because he wants things to be better, more efficient. He wasn't looking for recognition when he implemented this solution - he just knew there had to be a better way to do what they were doing. I love that about him and I just wanted to share.