Open Source: Toddler Mother’s Day Gifts to Grandmas

This year for Mother’s Day, Ryan and I took 22-month old Sagan over to Occoquan’s Paint Your Heart Out one Friday afternoon.

We picked out coffee mugs and sponged on some background colors. Then it was Sagan’s turn to participate. He plopped his handprint on each mug. After that, Ryan and I did our best to embellish the handprints and make them appear like peacocks. The proprietor of Paint Your Heart Out has a little girl two months younger than Sagan. That meant the tiny table full of toys was of great interest to Sagan while his parents worked.

While I don’t think our final products are going to make the rounds on Pinterest, we were pleased with the results…as were Sagan’s grandmothers. : )

Final Coffee Mugs from Paint Your Heart Out

And the whole process got to impress Ryan and I with Sagan’s memory retention. We didn’t pick up our pieces until nearly a week later. Sagan, of course, accompanied us on that outing as well.

As soon as he saw the mugs he said, “Peacock!” and he quickly followed it up with “Haaaaaaaaaand.”

So he not only remembered that we made peacocks, but that it was constructed out of his hand to boot.

BLOG: 100,000 Views Reached

This afternoon, this blog passed 100,000 views.  Like Clint, the second 50,000 went significantly faster than the first 50,000.  It took 14 months to get the first 50,000 views and less than 3 months to get the second 50,000.

I have my mother to thank for that…. and your mother… and all other mothers for that matter.  A lot of these last 50,000 hits were from people searching for Mother’s Day Cards.  Mother’s Day alone, I got 8,208 views.  Interestingly enough, I still had very heavy traffic the day after Mother’s Day.  Those slackers!  😉  It was nice to see a more positive source to a spike (My previous high had been from the Virginia Tech Shooting).

And speaking of mothers, my mother is coming to visit me this week!  She arrives on Wednesday and will probably be staying through the weekend.  The primary purpose of the visit is to get some painting done, but I bet we sneak in a quick hike and a visit to El Guadeloupes.  Should be fun.

Unscientific Experiments on Popularity

Popularity by Quacks

When Carolyn, Jay and I were young we had pet ducks.  We noted one day, that when a duck got seperated from the group he would let out some urgent quacks and the other ducks would quack back to help him navigate home. 

Ducks swimming in the duck fence.  The Sawyer driveway is below.

We used that observation as a basis of a duck popularity contest.  The duck fence was about three feet higher than our driveway.  One by one we took a duck and placed him in the driveway.  With the white cinderblock walls that surrounded the driveway, the duck couldn’t see the other ducks and they couldn’t see him.  The seperated duck would instantly start his worried quacking.  Us young Sawyer scientists then observed the reaction of the other ducks with great interest.  We believed the intensity of the other ducks’ quacks was directly related to how fond they were of the missing duck. 

Interestingly enough, there was one duck named Hornet who was quite the bully.  He was fond of raping other ducks, regardless of gender.  When we placed him in the driveway, he quacked fervently and to no avail.  Not a single duck quacked back!!!

Popularity by Candy 

Halloween of 1992, a number of friends and I dressed up as the three Presidential candidates (and their secret service protection, their wives and in the case of Bill Clinton, alledged lovers).  We then went around and tricked or treated.  There was a catch.  Instead of us each having our own bounty, we only gave the three candidates a bag for candy.  At each house, we instructed the homeowners to give the candy for all of us to the candidate they intended to vote for.  We split the candy up equally after we tallied the final results (which I can’t remember).  Of course, the candy given by each household was not necessarily proportional to the number voters that resided there.  Our poll was far from scientific, but I bet it was more fun (and yummy) than traditional polls!

Gennifer Flowers (Greg Z), Secret Service Man (Jay), Secret Service Man (?), Barbara Bush (Aaron Evans), Secret Service Man (Christian Geyer), George Bush (Me), Hilary Clinton (Wendy D), Ross Perot (Brian Nenninger), Bill Clinton (Christina Geyer)

Popularity by Blog Views

And now even though I’m grown and established, I’m starting another popularity experiment, this one just as unscientific as the other two.  I’ve placed a Father’s Day Card on my blog.  I’m going to watch how many people search for it and compare to how many people searched for Mother’s Day Cards.

Dad’s have their work cut out for them  

This will be far from conclusive.  I have no guarantee the Father’s Day Card will get as highly ranked in the search engines.  I did try to help it out by storing the picture on my personal website and naming it “FathersDayCard.JPG” to mimick the storage and naming scheme of the Mother’s Day Card.  BUT even with that, the content of the blog post is different AND there is no way that the Father’s Day Card is anywhere near as cool as the Mother’s Day Card that uses the phrase “dog crap” twice (How could anything top that?).  Nonetheless, it will be interesting to watch what happens over the course of the next month.

Good Luck, Dads.  Hopefully you’ll prove to be a little more popular that Hornet the Duck Rapist.  🙂

Glacier National Park

With our work obligations over, Larry and I got to resume exploring Montana.  Yesterday we ate lunch in Whitefish, Montana.  We got yelled at for jaywalking, but our experience was still very positive thanks to some delicious pies from Loula’s Cafe.  After that, we hit Glacier National Park.  This is the third National Park I’ve gotten to visit in the past year (Rocky Mountain National Park and Great Smokey Mountain National Park were the other two)!

Me at my third National Park in a year. 

Spring plowing of the park typically begins at the beginning of April and it can take two months or more to plow the Going-To-The-Sun Road.  Sometimes they are plowing through snowdrifts that are 60-70 feet deep!  It is typically late May or early June before the road is fully open.   Yesterday, they did have a ten mile stretch open to the public, so Larry and I took advantage of that.  We got to see a lot of great views, particularly of Lake McDonald. 

Me at Lake McDonald

Lake McDonald from near the Apgar Visitor Center

Lake McDonald, traveling southwest on Going-To-The-Sun Road.

I was disappointed when the park ranger told me that I would not see any sheep or goats because “they are higher up and snowed in”, but we did get to see some deer.

A deer in Glacier National Park

Afterwards, we visited a high quality gift shop (filled with wonderful crafts and artwork) near the Apgar Visitor Center and purchased a few souvenirs.  I have successfully secured Mother’s Day cards and gifts for both my mother and Sean’s mother this trip!

On the way back to Missoula, we passed by the gorgeous Flathead Lake and snapped some shots there as well:

Beautiful Flathead Lake

We definitely had a scenic day!  All my uploaded pictures from Glacier National Park and Flathead Lake (I have tons more on my laptop) are available on my Flickr site.

People Love Their Mamas

Lately, I’ve seen a marked increase in my blog hits.  Apparently this has very little to do with me.  With almost two months to spare, I’m seeing an influx of searches for “Mother’s Day”, “Mother’s Day Cards” and “Mother’s Day Pictures”. 

In a way, I guess that’s uplifting.  People could be searching for a number of other things.  I’ve seen “fat naked grandma” and “LARGE MAN IN THONG” searches come through in the past week.  Stacy has had his self esteem boosted by someone finding his site searching for “20s no social life“.  Christina has had stuff like “grandma+grandpa sex” and Clint’s had his little troubles with fecalphiliacs.  The indiscretions of an American Idol contestant prompted “Antonella Barba”, “Antonella Barba pictures” and “Antonella Barba photos” to be the top search queries earlier this month (Interesting Time article on the phenemenon). 

So people searching for Mother’s Day cards, that’s pretty damn sweet as far as the Internet goes.

Best Mother’s Day Card Ever

Last week, some co-workers and I went to Target to fetch some Mother's Day cards.  The second card I picked up, I was completely sold on.

"I'm getting this one!"  I announced, "It says 'Dog Crap!'"

"Public place," one of my co-workers tried to delicately remind me and out of the corner of my eye I saw a child pass by.

"It's a public card," I protested.

"Oh come on, it doesn't really say dog crap," he said.

I showed him the card.

"I stand corrected."

And that is how I found the best Mother's Day Card ever.  In fact– it uses the phrase "dog crap" twice:

And for those skeptics out there—  I'll have you know I spoke to my mother yesterday and she got a kick out of the card as well.  🙂