iPhone shattered.

For the first time since we brought two little souls into our lives, we decided to take a "family getaway" to celebrate our oldest going to Kindergarten next week.  I know!  Kindergarten!  I'm sure lots of experienced parents out there are rolling their eyes and asking what the big deal is, but for us, it's very big!  And we needed to celebrate it.  We decided to stay in-state and go somewhere that I've been DYING to I go to for a long time - Glenwood Springs, CO.  The drive has always been a little daunting for us, but we decided to go with it.  The girls could watch a movie (or two!) on the iPad along with having a few snacks to go with.  Needless to say, they did AWESOME.  They even napped, which was unexpected.  We hit a few of the big ticket items in Glenwood Springs, one of which was the Glenwood Cavern Adventure Park that is accessible by taking a gondola/tram up a mountain to a little theme park.  Unfortunately for Littlest One, lots of things were aged 3+, so she and I spent a lot of time eating ice cream and playing in the dirt.  The bigger one had a great time!

At this adventure park, there's lots of trails up and down the mountain to get to various attractions.  We were all walking up to one of the them, when we heard "DADDY HEWP!!"  When I looked back, sweet baby girl had managed to slip and was half under a plastic fence with her leg going down the mountain.  I got over to her and helped her up, but as I stood up, my phone fell and landed on the ground, face down.  I knew it was trouble as soon as I saw it land.  When I picked it up, it was completely shatter.  Ugh.  The good news:  the phone is completely functional.  Just shattered.  So after a fair amount of web searching since the incident I decided to just have the screen replaced...I know, voiding any potential opportunity to have Apple work on it for me, but much cheaper then getting a replacement phone!  And with my contract up in December, there's a slight possibility of getting a new iPhone 6...although I'm not completely sold on that idea yet either.  Anyhoo, here in about 15 minutes I'm hoping that my phone will be back to new and be working great.  Update:  It's working great!  I'm thrilled!!!

The rest of the weekend was loads of fun; we spent a lot of time swimming in the hot springs pool, taking naps, and eating (my favorite).  The girls had a BALL swimming as much as they could...even the 2 year old, although she gets tired faster.  It was a little bit of a hike over to the pools from our hotel (Hotel Denver), but both of the girls did great.  Speaking of, Hotel Denver is AWESOME.  Granted, it's old, and has some features of an old hotel, but it was clean, quiet, and the hotel staff was awesome.  The best part was that we could buy discounted hot spring passes, and they'd let us borrow huge white towels and would throw in a bottle of water for each of us too.

We pretty much enjoyed all of the restaurant that we ate at, with the exception of the Brew Pub right at the Hotel Denver.  While they were super convenient (and you can wait for your table in your room, with beers, and they'll call you when the table is ready!), the items that we ordered weren't fantastic, and the service for us was SLOW.  Which blows my mind a little, since there were tables that got sat AFTER us, that got to order, eat, and leave before us!  So maybe it was just our server that wasn't paying attention.  We were certainly making enough noise, you would think they'd want to get us out of there as fast as possible!  Other restaurants that we dined at included Juicy Lucy's - AMAZING, and a Cajun restaurant, which was also very good, and a nice change of pace, that didn't skimp on quality or service.  We rounded out the weekend with a stop at Beau Jo's for pizza in Idaho Springs, CO.

Now we ramp up for school to start next week.  Which is thrilling but scary, and fun all at the same time.  I better take my tissues along..might be a long teary walk home for me!

iPhone.

So I posted a while back about getting an iPhone, which was a big leap for me since I'm a through and through google user.  Luckily I've found some apps that make using Google easier and easier on my phone, which has been great.  I really like the phone and see myself using this phone until it breaks.

And break it may, because I go through cases like they're going out of style!  As with all my other phones and devices, I'm constantly looking for a case that is slim form.  A friend of mine once looked at an old phone of mine and said "doesn't it stink that we buy these fancy skinny phones and then cover it up with a huge case?"  I couldn't agree more!  In consequence, I believe I've gone through like 4 cases since getting my iPhone.  Here's what I've learned:

1. TPU cases are the skinniest, but last about 1 drop.
2. Silicon cases seem sticky to me and move around too much for me.
3. "Tough" cases are just that, but add so much weight and size to the phone.

I currently am sporting an XDoria Defense 360, which is a clear fully enclosed case that has been working very well for me for about 4 months.  The problem is that I dropped it, which caused a crack, and a few days ago I took apart the case to clean it up, and that cracked piece fell out.  Now I have an exposed corner which puts me back into shopping mode.  Ugh.  Matt is currently sporting a Luvvitt case which seems to be a hybrid of silicon and something else - it's pliable but not sticky, which is interesting to me.  It doesn't have a front cover, but I could get a screen protector - another pet peeve of mine!  I can never get them on straight and without bubbles!

Do you have any suggestions for cases?  Leave them in the comments, I would love to hear!

Shiny and new.

As of 12/30/2012 I was 'eligible' for a new phone upgrade with Verizon - which means absolutely nothing other than the fact that I get to renew a 2 year contract and pay an additional $30 on top of buying a new phone from Verizon at a discounted price...*sigh*.  Anyways, I was able to 'upgrade' my phone, to a new 4g phone, while losing my unlimited data plan..again, some upgrade.  This year I was torn between getting a new Samsung phone, and an iPhone 5.  I've resisted getting an iPhone in the past, mostly because I'm not a mac user, and I am a heavy google/picasa user.  I decided to go with an iPhone this time because they 'just' (this fall) released the iPhone 5 with 4g, and there are enough apps out there to make picasa and google readily accessible, so I ordered up a shiny new iPhone and it was delivered shortly after the new year.

So far I love it - it's smaller than my old phone, but I don't mind the size - it fits nicely in my hand.  I love how snappy and fast it is, and I love the speed of 4G - it's lightning quick - faster than our wireless connection at home.  We have an iPod Touch at home so the operating system was nothing new to me.

A couple drawbacks to the iPhone that I've noticed thus far:
1.  No widgets.  On my android phone I downloaded an app called "Beautiful Widgets", that let me put a 4x2 widget up on my home screen that always showed me the current weather and time.  It isn't apparent to me that iOS allows that, at least google hasn't revealed anything
2.  Custom Ringtones/Sounds.  It sounds like this is possible, but it doesn't sound as though it's as easy as texting a sound to my phone and being able to set it as a ringtone.  I admit that I haven't looked too hard at this, but from what I have looked at I haven't found anything that looks super easy.  My favorite ringtone is a .mp3, and I haven't found a way to use it yet.
3.  Memory - everything that was on my other phone was on a sim card and if I filled it up I could buy a new one or even get a bigger one.  I bought this phone with 16GB of memory, but that's it - once I use it up I have to start deleting, cause there's no option to change out memory options.
4.  Nagging text messages - if I get a text message, and my phone is locked, the phone will keep nagging me every couple of minutes that I have a message...which I think is annoying.  I don't mind one notification of a new message, but I don't like getting CONSTANT reminders that I have a message.  I'm sure there's some way of turning this off, I just need to figure out how.

Other than that I really like the phone.  Everything seems very fast right now, and I haven't had it lockup or do anything weird yet.  Yay!

My new baby.

Another update in my personal life is a recent addition of a smart phone to my arsenal of electronics.  I have been putting this purchase off for some time now, as Matt got a Droid sometime last year.  I couldn't believe that a data plan was going to cost me an extra $30 a month, and I honestly didn't see myself using it.  Since then, I've grown to love our iPod Touch, that has the Facebook App, Google Reader, and the Weather Channel (to name a few) along with a few silly games that I can play before going to bed at night.  Needless to say I'm hooked.  The only problem?  Well, just that it's not a phone, and as soon as I'm outside the reach of a wifi network I don't get to do anything online, although there's still plenty of fun things to do offline.

So, needless to say, I've been tossing around the idea of getting a smart phone for a while.  And was REALLY excited when Verizon finally got the iPhone...I mean that's HUGE!  I had decided that I was going to wait for the iPhone 5 to come out sometime this summer.  Every since Verizon's iPhone 4 has been out, which was what, Febuary(?), I started re-thinking my logic.  Granted, I love our iPod touch, however, I'm not sure I was ready to replace it - considering that it would probably go into major non-use if I were to get an iPhone.  Also, for Matt's birthday, he got an iPad, which we also love and use lots.  However, I'm also a heavy google account user, and what I love about Android phones is their tight integration with google - so my email, calender, photos, etc. load would load automatically.  And I also like that although there aren't as many apps on the Android Market, a lot of them are free, and I'm a fan of free!  Granted, the App Store has lots of free apps too, but often they are a lite version or somehow crippled until you buy the full version.

With that in mind, we went into Verizon's store (btw - I sorta hate Verizon and their antics, but since everyone in my family uses them, partly because of me, party because of the network, I must stick with them - hello free minutes!) and looked at phones.  I originally thought I really wanted the HTC Thunderbolt, however when I held it it felt massive.  It just seemed to big for my petite/dainty hands (hehe).  The next one I picked up was the Samsung Fascinate, and liked it immediately.  Just like Harry Pottery and his wand sending a warm jolt of energy to his body at first touch...ha ha ha!  Anyhoo, I really dig the swipe texting, and the look and feel of the Fascinate.  One drawback is that it does not have a front camera, so video chat isn't an option, however I'm not sure how often (if ever) I'd be in a situation where I'd only have my phone to do a video chat with someone - most likely we'd have Matt's iPad, or a laptop or some other means of doing video chat.

So far, I'm loving it - I love doing a quick check of FB, downloading 2 free versions of Angry Birds, and having the beautiful background pic sweet baby girl spread across all my home screens.  I don't like that Verizon wants to charge to tether the device to another wireless device for $20 a month, for 2 GB of data - that's highway robbery, although there HAS to be someway around that, right?  Admittedly I do have some remorse over not getting the iPhone, since I think I have been in love with the iPhone since it's conception, like 8 years ago, but beings that I'm not a mac user, or a heavy mac anything, I think I've made a decision that's right for me.