Keepin In Touch

I look at my life and what fills my days and I am absolutely amazed. What seems like the simplest thing nowadays seemed like out of this world impossible alien technology ten or fifteen years ago. Think about all of the things a cell phone can do nowadays. A CELL PHONE. It's a mobile phone, a camera, a video camera, a handheld gaming console, we can send messages to each other instantly, scan a bar code to check and compare prices on almost any consumer item, surf the web, find the cheapest gas in a **-mile radius, download and read a book and much much more depending on what phone you have.

On my computer, the possibilities are nearly limitless. From games to mail to photo editing software. And the INTERNET! Holy cow! Can you believe everything we can do and find on the internet?! If you had told me ten years ago that we would have the capabilities that we have now....I would laugh in your face. We have limitless knowledge at our fingertips in an instant. Need a recipe for Quinoa? Don't even know what Quinoa is? How do you even pronounce that? Google will tell you everything you need to know. Thanks to social networking sites like facebook, I can instantly share stories, pictures, videos and more with family and friends around the world! I could go on and on for pages and still not even scratch the surface of all of the technological advances that have been made in the past five years. (And there continues to be more and more every day! Remember when 512KB of RAM and a 50GB hard drive was unbelievable?! Remember how happy we used to be just to have the internet when it first became readily available tot he public? So what if dial up took 10-20 minutes just to connect? I currently have a 14661 kbps download speed and a 45917 kbps upload speed. For now, that's awesome. OUTSTANDING. Especially for what I pay--Thanks Fibernet! But in a year or two, that may be a joke.)

Easily one of my favorite programs to have and use at this point in my life: Skype. I have family and friends in all parts of the country and in different parts of the world. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I move a lot. A LOT a lot. Over 15 times in the past 5 years. I've always tried to keep in touch with good friends and family and now that I have a son, it's more important to me than ever. Skype makes that possible in ways I never would have imagined. Not only can we talk, but we can also see each other, play games with each other, share pictures and files and more.

Gabriel has learned the sounds of Skype and he knows what each sound means. As soon as he hears Skype's startup sound, he knows he will probably get to see Gama (my mom), Ti-ti (my sister), Papa (my dad) or someone else that he loves. When he hears the skype sound, he perks up and gets an excited look on his face and says "Oooh! Oooh!!" and runs to the computer and starts waving and blowing kisses at the screen--whether there's someone there or not! It's so cute!! I'm not sure if you noticed the pictures of him skyping with Gama on Christmas....he loves it!

He also really loves seeing Ti-ti, who is currently deployed (Navy) in Japan. (She's okay - stationed at Kadena in Okinawa, the earthquake and tsunamis didn't affect her, thank goodness!)