ooVoo

No that is not an asian face or a smiley icon in today's title post. Please keep reading and I will explain :) Today I really started to feel old when I sat in church with the Beehives and they all whipped out their smart phones/iphones to read their scriptures. I got confused for a second and then realized what was going on. I just remember sitting there and thinking, "Huh, I remember back in the day when I was 12 and we held scriptures in our hands and they had turnable pages..." I just love the organic feel of an actual book in your lap and the smell of the pages. Mmmm... Anyway, afterwards I thought, "Wow, I can actually say that was 11 years ago...jaj I am getting old so fast!"

Upon returning from my mission, I have been plunged into the latest technology of the 21st century. So just a little explanation for those that are new to the "mission" term. When you are a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints you move from home to your mission area and you live according to specific missionary rules and regulations for the 2 years (boys) or 18 months (girls) that you serve. One of those rules entailed the limited use of technologies.  We only used the computer to email our families once a week, then maybe if we had to make fliers for some event we could use a computer at that time too. Even then, that meant we only used simple programs like microsoft word. We also used cell phones that were assigned to each companionship, but they were just the ancient Nokia ones that you used maybe five or seven years ago. Anyway, it helped us steer clear of doing things like updating our facebook statuses, mindlessly surfing the net, playing video games or playing games on our phones. This technology rule was of course in place so that we would focus more of our time on teaching people about Jesus Christ because that's why we were there in the first place.

While I've been home I've had to readjust to the technology dependent lifestyle I used to live. I got a new macbook from Jeffrey and figured out all the keys on that (I had to readjust to the American English keyboard), then there was my new phone I had to play around with among other things. Mind you, I was a savvy tech kid before I left, I knew how to use all the little toys, programs and gadgets that every college kid uses plus some and then I came home and the little kiddies in elementary school had cell phones and my 2 year old niece knew how to use ooVoo. Do you know what ooVoo is? Yeah I remember when my 18 year old sister asked me if I knew how to use ooVoo. I thought she was speaking a different language or had something caught in her throat. Below is the logo, maybe it'll jog your memory of this new program:

Tonight I tried to put my ooVoo skills to use so Jeff and I could talk to my niece Skyler Rae and my sister. I thought it would be easy since I saw my kid sister do it once to show me, but for some reason I couldn't get the program to work properly. Ugh. Finally I got it to work and we got to see my cute niece and my sister. My favorite thing is to pinch her checks through the screen. My sister kindly transfers my pinch to her little child and Skyler Rae just gets a kick outta that and smiles super big. Here is that cute kid at our wedding tea party:

So if you don't know how to use ooVoo you should check it out. It's one of the many video chat programs out there and hey maybe you'll be all the more tech savvy for doing it.

Also, photo credits go out to our great photographer Athena Danoy. You can check out her work at www.athenadanoy.com. Pictures from our wedding and wedding tea party will be posted up later this month :) Be excited!