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Thanks to my experience of trying to rip an Audiobook to iTunes this week, here is a handy little guide on how to do it.

(1) Click on the edit menu and select preferences.
(2) Make sure the Audiobooks option is selected
(3) Change your “When you insert a CD” option to “Show CD”.
(4) Click on “Import Settings”
(5) Set the “Import Using” to “AAC Encoder”.
(6) Set the “Setting” option to “Spoken Podcast”.
(7) Insert Audio CD into your computers drive and wait for the album to appear.
(8) Select all of the tracks in the album.
(9) Click on the “Advanced” menu and select the “Join CD Tracks” option.
(10) Click on the “Advanced” menu and select the “Make AAC Version” option. The tracks will now be copied to your computer in one large file of about an hour and ten minutes instead of lots of 3min tracks.
(11) On completion of the ripping, go to the “Recently Added” playlist and select the file you just created.
(12) Right click on the file and select “Get Info”.
(13) On the info screen select the “Options” tab and change the “Media Kind” to “Audiobook” and check the “Remember Playback Position” and “Skip when shuffling” check boxes.
(14) Repeat steps 7 through 13 for all of the Audio Books CD’s.

Your newly ripped Audiobook should now appear in your library under Audiobooks and act accordingly.

We had Daniel’s 5th Birthday Party today. On request from Daniel it was a Transformers themed party. It’s a good thing we set the time to be 11:00am because one of his friends (Jay) who was born 3 days earlier then him is also having a Transformer themed birthday party today, but at 1:30pm.

Along with the Transformer theme we also had two slip and slides, two wading pools and many water pistols.

The first hour was spent with the kids having a blast with the water activities. The most popular thing at the start was the water pistols. Even Stezza was walking around with a water pistol trying to shoot people. By the end though it was the slip and slide that could have two people on it at the same time that was the most popular.

Cake and the Happy Birthday song were carried out around 12:00pm, followed by the destroying of an Optimus Prime Piñata. By 12:30pm Daniel was opening his presents. Man was he focused. He just wanted to open present after present after present. He hardly stopped to look at anything. At least when he opened our presents (a Bulkhead transformer and a Bakugan tin with two Bakugan’s in it) he stopped and said something. For pretty much everything else it was open, go to the next present. Open, go to the next present.

By 1:15pm everyone had gone. By 1:30pm Daniel was out the door heading to Jay’s birthday party. Stephanie was down to sleep and I was able to clean up a bit. All in all I think we had about 50 people here for Daniel’s party.

This afternoon we have a pool party to go to. It is one busy day.

Daniel started his second round of swimming lessons today. This time instead of twice a week for 4 weeks, he will be going 4 times a week for 2 weeks. A real intense swimming course.

I got to take him for his first lesson. This had the added benefit of allowing me to try out the new video app that came with the new “cupcake” update to my G1 phone. You can see the results below.

I must say I do like the ability to take a video and then upload it straight to YouTube without having to mess around with cables and the like.

By the way Daniel rocked it, in his first lesson.

Last night we went to Daniel’s Pre-K Graduation ceremony. Yes I know for Australian’s this is very strange to have a graduation ceremony for passing what would be kinda in Australia, but that’s what happens over here.

The Pre-Kers did a performance showing us all that they had learned throughout the year. Daniel did awesome and was really loud with all of his answers. You can watch the performance below.

Daniel also got to read a book all by himself to the audience. We were very proud of our little man.

Congratulations Daniel on graduating Pre-K!

This week was a recovery week so not much happened. So here is a video of Pen and I dancing from a few months ago at the churches Women’s conference.

Stephanie turned 2 last weekend. We had a birthday party with lots of Stephanie’s friends. The theme was Tinkerbell, who Stephanie didn’t know of until the day, but as soon as she saw pictures of Tink everywhere and knew Tink’s name, she was proudly stating “I love Tinkerbell!”. Many presents were opened and a great time was had by all.

Over the weened I also ran a golf tournament. The tournament was to raise money for the Single Mothers of Gwinnett. We had 40 guys turn out to play and we raised over $1200 for the Single Mothers. Dad was a big help on the day, manning the Hole In One hole and helping with registrations.

Sadly though this weekend Nanny and Pop headed home after three weeks with us. We loved having them here, and the kids especially loved the attention that was lavished upon them. Thank you Nanny and Pop for the visit and we hope you come again soon.

We went to Disney’s Magic Kingdom today. By the time we had parked our car, caught the train to the Magic Kingdom and gone through the turnstiles it was 11:30am. We promptly had lunch to avoid the rush and free ourselves up for the rest of the day.

The first thing the kids saw in Disney was a parade which got them really excited as they got to see all of the characters they knew.

Pen, Daniel, Stephanie and I over the day managed to see half of Disney. Nanny and Pop managed to see most of it.

Daniel’s favourite thing was the Pooh Bear ride. His least favourite thing was the fireworks that went off in one of the performances. These had Pop chasing Daniel through Disney because as soon as they went off Daniel took off at a run.

Stephanie had a great time too but refused to go into the stroller for most of the day. When we finally convinced her to get in, she was asleep in a few min.

The most amusing thing for the day was Pen getting into the pool with the kids at night when iit was about 68 degrees. Now that is true love for you!