Halloween pics 2014

Last night was our ward's trunk or treat. I typically don't dress up, but my son, Nathan, is REALLY into Harry Potter this year and suggested we all dress up! I would pretty much marry Harry Potter if I wasn't already married.....and if he wasn't a fictional character. So I was pretty excited at his idea!

Here is what I posted on Instagram. I got to be a professor....my favorite thing!

You'll see we have Professor Snape, Professor Trelawney, Harry Potter, Hermione, another Harry Potter, and one very cute house elf who did NOT want to wear his ears! :)

Yes, we have two Harry Potters - this is because Aidan absolutely worships Nathan so wants to do whatever he does. It's VERY sweet and I'm glad Nathan is such a great example to him.

One more cute picture of the bigger kids! I really love this one.

Elder Holland's talk

Quite a few people have asked for a link to the full version of Elder Holland's talk that I showed in class today. Enjoy!

LinkedIn fail

I don't really use LinkedIn, but I get quite a few emails from them saying that I have pending invites or whatever. I log in today and accept invites from a bunch of people. Then, LinkedIn sends me to a page saying you should link up with all these people in your address book. The very first person it says I should link up with is my grandpa, Mark L. Money who died this summer from Alzheimer's.

My grandpa was literally the smartest person I knew (he was vice president of Texas A & M and created the research park at University of Utah) and I would give everything to connect up with him again. Alzheimer's is a horrible, horrible, disease and I hated watching the man I knew lose his mind.

My daughter, Hannah, standing in front of Grandpa's sign at the U.

An old picture of grandpa and me.

Thanks for the painful reminder LinkedIn......


But good thing families are forever, cause I'll be able to "connect" with him again in a very REAL sense someday!!! Take that, LinkedIn!

Red Rock Relay - Park City

Okay, this post is kind of long, but I want to make sure I remember this experience!

Last Saturday was the Red Rock Relay! For those of you who haven't done a relay race, here is how it works. There are six people on your team and you each run two different legs of 60+ mile race. We did the Park City one and it was from Midway up to Park City and then back to Midway.

Honestly, this has been one of the hardest, but most fun things I have ever done! I'm not really a runner. This is hard to admit in Utah county, where it seems like everyone runs! But my good friend, Shanna asked me to be on the team so I spent the last three months training. This has been really nice, because I feel like I am about in the best shape I've been in since college.

The night before the race we all stayed up in Midway. I can't remember the last time I have ever laughed that hard! I won't get into it, but let's just say, "what happens in the van, stays in the van".  I love these girls!

Race day - up at 5 am. My two legs were #6 and #12, so I had a looooong time to wait.

My first leg was 3 miles straight up hill. And I do mean UPHILL! I ran a good portion of this, but had to walk some. Okay - why is this post about media? Well, you know from our music lecture that my go to running song is "Put our hands up" by Macklemore. After two miles, I was pretty much at my limit and I thought - okay, time for Macklemore. But as I scrolled through my iPod I came to realize that that song (and 4 of my best others!) weren't on there! I added a few songs right before the race, and somehow much have deleted my five very best songs! I actually started to get all teary and felt a little defeated. But the next song was "I will wait" by Mumford and Sons and when that banjo started playing I started to run again. I made it to the top, had a giant asthma attack (thank goodness for inhalers!) but finished!!

No idea why I am smiling in this picture - I wanted to vomit at this point!

Here are a few pictures at the top of the mountain right after my first leg.

My second leg was the very last leg of the whole race. 8.33 miles straight downhill. Which hypothetically should have been easier than the uphill one.....but it wasn't! The first mile was out of a dream. I felt fast and strong. There were no cars, no other runners, the weather was perfect and I was running through groves of aspen trees. The colors were beautiful - everything was bathed in a gold light as the sun was setting through the mountains. A few leaves fell and I jumped up to grab at them. Truly magical.

Well, then the road started getting REALLY steep. In fact, as I was at the top of the mountain, I looked down at the valley and thought, "wow, that is gorgeous! That must be Provo in the distance! Breathtaking". I soon came to realize that I was going to run down this giant mountain and it wasn't Provo in the distance, it was Midway! In all, I ran down 3,500 feet, all the way from Park City to Midway. At mile 5, I began to get really distressed. My knees were burning at that point, and I had hurt my hip so every step felt like fire. My van gave me some good support but I wanted to give up. What I would have given for an uphill at that point! Again, I wished for my go-to songs. Where were you Katy Peery??? It is crazy how much music matters in a time like this!

I pushed through the final 3 miles and ran through the finish line (my leg was the very last race). My team ran up to meet me but I had to walk away since I started to cry. It was both a physical pain and emotional release of actually finishing the race.

Obligatory selfie at the end!

Would I do it again? YES! It was a great experience to exercise self control to hone my body into a place where it could actually finish this race. Our bodies are such a gift from our Heavenly Father and they can do amazing things! It was actually a very spiritual experience. I prayed for most of that second leg and felt strengthened right when I needed it most. It was good to push my body to the limit to see exactly what it could do. I loved watching my teammates succeed. We all finished our races, even though some of them were very difficult. I've been very sore the last few days, but it was all worth it in the end! In fact, my team just texted me and said there is a "rivalry relay" running from University of Utah and BYU next year, and I'm all ready to sign up! Go Cougs!

Liam's picture fail

Every year we get the kids' pictures at the start of school. Liam (age 16 months) tends to be pretty clingy and was not too happy to get his picture taken. We tried on two different days but got lots of pictures of him scowling or crying. The one time he smiled, he stuck out his tongue.

Kinda cute, right???  I almost went with the one above but something just didn't feel right about the picture. Well, I realized what it was! Paul and I are watching The Office and this picture seriously reminded me of Kevin for some reason. The double chin...the sticky outie tongue.......I just couldn't do it!!!! 

So we went with a cute, but serious one! Dang you Office!

Fast paced shows

Check this out! I came back from our lecture today and found an email containing a link to this study, called, "Fast-paced TV shows don't harm preschoolers' concentration"

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=145059&CultureCode=en

WHAT?

Essentially, the study was on 41 preschoolers who watched a slow version and then a fast paced version of Postman Pat (a British children's show). They found that there was essentially no difference between the groups. I like that they watched the SAME show for both conditions. I hated that there are only 41 kids. That is pretty low to make this type of claim. Also, the study was just presented at a conference and has not actually been published so I don't have access to any of the stats.

I think this is an interesting example of what the media does with this type of study. Check out the title......okay, maybe it didn't in this particular study, but lots of studies have found the opposite. Also, Postman Pat is generally a VERY slow program - I wonder what the results would have been if they used something like the spiderman clip we saw in class?

Are superheroes good for little boys?

Check out my recent blog post at Parentsware on our superhero study!

http://parentsware.com/gender-stereotyping

Media for Babies: Taboo or Tolerable?

I mentioned that I was involved with a new media/parenting company called "Parentsware". I'll be contributing to their blog every so often and will post a link here. Go check them out! You can also sign up for their newsletter. I'm very impressed with this company - they are committed to helping parents navigate the world of new media.

My recent post is on infants and media. We discussed this in class, but recently, one of the very top names in infant media came out with a statement that media via TABLETS might not be as bad as we thought? Read here for my thoughts on the subject.

http://parentsware.com/baby-media

If only bullets were flowers....

One of my former students sent me this clip from Ellen, talking about how to improve on violence in the media. I love it!

Target's photoshop FAIL....

So much I could blog about today!

First - we FINALLY saw Frozen! I have been waiting patiently for it to come to the dollar theater and it finally came! It was amazing - I loved it! My kids loved it! Hooray for Disney!

My one complaint (okay two) is that (1) both Anna and particularly Elsa are very thin and sexualized in points. Typical Disney Princess for you! (2) I feel like Anna's character is VERY similar to Rapunzel. The part where she was asking that guy to take her up the mountain? Just like when Rapunzel was asking Flynn to take her to see the lights. They even look alike and have a similar voice. I'm just saying......

But besides that, I loved it! LOVE those powerful females!!

So here is what I want to write about. Target has been in the news for all sorts of things lately. Not sure if you saw this one floating around, but here is a giant Photoshop fail from Target. Note a few things - (1) her left arm is grotesquely skinny and looks stretched out. (2) she is missing half of her crotch. Seriously.

Here is a close up

I'm so glad that this was pointed out in the news media (I think Huffington Post picked it up). Target should be ashamed. Additionally, they should be even more ashamed given that it is a swimming suit for adolescents!!! As if they don't already have enough body image problems.......

Here is Target's reply apologizing for the mistake.

"In response to your query about the swimsuit image on Target.com, this was an unfortunate error on our part and we apologize. We have removed the image from our Web site,” a company spokesman said. Asked how the mistake occurred, "It was the result of a photo editing error on our part."

What they should be apologizing for is photoshopping young girls in the first place!! Dream on Dr. Coyne..............

A girlygirlygirlygirlygirly weekend!

Oh-kay! I know we just talked about gender stereotypes and media this last week, but me and Hannah just had a girly OVERLOAD this weekend!

Day 1: Disney on ice

Confession- when I was a kid, I was convinced I would be an Olympic figure skater when I grew up. Okay, I can barely skate and never took a single lesson, but this was not going to sway me from my dream! :) So, I love to watch figure skating! On Friday, Hannah and I went to go see Disney on Ice. It was so good! I loved the figure skating - they were way good! I also enjoyed watching as they acted out the Disney stories via ice. They did the Little Mermaid, Tangled, Brave, and Beauty and the Beast. The Brave one was awesome!!! Lots of girl power there! :)

What I couldn't get past was the sheer number of little girls dressed up as Disney Princesses, buying Disney princess merchandise - seriously - who pays $12 for a SNOWCONE in a Disney cup? It is just water!!!! Disney must be making some serious bank off of this.

Hannah loved it. She giggled and smiled and sighed in all the right places. She sat on my lap the whole time and we snuggled for most of the production - such a great day!

Day 2: Fairy Tea Party

So I really enjoyed Disney on Ice because I felt there was sort of a balance with some gender issues. The Fairy Tea was PURE GIRL.

This was held at Provo City Library. One of my friends got a bunch of my mom friends and their little girls tickets. The ballroom was decked out in lights and fabric. EVERYONE was dressed up! Even most of the adults. I wore Hannah's "supergirl" cape....part in protest! :) It started and the lead fairy flitted out and talked about good manners, and being sweet, and lovely. I think I rolled my eyes like 10 times, and told myself I had to stop! Then there was a fairy ballet (actually very good) and then the girls promenaded and twirled in front of the Fairy King. Hannah said (and I quote), "mom - that was CREEPY!" That's my girl! Then we had a proper tea with biscuits, fruit, and lemonade. Hannah had a fun time with her friends, but couldn't wait to get out of her dress up because it was too itchy.

What do I think about these kind of things? Am I annoyed at how superficial they were? Yes. Am I annoyed at the focus on being pretty and fancy? Yes. However, I loved spending time with Hannah! She is 6 years old and is kind of growing out of this phase. I had to convince her to dress up for the Fairy Tea Party and she didn't dress up for the Disney on Ice one. There is something magical about having a little girl, and I guess if I need to tolerate a little glitz and glam and sparkles, then so be it! Sometimes you just have to embrace the girliness. I will miss this stage when it is gone.

Though I must say, I was extremely pleased on the way back - Hannah said, "mom did you know that girls can do anything boys can do?" She then told me about an epidose of Sofia the First (Disney's newest princess for preschoolers) where Sofia wants to play polo but only the boys play polo. She sings this awesome song "I can do...anything, so can you - anything!" about not letting people put you down - and then tells me that Sofia plays polo with the boys and she scores the winning goal!  Now there's a media character I can get behind.

Dancing water

Today was parent's day at Hannah's dance class. Now, I know I'm not big on gender stereotypes, and Hannah also does soccer, tennis, and Brazilian jiu jitsu, but let me tell you a secret. There are few things in this life that give me as much joy as seeing my little girl dance. It just makes me so happy every time!!

A few pictures I took right before her last recital

Well, at dance class today they gave us just a little sneak preview for their upcoming recital in May. The dance they will be doing is called "dancing water" and they will go through the entire water cycle through dance. Very creative. And guess what song they are using?

Yep, if you remember back to our music lecture, this was the song that I would "be" if I was a song! I'm so excited - and it is perfect for the theme. As I watched Hannah dance to "Waterfall" today, pretending she was a floating raindrop, I just felt really, really, happy. I can't explain it -it's like everything was okay with the world all of a sudden.

Cereal...and what the heck am I supposed to eat for breakfast now?????

My husband asked me, "What's the deal with LIFE?"

"You are going to have to be a bit more specific", I replied.

"The cereal. I always thought it would be disgusting because of the name. But then I tried it today and it was AWESOME. Totally full of sugar."

"And your point?", I asked.

"Stupid marketing. The cereal just doesn't match up with the name"

Oh----kay! And there is your random media moment from my day! Though just in case you were wondering, Life is actually low in sugar (6 grams a serving) compared to most other cereals (e.g., Lucky charms has 10 grams, Fruit Loops has 12). I was checking this on a website and to my HORROR I found that one of the very worst cereals you can have is Raisin Bran - a whopping 19 grams of sugar per serving!!! I have this like 4 times a week and always thought it super healthy for you!

Stupid marketing, indeed.

Time to find a new, delicious, healthy cereal....suggestions?

How I bonded with my 9 year old using SPSS

Okay, this isn't strictly media related, but given that we use SPSS in class, I'm counting it!

I was preparing for my other class and getting a big dataset ready in SPSS. My son, Nathan, came in the room, stalling, not wanting to go to bed.

"Watcha doin'?" he asks

So I tell him all about statistics and correlations and so on thinking he will get bored and go to bed. Instead he asks a ton of questions and we start to run some stats together. We find some evidence that playing violent video games is bad for kids. We find that having a really mean best friend isn't good for anything. We find that when parents are authoritative to their kids then good things happen. We look at a ton of gender differences. Boys are better at self regulation, girls are more depressed, boys are more violent, girls are more anxious and so on and so on. We look at mean differences and significance levels. He kept asking me to run more..... so interested in the gender differences and taking it personally for boys everywhere when girls were significantly higher on a given trait! We ended with a good discussion on gender showing that both boys and girls are good at lots of things, so hopefully he doesn't read TOO much into the stats.

We seriously did this for an hour. He asked how he could do this for his job. Just keep doing well in Math, I told him. Now as I'm reflecting on this, he totally just manipulated me into staying up an hour past his bedtime. So he wins. But I win too.......SUCH a nerdy mother/son bonding activity but I'm loving it!!!!

Me and my little guy

I am SO mad right now

I was just checking up on who was visiting my blog. I clicked on a link that I didn't recognize and BOOM up popped a porn site. And even worse, my 9 year old son, Nate, was sitting right next to me! I feel violated. I hate pornography. I have three sons and it makes me sad that they have to grow up in a world where women are portrayed in such ways. The only upside is that me and Nate got to have a really good conversation about pornography. We've definitely talked about it before but this is his first experience of actually SEEING something. And I suppose it was lucky that I was there so we could talk about it and hopefully use it as a teaching time. SO mad though. He is such an innocent and sweet little kid and he to deal with that filth. Seriously so mad right now!

I took the plunge…...

Well, I took the plunge and finally joined Twitter. I've been really anti-Twitter for a while because:

a) I think the word "tweet" is annoying
b) I despise the whole hashtag thing
c) I already have enough social media to fill up my brain

But since I study the media and I talk to parents all the time about how they need to know new media since their kids are going to be on it - I thought I better practice what I preach.

Though confession - I don't really know how to use it! For all you guys out there - do you use Twitter? If so, who do you follow? What is the benefit of Twitter compared to Facebook or Instagram (both of which I am currently on)? And somebody explain to me how this whole hashtag thing works? Honestly, my brain is just tired thinking about it!

Oh and feel free to follow me @moneycoyne on Twitter. When I actually figure it out, I just might post something! :)

Happy tweeting!

One very *sassy* commercial

My daughter, Hannah, was singing this song...

"I'm Scat, the cat, I'm sassy and I'm fat. If you don't like my color then I'll change it like that!"

Nate (age 9) started tattling that Hannah was saying the word "sassy". When I asked him why that was a problem, he said, "well, sassy and sexy are the same thing". We had a little conversation about the difference between being sassy (which him and his sister are frequently) and sexy (entirely different ballpark).

Then he said, "Sexy is like on that commercial where they try to sell hamburgers" (in reference to Carl's Jr. commercials). When I asked him why they used sexy women in these commercials he said, "It's like they are trying to make you think that if you don't eat their hamburgers then you won't be cool. But then if you DO eat their hamburgers then you'll be sexy. It's just not the truth, though! It's just a HAMBURGER!!!"

This is like the most tame advert I could find....

Right on kid!!!! I despise Carl's Jr and their sexualization of women in advertising and am SO glad he is actually using his brain when these commercials come on!