Ways in Which We Excel

For many years I have been teased about the spreadsheets I use to make my life easier. For example - if you get a Christmas letter from us - and presumably you do or you wouldn't waste your time reading this blog - your name, appropriate salutation and address are stored neatly in an Excel spreadsheet I update every year. If you have ever eaten my "Beef Stroganoff for Engineers" (turns out engineers would make great chefs!) the recipe is saved as a Word document on my PC and is also listed on a recipe spreadsheet under the categories of beef, crockpot and Sunday meals. Laugh if you want to, but every time I take something that I just can't seem to get done properly and apply a spreadsheet to it - it works for us! Baby names are no exception. Aaron and I did the rounds when naming the dogs. The pre-spreadsheet method we came up with was that I would suggest several names, Aaron would say no to them all and I would be in a bad mood for a while. Then we would start this process over again. When it came to naming Braden I didn't want us to go thru the same aggravating steps so I came up with the spreadsheet solution. I copy an entire website of names to a spreadsheet. I go thru and remove the names I like the least and then email the remainder to Aaron. We go back and forth removing names until we come to a name we both like. Since Braden is anxious to have a name for the baby in my tummy we started the process earlier this time - I sent the first draft to Aaron yesterday. It still may take a while before we agree on a single name - but hey - its in a spreadsheet now so I know we will sort it out eventually!