The Flu, a Blackeye & a 6 year Wedding Anniversary

So this past weekend was all set up to be romance fest 2008 with Valentines Day on Thursday and our 6 year Anniversary on Saturday. We had babysitters lined up (three different times in fact!) and tons of family and couple activities planned. Jacoby even had Friday and Monday off work, so four day weekend here we come. Sounds great huh? Enter, Coby throwing up Wednesday night at midnight. So Valentines day was spent cleaning up throw-up and trying to keep Rett away from the throw-up bowl which he found rather amusing to spit into. Well that is until he starting throwing up on Saturday! Luckily neither of us caught it and both the boys are finally health again. Oh and about that styling blackeye bit, Coby tossed a book off his bed to Rett's bed as they were laying down at nap time. Hit him smack in the face. It's a little embarassing taking him places with it. I feel like I should make him a t-shirt that says no my parents don't abuse me!

30 Baby!

So February 1st was my 30th birthday. The BIG one. My life is all that I thought it would be by this age and more! (Well except for owning a house:). My birthday was a ton of fun this year. Anyone who knows me knows that I am really into birthdays. It's the one day of the year only about you. When you were a kid or even in college that wasn't as important since you could have a lot of "all about you" days in the year (even though I have always loved birthdays!). Enter parenthood and that number goes down to 1. Just 1. And even that is pushing it. I asked Coby to tell me something he likes about mommy on her birthday and he refused to say anything other than he wants to go home from the walk we are on. I like mommy cause she takes me home from the walk. Feelin' the love already.

Anyways, so to start the day Jacoby made me a big breakfast (which ironically was the exact same thing I asked for last year for my birthday) and then I go to get my hair done. That was my first mistake. Yes, getting your hair done all alone without kids for a few hours sounds great, but 5 hours later, yes 5 is not that great. I didn't get home until 3pm! So maybe turning 30 doesn't make me any better at making good decisions. Schucks. Later that night Jacoby took me out to dinner. The next night he threw me a birthday party which was awesome. I really wanted to dance since that is still one of our favorite things to do. My brother Rob had given us a black light oh like 4 years ago that we finally set up in our garage for a dance party. It was a hit! The kids especially loved it and it made all the adults more willing to dance since it was dark. We tried to take some video of it but it was just too dark. Then as the last few people were leaving we realized that we could make our own strobe light by flicking the lights on and off. Genius. Strobe light and black light, what more could you want???? If you were thinking I might be more muture now that I am 30, you might want to check out my all new music video starring me:)

Survivor Tryouts

This will go down as one of those thing you do on a whim that seemed like a good idea until you actually go through it and realize that your justifications for doing it really weren't that good. I like the show "Survivor". Heather and I got hooked on it years ago from the influence of our friends, Doug and Julie Rogers. But the enjoyment has always been in watching the show, at my own house, sitting down in front of a tv. This week I saw an advertisement for Survivor auditions in San Diego and for some reason I could suddenly see myself sitting there on national television, winning challenges, and being the coolest, most likeable member on the cast. If I only had a few minutes to show them who I really was, there would be no way they could turn me down. It turns out that 600 other people in San Diego thought the same thing. But 1 out of 600 still isn't too bad. Multiply that by 15 other cities that they visited, not to mention the thousands of other videos that people can mail in. My chances started looking worse, but I didn't realize that until I had already been in line for 4 hours on a Saturday morning, and by then I couldn't just leave the line. I mean, I had already spent 4 hours there and I couldn't just throw that all away. So instead I decided to stay 3 and 1/2 more hours to get my big break. And all it turned out to be was 2 minutes in front of a video camera that they will send to judges to screen through later. And when it came time to do the actual on-camera audition, I was nervous and I'm sure I talked too fast and sounded like a goof (not that I'm not a goof, but at least I'm not a nervous one).

I made some friends during the 7 and 1/2 hours waiting in line

The line in front of me

And the line behind me

Famous Venice painting travels to San Diego

I went on a business trip to Italy last spring. We visited Rome, Florence, Parma, Cinque Terra, Pisa, and finally Venice, in that order. I searched for a painting I could buy that would remind me of my trip, something Heather would like, and look super nice framed somewhere in our house. I passed up all the other venders in all the cities because their paintings were just too expensive, until I was just about to leave Venice. I couldn't come home empty handed, so I finally gave in and paid a lot of money for a picturesque painting of a canal in Venice, with buildings on the side and a few gondolas in the water. Although it was expensive, it would be something I would keep with me and something I could share with Heather for a long time. Then as we were walking along other painting vendors, my co-worker, who also went on the trip with me, found a very similar painting for 3/4th the price. That sure makes you feel good. What they don't tell you, and if you are a guy and have never gotten anything framed before, is that getting a frame for such a big painting on canvas is even more expensive. So much so, you realize how much money you could have saved if only you didn't buy that darn painting. So almost a year later I have given in and we had the painting framed and it is now up on our wall.

Insights of a three year old.....

I am way behind at posting but we have had people at our house for the last month! It's been fun but I am exhausted. Once I catch up on all the household stuff I am behind on I will post some more. Just thought I would share this funny moment with you...

Last night we were sitting in the car outside Longs Drugs while Jacoby ran in to return something. I turned to Rett and said "Where's mama?" and he points to me, then "Where's Coby?" and he points to Coby, then "Where's Rett?" and he points to himself. Lastly I ask "Where's dada?" and he points to the store and Coby says "He might be in jail I think." Just wondering what Coby thinks Jacoby does all day.....:)

Bake Day

One of my favorite Christmas traditions we had growing up was baking tons of different types of Christmas cookies and then making treat plates to pass out to our friends and neighbors. Once I went away to college I continued the tradition with my roommate Jill and now am sharing it with my own family. Jacoby is usually my bake day helper (he's a good sport). But now that the boys are a little older they love to get in on the action (although how much of "helping" they really do I am not sure of!). Coby's favorite part are the sugar cookies. He loves the cookie cutters and of course the frosting part. He likes to frost the same cookie multiple times and just keep eating off the frosting. This year we made sugar cookies, russian teacakes, m&m cookies, candy cane cookies, and homemade oreos. I think it ended up being somewhere around 300 cookies:) Yummy!

GRE

I (Jacoby) have been applying for a Department of Defense scholarship called the SMART scholarship that would pay me half my salary to go back to school for a graduate degree for the next year. My work will be gracious enough to let me work part time so in essence, I would be making my full salary and getting a graduate degree at the same time. However, in order for me to actually receive the scholarship I need to be accepted to graduate school. And in order for me to get accepted to graduate school at the school I would like to attend (UCSD - its close so I could still work part-time and it has a really good robotics branch of their EE department) I need good GRE scores. Last year I prepared a few months for the test and when I took it, I was very dissappointed with my scores. That verbal test is incredibly tough. When you are supposed to pick an antonym of a word, and you don't recognize that one nor 4 of the 5 answer choices, it can be a very difficult test. Here is an example of an antonym question I have seen (not from the actual GRE tests I have taken because that would be a breach of my testing contract):

OPPROBRIOUS:

(A) meretricious
(B) innocuous
(C) invulnerable
(D) irreproachable
(E) ambitious

Do you see what I mean? Opprobrious? Meretricious? When I don't even know what I am supposed to take the antonym of, this gets tough. The answer is D. Opprobrious means "expressing offensive reproach" and irreproachable means "not subject to blame, faultless".

Anyway, so I bombed the test last year and things didn't fall into place to go back to school and get the scholarship. So I am applying for the scholarship again this year and I knew I would take the GRE once again. But this year I have been studying on and off for the last year, mainly studying vocabulary. Its the weirdest thing but I see all these new words in novels and publications all over the place. Its like everyone else is learning and using these new words with me. So I took the test yesterday again with my new-found vocab knowledge and I rocked it! I raised my verbal score by more than 200 points (which either means I got a near perfect score this time or I must have done really poorly last time - ding ding ding ding we have a winner) and my math score even went up too. Still, I haven't even applied to UCSD or for the scholarship and I don't know if I will be accepted, but I have a much better chance than I did last year, and I know I won't have to take the test again.