13 years ago today

it was a beautiful night with a full moon after many many el niño days of rain rain and more rain. we were walking along the water in sausalito with the moon up high and the bay bridge behind us. it was then that rob asked me to marry him.

ahhhhh it was wonderful. and it feels like it just happened...crazy how time is.

that night was also the night that rob's little white mazda 323 hit 100K miles - so we got to watch it turn all those zeroes. i think i can even remember where it happened.

close

in process

getting the slip with the due date

checking out books

Rhys got his library card!!!

yesterday rhys got his library card. he signed his name on the card and we proceeded to get several books and he checked them out.

big step, that.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!!! and a few other things

today is not only abraham lincoln's birthday, but it is also my dad's birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD!!!

he and moni were going to Outback for dinner to celebrate and this weekend they'll have a fun and fabulous party. they throw really good parties. our engagement party started at 4:00 pm and ended at 4:00 am!! the food is always good, the company is fantastic, and the poker games are always a good time. i'm sorry i'll miss it.

they were just up in san rafael - they came up for Pat's memorial. my brother matt came too. it meant so much to me and to rob's dad and family too. from there they went to pismo beach - that's where matt and michelle are getting married!! i'm so SO excited! we've got our reservations, irene and rhys will be the flower girl and ring bearer. irene's over the moon. i don't know that rhys knows what to make of it. but they'll both be very cute.

i wasn't sure what to get Dad for his birthday - my nephew, ben, gave me a great idea! so i got him the dangerous book for boys - hee hee! i hope he'll like it. i think it will be fun.

carefully carrying cupcakes

rhys carried these cupcakes for several blocks. we got them from our friends. they invited us over for afternoon yummies. nope, no cupcakes. we had blueberry shortcake and warm chocolate chip cookies and milk! on top of that, i got to have some visiting time with a friend.

Thornton Grove

this is just a few offramps from Bob's house. we had to stop for gas - and this ginormous military vehicle needed gas also. it was H.U.G.E!

our drive home was relatively quick. we were going to stop in colfax for dinner, but both kids were asleep, so on we went. then we tried stopping in truckee - what a mistake. it was crazy busy at every turn. so forward we drove. we decided we'd just wait to eat until we got to sparks. we had dinner at sonic (coupons = goooood).

biiiiiig!

rob and ben

this is dark - but here are rob and ben trying to figure out what happened to ben's ipod files. somehow they all got corrupted. they worked on it for quite a while with no success. bummer.

good sport

steve was just coming back from relaxing a little bit (and changing into more comfortable clothes) when the kids attacked him - heh heh. he was a very good sport and did a cartwheel, was a horse, did a handstand, etc. the kids thought it was fabulous (and so did i)

playing after the memorial

this is at Pilgrim Park outside the Community Center. Rhys was having fun balancing wherever he could.

enjoying her cousins

this was late in the afternoon - after Pat's memorial, after the reception. We stayed at the De Haan Community Center for dinner (yummy chinese food). Again, Irene's older cousins (Catherine isn't in this picture, but she was there too) were delightful and played Go Fish so that Irene could play with them. what a lucky auntie i am!

sacked out

the kids sacked out in a big way - i was reading two very exciting chapters in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe - but Irene couldn't stay awake, no matter how hard she tried. it was later than they usually go to bed, but they had just met more cousins (adult cousins), and beth had arrived, and we had a lovely dinner and visiting and playing. hard to go to sleep in the middle of all that. so, i think it was 9:15 when we started bedtime. it was 9:30 when rhys fell asleep and about 9:40 when irene fell asleep. that's a good 1 1/2 - 2 hours later than usual.

cousins

Here are the kids with two of their cousins in Lodi. we hadn't seen Ben since Pat and Bob's 50th anniversary - back in 2003. to say it was good to see him and the rest of the family is an understatement. in this picture, Ben (in the middle) and Jake (in the cal shirt) are being incredibly good sports and looking through rhys' Star Wars Encyclopedia. it's thick and rhys likes very much to look at every page. ben and jake hung in and looked at it all with them.

Auburn

here's rob - as we drive through auburn. we didn't stop in colfax on either end of the trip this time.

Verdi, Nevada

we left home around 10:00 or so...give or take. this is on our way outta dodge. verdi [i'm still not entirely sure how to properly pronounce this the nevadan way, - i tend to make it a spanish word, but i hear others pronounce it verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrdie (with er being the way i say um, er...). it's like nevada and scolari's. here those are pronounced nehvaaaaaduh (short a) and scohlarees (again, the short a sound - i tend to make both of those short a sounds more like ah sounds...crazy californian that i am] is, as you can probably tell, very very close to the sierras. on our way home, when we get to lodi, we know we're about 1/2 hour from home (even though it's only 10 miles from sparks - we're 20 minutes away from the freeway).

wow - looking back at that, those are some unbelievably long parenthetical statements...ah well.

so - this is early on in our trip. it was a beautiful drive - no snow/ice to worry about this time down the mountain. it took us a little more than 3 hours to get to Lodi.

opting out

sometimes there are things that we (okay that i?) don't know about...the newest yahoo beacon thing is one example...i think that it is primarily for those who use yahoogroups.

If you belong to any YahooGroups this may be important...

Yahoo is now using something called "Web Beacons" to track Yahoo Group users around the net and see what you're doing and where you are going (similar to cookies.) Yahoo is recording every website and every group you visit.

Take a look at their updated privacy statement:

1. http://info.yahoo.com/privacy/us/yahoo/details.html


2. About half-way down the page, in the section on Cookies, you will see a link that says Web Beacons. Click on the phrase "Web Beacons".

3. That will bring you to a paragraph entitled "Outside the Yahoo Network". In this section you'll see a little "click here to opt out" link which will let you "opt-out" of their new method of snooping You need to click the confirm opt out on that page.

4. Once you have clicked that link, you are exempt. Notice the "Success" message on the top of the next page. Be careful because on that page there is also a "Cancel Opt-out" button which, if clicked, will *undo* the opt-out. It appears after you have hit the opt-out button so is very confusing.


i actually went to something on the left that said "Opt-Out" and there were two things that i opted out of.

that's it for now :)

tests and such

i have now taken all the tests i need to take to get my subbing license back in order...i just have to see if i have passed the last section of the PRAXIS.

i am notoriously bad at taking standardized tests. i'm just really really bad at them. the little bubbles, the answers that are so close to being correct, the constant questioning of the answer i chose. the tension of if i don't do this right, i'll not pass this or that.

the first set of tests i had to take were the Nevada School Law, Nevada Constitution, and US Constitution tests. it's not really a good idea to take nevada constitution and US constitution back to back...there are enough things that are similar that, if you're me, it messes you up. so, i passed NV School Law and US Constitution but didn't pass NV constitution the first time through. i rescheduled another test - this time having to do a "special administration" which just means that it costs more money - and i took nv constitution again. i only missed ONE question!! yea me!!!

then it was on to taking the praxis. i bought a book (a big thick book) and studied and studied - generally either while the kids were doing gymnastics or late at night, but study i did. i read all the tips, i read all the reminders of how to do fractions and solve for x and and and all the other stuff that i'd forgotten or wasn't completely confident in.

apparently it paid off. i passed the math section with a 186 (172 is passing, and it looks like 190 is where it tops out?!) and in the reading comprehension section i scored a 184 (174 required). reading comprehension is another tricky place for me - b/c i hardly CARE what would change the author's opinion. why does that matter to me? heh.

i'm waiting for the writing section. 1/2 of that is an essay - usually i'm incredibly confident in my writing skills. this time, not so much. 1/2 hour goes REALLY quickly - especially on a computer that i'm not used to and where i can't see the entire page i've written so i had to keep scrolling. and the statement that i had to write an essay on was not like the sample questions. the sample questions were fairly bland - easy to take and defend one side or the other. this one was, for me, filled with heat. i can't actually tell you what the question was, or i could be tarred and feathered and have to retake the entire thing all over again. but i'm worried about some of the content -- content isn't really supposed to be graded - it shouldn't matter that i'm a bleeding heart liberal in a red county - but who knows.

the other half of that section was looking at sentences and deciding what was wrong (i felt okay about that part) OR taking one phrase of the sentence and finding which of the 5 suggested phrases was the best one to use. perhaps it was because i'd been there for 3 hours by that time, perhaps it was because i hadn't had my coffee that morning (we weren't allowed to bring it into the testing room), but i was questioning EVERYTHING.

so now i have to chew my nails for the next 2 - 3 weeks until i find out how i did. if i didn't pass that part, i have to retake it. bleh.

ACK!!!! I MISSED YESTERDAY!!!

drat.

irene sewing

Be Good To The Earth - a song by Rhys

Be good to the Earth
And there's lots of Be Good To The Earth Songs - like 130!
And don't throw garbage on the ground
Because the world would get dirty.

Just be nice to the Earth
And the Earth will be nice to you!
And be good to the Earth
Wherever you go!

(musical interlude)

Sing to the world
Wherever you go.
Next is music, music, music!
Next is be good to the Earth.

And pick up all the trash you see
to keep the Earth clean!

Be good to your friends
and
Be good wherever you go!

(music)

The End.

The Batter Blaster

no - even though rob did the boneyard blast back in late june - this is NOT about baseball! it's about THIS - waffles and pancakes in a can!

WHAT? you say? pancakes in a can??? we saw them at costco. i thought they looked fun. rob thought it seemed a bit crazy. but he came home and googled them. that brought him to this article.

so, he and his dad had to go to costco and he got some!

here are some pictures of him making the pancakes:



snazzy, huh? one can made 18 pancakes. so one can fed 5 of us. they tasted pretty good, they're organic, which is great, but they are a bit spendy for having every saturday or sunday. BUT, how cool would these be for camping?? *I* think they'd be FABULOUSLY cool! especially when kids are suddenly ravenously hungry and don't want to wait for the mixing of the batter etc. it's fewer things to wash and the can is recyclable. you just need to keep it in a cooler - easy peasy!!

**edited to add for deirdre - for 3 cans (b/c, remember, we bought them at costco) it was 9.99. so 3.33/one can. not really super duper spendy, but i could buy an entire box of bisquick for less :)

Rob and Rhys

surrounded by the solar system

Gramps arrived

and has been put immediately to work.