Erin and Elizabeth

Thought I'd post this picture of us that was taken at Thanksgiving. I can't decide if we're looking more or less like each other as we get older. We'll be visiting Elizabeth's family again on December 9th, for an early b-day party for Caleb (who will be 3). The kids really enjoy each other.

Kenneth had his end-of-soccer year party last night. His coach made individual plaques with special names for each kid. She did a great job and Kenneth was so proud. His name was "Lightning Speedster."

Rod heads out to Las Vegas tomorrow morning for only about 36 hours total in order to assist one of his clients in a trade show. He plans to wander around taking photographs in his spare time, and claims that he'll need no sleep. We'll see. :)

Evelyn's New Room

Rod and I spent a lot of the Thanksgiving break painting Evelyn's room and installing a closet dresser and cubby set. It looks so good. She is so proud. (Me too!) Only a couple of things are left to do. We've ordered blinds which should be here in about a week. We've started assembling a nightstand, which will eventually be painted to coordinate with her room colors. It is an off-white color now with an accent wall in pink (which Evelyn picked out). We also accented the area around her windows in the pink color. Fabulous! I have contacted a few seamstresses to get quotes on making a window seat cushion for her as well.

I will try to remember to take a picture when she's not asleep.

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We did!

The Yearly Flu Shot

Poor Kenneth has to get his flu shot on Wenesday and he is very anxious about it. Evelyn can get a Flu Mist, but Ken has to stick (no pun intended) with the shot because he has a mild case of asthma. He was lamenting about it tonight and I told him that some kids have to get a shot every day when they have certain diseases (meaning, diabetes, although I didn't say the word diabetes). Kenneth said very seriously, "I know Mom. Rabies."

I am taking Tuesday and Wednesday off from work (of course, Th & F are holidays). The kids have one more day of school on Tuesday, but I will be participating in Evelyn's class Thanksgiving party in the afternoon, then we'll all go home and start the vacation together. I baked several mini-loaves of chocolate pound cake and pumpkin bread for the party and for a teacher gift (of baked goods) effort that is put on by the PTO.

Visit from Loretta and Jim

My Aunt Loretta and Uncle Jim flew into Austin last Thursday through this Tuesday to spend some time with my parents. On Friday night, we met everyone at The Oasis, which is a restaurant in Austin adjacent to a lake, and has an incredible view. Every sunset (which was at 5:33 PM that day) they ring a bell and signs claim that the restaurant has not missed a sunset for 26 years. Elizabeth, Caleb, and Kyle joined us as well (Josh was hunting). Elizabeth's family stayed with us at our house, which was great for the kids. Saturday night we met again at my Mom and Dad's house and had a fabulous pork roast. Elizabeth stayed through Sunday and joined our family at a birthday party where they rented out the entire Austin Children's Museum for 2 hours. From what I hear, Mom, Dad, Loretta, and Jim had a great time on Sunday and Monday, going to New Braunfels for a Bratwurst Festival and then to San Antonio. It was great seeing them. Now I am caught up with all of the Jacobson's except Keith! (Sorry the pictures are a bit dark.)

Are Your Abs Ready to Play?

This is the first time ever that I have gotten behind on my Oprah magazine. I realize this is a little pathetic. November is sitting on the table by my bed, right underneath the Real Simple magazine that is also unfinished (but at least started). The December Oprah arrived today. I'll have to force in a double issue of wisdom in the near future.

On a different note, the instructor in Krav Maga class was on his self-proclaimed 2nd Rockstar drink (which I guess has a crapload of caffiene in it) and made the workout way more intense than usual--and it's pretty intense regardless. The Wednesday instructor happens to have trained Navy Seals and reminds us of that periodically. At one point he yelled "What's THAT? What's that? I hear your Abs calling! Are your Abs ready to come out and play?!?!?!??" Yikes. Mine were happy where they were, thank you.

The Candy Swiper

As I got out of my car from my Monday exercise class, Evelyn burst into the garage and said "Mom. Someone is in serious trouble with me." She found a Halloween candy box that had been given to her by a soccer friend under our coffee table, EMPTY.

The trials and tribulations of a 5 year old. The picture was taken on Saturday by Rod.

Family News...

Evelyn created a new word on her own. She asked me "What do you call a sneeze AND a cough? A Snoff!" I thought that was really clever.

I think this is the first weekend in 2 months that neither child has an 8:30 AM Saturday soccer game. THANK GOODNESS! After tomorrow, we have only one more game week (and of course, one of them starts at 8:30 AM).

We just found out that Elizabeth is pregnant with her third child, due in mid-July! To borrow a phrase, Holla! Let's hope she can make it through the holidays without getting exhausted. :)

Snow White and the Ghoul

Evelyn and Kenneth got dressed up (of course!) for Halloween. We started the evening at a family friend's house for a pre-walk party, complete with Chick-Fil-A nuggets, veggies, and homemade sandwiches that were baked in the oven. Fabulous! I went home to answer the door for trick or treaters and Rod went walking with the kids and the rest of the party group. They are still out and have dropped by twice now to dump their baskets of candy so they have room for more.

Have a Happy and Safe Halloween!

Do Fish Eat Breakfast Cereal?

Tonight we went to the elementary school Fall Festival. For 25 cents a ticket, kids could play games at various booths. I worked the Moon Bounce from 6:30 - 8. My job included manning a stopwatch for 3 minute jump segments, trying to allot the correct number and size kids in at the same time. I am proud to say that only a bitten tongue occurred on my watch!

While I ran the booth, Rod walked around with the kids to spend their tickets. I don't know whose bright idea it was to have fish as one of the prizes, but when I caught up with them after my stint as Moon Bounce Coordinator, Kenneth had a bag of fish. Great. We put them in a bowl with some marbles (Evelyn's idea) and fed them grape nuts flakes, which is about the only thing I could think to feed fish at 9:30 PM.

Exhausted

I promise to post some family info soon. I am exhausted from a busy 2 weeks of travel to Taiwan and then to San Francisco. The weekend was as relaxing as it could be, but I'm not completely back in gear yet, although work and family demands remain ever present!

Back from Taiwan

The week went very quickly in Taiwan. I would get to the Dell Taiwan offices around 8:30 AM and by the end of the day, would be at one of our manufacturers working through product development tradeoffs till 9 or 10. Long days and a short trip. The only night I didn't work late was the first night there. On that night, a colleague and I (she happens to speak Mandarin) went to get a massage at a massage school for the blind. It was really one of the odder massages that I've had. You are given full-length pajamas made of a really light-weight material and the massages involved a lot of stretching. We also visited a Taiwan night market which was completely overwhelming with the number and proximity of vendors.

On one of the nights there, an earthquake happened while I was sleeping; someone said that it was a 5.9 score. The hotel was shaking in a wave-like fashion and there was a lot of clanging. Apparently this type of earthquake is somewhat normal and happens about 10-15 times a year.

One the flight back home on the Los Angeles to Austin leg, Sandra Bullock sat in the first class seat next to me! she was reading a script and making notes in it and we exchanged very basic pleasantries, but I left her alone. I'm still impressed.

I met Rod and the kids (and Nana and Pops) at Freebirds straight from the airport. It was great to see them and I got really great hugs from Kenenth and Evelyn.

To Taiwan Again

I head out tomorrow morning for Taiwan for a quick work trip. Tomorrow the kids will hang out with Nana because they have off for Columbus Day. After that, Rod has full charge till Saturday, when I return.

We made progress on Kenneth's landform, adding blue clay for water, and green and brown clay for vegetation. Evelyn kept busy alternating her time between giving us small pieces of clay and coloring her Hello Kitty's Neighborhood coloring book.

Making a Landform

Kenneth has been assigned the highly educational task of making a landform as part of a larger learning-about-landform-characteristics initiative. I don't have anything against the second phase of the project, but the first phase of actually making a landform is (1) a pain in the rear, (2) time-consuming, (3) expensive to some extent, and (4) of questionable educational value-add. I'm not bitter, but I remember projects like this when I was in school and I never understood the value of making models. Maybe it's just me. Brief sidenote: I remember re-using a model of an English castle that I had to create for SAGE in the 3rd grade again in the 6th grade for a Boston Tea Party project. The fact that the Boston Tea Party had nothing to do with castles was beside the point in my mind. I just didn't want to make a new model. Mr. Wichlep mocked my choice of model with some Lipton tea bags glued to the moat area. I can still remember the disdain in his voice. LOL

Back to Kenneth's project: Like a dutiful Mom, I made the "Landform Dough" which you can then mold into your selected landform shape, which has to dry for 48 hours. The kids were out of school on Friday, so I took the day off with them and most of it was spent locating items that can be added to the landform once it is dry. I have to admit, Kenneth did a great job molding out Florida (we chose Florida, the peninsula, as our landform). We rolled out a map of the U.S., I gave him the lump of landform dough, and told him to make Florida. He even molded out the Florida keys and some internal lakes. Since I am heading out of town on Monday morning, Rod will have to supervise the rest of it (it's due on Friday).

In case you're interested in making your own landform dough (which has the consistency of Playdoh): combine 4 cups flour, 1 cup salt, and 1.5 cups water. Knead together for 8 - 10 minutes.

Angry Cheerleaders

The kids had an early release day on Wednesday, so I picked them up at 12:30. We spent some time at home, and towards the end of the day I took them back to my work for about a half hour to wrap up a few things. While they were there, Kenneth played with Legos (which I keep in a drawer for those sort of moments) and Evelyn wanted to draw on my white board. She did a really good job on 2 cheerleaders. The problem came up when she decided to add teeth. All of a sudden the cheerleaders became angry-looking. The picture cracks me up every time I look at it. I erased it today because you never know who might walk by your cubicle and think you were spending time drawing people on your board. :)

You Should Tell People When They Have a Sticker on Their Face

I was at Evelyn's soccer scrimmage game tonight when I noticed that a couple of the parents were looking at me in a funny way. Evelyn had given me a sticker before the scrimmage and I put it on my shirt. Apparently my shirt didn't hold the sticker that well and I must have dipped my chin into my shirt and gotten it stuck onto my chin. LOL. It took me actually touching it to realize it was there. On that note: always tell people when they have something enormous on their face when you know if shouldn't be there.

Later in the evening, Evelyn pointed out a large freckle on her neck and said "an angel must have given me a really big kiss [insert prolonged pucker sound]". We call freckles "angel kisses."

Of Course Your AC is Connected to Your Sink Pipes!

Our upstairs air conditioner has been out for 4 days, and was finally fixed today. I will spare the details of why it took that long to fix it, but believe me, there were reasons. We had been sleeping with the upstairs windows down, and then shutting them during the day, which led to a very stuffy house by the time we got home each day. At least the downstairs AC was working.

The final "fix" was conducted by Rod and I, not the folks who installed our $2000 investment into a new outside unit. They had left and I noticed that cold air was still not blowing; Rod investigated and found that a float switch had been tripped, which could mean a couple of things, but in this case, it meant a somewhat rare event that was brought on by a clogged drain pipe that pooled into one of the piping structures under a sink in the kids' bathroom. The evening was spent with my thumb stuck up into a disgusting pipe against something that looked and smelled like sh*t so that I could create "pressure" so that when Rod yelled "OK!" and subsequently blew into the other end of the pipe (which was in the attic) I could count to three and remove my thumb from the sludge as the air forced the sh*t into the bucket below my hand. Of course this involved very awkward positions and a lot of cursing. We finished the job with our Wet/Dry shop vac (which has been way more useful than any appliance we have ever owned). Once that pipe was clear, the air conditioner blew cool air and has been working properly ever since. I would say that we're pretty good problem solvers.

The Tooth Fairy Has to Go to HEB

Evelyn lost her tooth yesterday! She is so proud. She told her teachers, her YMCA counselors, her Nana, her soccer coach, and our neighbor. I had to make a run to HEB to get some cash for the first lost tooth (we give $5 for the first tooth). When we were at a scrimmage game for Evelyn, I ran into another Mom that we know from Kenneth's grade, who was there with her children while waiting for her daughter's soccer practice to finish. When I told her that 'the tooth fairy has to go to HEB to get some cash' I got the withering look that basically indicated that I was not following the scripted Tooth Fairy Rulebook and that around her children, the tooth fairy does not need to go to HEB to get cash. LOL

Loose Tooth Update

Evelyn's first loose tooth is now almost out. It is bending forward all the way. The school nurse gave her a tooth-sized treasure box that she has been faithfully carrying--it has even made it next to her pillow in case it falls out during the night. If the tooth actually fell out in the middle of the night, the reality is that she would come crying into my room because her mouth was bleeding. We'll see if we make it to the weekend with this tooth.

Back in Texas!

Our last couple of days in New York were great. It was the perfect amount of time there to really enjoy ourselves without spending too much money. We slept in on Friday and had a bagel brunch at a deli around the corner once we got up. There is definitely not a shortage of delis and pizza shops in New York. We visited the Empire State building on the way to an unusual museum: The Museum of Sex. This is the place that has hosted the statue of Britney Spears giving birth on all fours and currently has a Hilary Clinton bust next to an exhibit about females and politics and sexuality and the fact that the interaction exists. I'll spare my reader guests any additional details about the museum, because it truly is something you have to experience for yourself. Thursday night we saw Mamma Mia! on Broadway. It was terrific as well, but in a completely different way from Rent.

Saturday was our last day in NY. We took the subway down to the former World Trade Center site and it is astounding in person. You can still see the destruction via the gaping holes in the ground. There are pictures that are representative of the events of 9/11 all around the gates of the area. So sad. Even several of the buildings around the area have a level of dirt on the outside that could not be normal wear and tear--it has to be from the effects of that day. After a brief time there, we walked a few blocks to South Street Seaport, from which you can see the Brooklyn Bridge and shop for hours (if you wanted to). We went to a museum down there that had the "Bodies" exhibit which has been in several large cities in the US and other countries. That was amazing. I don't think I could really describe it well in words.

After that, we took another subway to JFK Airport but got off too late and had to take a bus in Queens (I think) to complete our journey to the airport. I have no regrets about the trip. I think we got a lot done in the time we were there. I am happy to be home though. Kenneth woke up to say hello and he gave me the best hug. I tried to wake Evelyn up but she was sacked out.

Hey Man, Can I Piss in Your Ear?

Rod and I are having a blast in Manhattan. We landed in JFK Airport around lunchtime Wednesday and jumped on the subway from the airport, which took us staight into Manhattan. Once we reached our stop (the 42nd St. A-Train), it was only about a 3-block walk with our luggage to our hotel. The hotel QT is right off of Broadway and within walking distance to just about anything you'd want to do. It is an extremely modern hotel and the room basically is about the size of the queen bed that's in it. The first floor has a pool with a unique design, complete with movie theater seating around it and clear acrylic form-over-function chairs.

We had to head over to the Late Show theater to pick up our tickets for the Wednesday show between 3-4 PM, then back again at 4:45 to file into the theater for the actual taping. "The Rock" and Norm MacDonald were the guests. It was really, really neat to see that live. Rod and I have been Letterman fans for awhile. The theater is MUCH smaller than you would think from watching the show. It is also incredibly structured (the process of taping the show and bringing on guests, etc.) He didn't do any audience participation stunts, so there was no opportunity for 5 minutes of fame. Directly after the taping, we walked 3 blocks to Caroline's Comedy Club, where we met Kristin and Brian (my cousins) and Kristin's husband Chris. It was the first time we had met Chris, so that was great! I would say that the comics that performed at the 7 PM show were about half and half (half pretty funny, half not so funny). Regardless, we had a great time talking with Kristin, Brian, and Chris. One more note about Caroline's: we saw one of the finalists from Last Comic Standing sitting at the bar on our way out of the show! Too cool. While we were talking outside after Caroline's, believe it or not, I saw someone I know from Dell! One of my mentors is here on business with some other Dell VIPs and we happened to be on 45th and Broadway at the same time! Truly amazing how small the world is.

This morning Rod and I spent some time shopping. It is truly a fabulous place to shop. I spent a good hour and a half in H&M. If you are a female you have probably heard of H&M. Great prices on trendy stuff... The quality is clearly not the best, but most of it is not bad and you can really get some amazing deals. After that we went to one of the New York Public Libraries, which may sound boring, but this particular one was apparently a very old one and the building was architecturally amazing. It looked like a combination of a castle and a historic church, including an area on one part of the ceiling that was painted intricately with figures and other images. We made our way down toward Rockefeller Center and the Musuem of Modern Art as well. After that we rested in the room for about 30 minutes and got ready for our Thursday night Broadway show, Rent. Can I say that Rent was INCREDIBLE. We had amazing seats, about 15 rows back from the stage and centrallly located. The cast was fabulous and it reminded me again why I like that show so much. After the show we stopped by Connolly's, an Irish pub and restaurant. Rod had Irish beer and we both opted for traditional Irish food. Rod had Shephard's Pie, and I had Irish Beef Stew. YUM.

When we got back to the hotel, Rod decided he wanted to go swimming, so he went out to buy a pair of swim trunks at 11:30 at night. Of course, so many stores stay open late, so that is not as odd as it sounds. He came back with a pair of trunks with I-Heart-NY printed about 800 times on them. haha. On his way back from buying trunks, he said a guy stopped him on the street and said "Hey man, can I piss in your ear?" ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. I still am laughing at that. What in the world would possess someone to say that?

Tomorrow is another busy day!