Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Weekend Fun




So, here's the weekend update. Friday night was pretty chill, we took the kids out to dinner and then came back to the house to watch a movie. I was supposed to take Mallory and a friend to see the new HSM3 movie, but all of the showings were sold out or way too late! So, I owe her that for another time.
,

Saturday night, we helped Mike celebrate his birthday at the somewhat annual now Halloween party. We also took Rob and Carmen with us. It was a lot of fun! We showed up too late to get in on the group photos, but everyone went all out this year again and looked great! We'll have more Halloween photos of the kids after Friday, but here we are as Pilot and Private Flight Captain. And featuring, Rob & Carmen as Romeo and Juliet (she's an English teacher, makes sense, right?) Thank you to our awesome hosts, the Punk Rocker and the Devil, Satan-ish, winged guy?



Saturday night when we got back to the house, we found a very sick Nicholas. Poor little guy! Mallory got her first real test as a babysitter! I went from the car in the garage so quickly to tend to Nick that I forgot to turn my lights off. I didn't notice it until Sunday a.m. around 10, and just turned them off figuring the battery would rejuvenate itself. Oops, apparently the car has to be running to charge the battery back up. Lesson learned, Thanks Mike for coming to bail me out!!


UPDATE: This post looked kind of incomplete, so I'll add the kids halloween photos to it. Mallory has announced that next year she won't be trick or treating but handing out candy. I really doubt Nick will want to go by himself, so could it be that my trick-or-treat days are over? I wish they had gone out with a better bang! We really didn't see a lot of people out this year, and no one hardly came to the house either. We started the night refusing to give teenagers with technically no costume on treats, but by the end of the night, we just wanted to give away the candy, so the brave ones who came back ended up getting a handful. Oh well. I am hoping for a Halloween resurgence next year. I have such fond memories of trick or treating as a kid, I'd hate for it to fade out...


In updating this post, I can't find the photos that were on here. I must've stolen them from someone else's photo gallery originally...

Monday, October 27, 2008

JoePa Rocks!


There's almost nothing more annoying to a Nittany Lion, than a Buckeye! But after this weekend, they are a non-issue! In the most exciting, gripping game of our season yet, the Lions pulled out a win over the Ohio State Buckeyes, bringing our record to 9-0. It's been a great season, and there's nothing better than seeing JoePa have another successful year! yea, yea, maybe he'll get the hint and go out on top, whatever.. none of that matters at this moment!


Go Blue! See you in Miami?

post signature

Monday, October 20, 2008

Smart Kids!

A post about the kids, the real reason most of you even read this blog!~ Congrats to Mallory and Nicholas who received outstanding report cards for this first quarter of the school year! Mallory has continued her streak of A's through Jr. High, proving that the transition maybe wasn't as bad as she thought it would be. And Nicholas completed this first quarter at his new school, with A's & B's, landing himself on the Honor Roll for the first time! (4th grade is the start of letter grades, thus Honor Roll.)



We are extremely proud of both of our smart little critters and wish them continued success for the remainder of the year!


post signature

Weekend Update

We've posted so sporatically lately that I find myself combining weekend reports! We spent this weekend officially celebrating Craig's bar passage with dinner and a night out dancing with friends. For a change, we thought we'd try the newest, trendiest restaurant in Scottsdale and I'm not sure it paid off for us? The atmosphere at Roka Akor was very cool upon first entry, but constantly waiting for your family style dinner elements allows you to examine further and I couldn't get past the place smelling like a band-aid? We waited almost 45mins for each course to come out, and when it did, the quality was questionable.





Anyway, we shook that off and headed out to Devil's North for dancing and fun. We had a great time there, of course it was packed, but still plenty of room on the dance floor. Everyone enjoyed the beats. Even Craig's usually shy friend BW, brought his A game and it paid off! Thanks to all those guys who came out to celebrate Craig's success.






It's really rare that I get out to dance twice in one month, but it happened! Last weekend was GNO and we were living it up at Devil's South. That's where we usually hang out in Old Town. I can now attest to the fact that both locations are 'shutting it down' every weekend! Here's a fun photo from GNO, Shelsea, Jill & me. I had the camera this weekend too, but for some reason did not capture any of the fun?








post signature

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Congratulations!

Last Friday, we received the good news that Craig passed the Arizona Bar Examination! He is completely thrilled and relieved! The results were to be published on the website at 4:45 and he called me while I was still at the office to let me know he was stuck in traffic at 4:40. So... I couldn't wait. I hung up with him and immediately searched on-line for the results. My heart was pounding as I scrolled through the list of names to get to the R's.

Seeing his name on the list, and telling him he passed the test was one of the most thrilling, exciting moments we've shared together so far. I almost didn't know whether to shout out with glee, or just collapse to the floor and cry for a bit, knowing that this phase was finally complete!

Congratulations to my husband, on your wonderful accomplishment! You will go on to be a successful attorney in any specialty you desire. While I joke with him that his post below resembles a Grammy acceptance speech, it's clearly written with the most genuinely excited emotion of someone who's just realized a dream and for that I admire and adore him! You are extraordinary, counselor.

post signature

Friday, October 10, 2008

I Passed!

Well, this will be a brief update but I found out at 5pm today that I officially passed the Arizona Bar Exam. So, with my Character and Fitness passage last week, I am officially a counselor in AZ.



Thanks to everyone that has been there for me through this process and especially Vic, Mal, Nick, Steph and Robert (and the LSAT cat), my parents, my aunt, and all my family and friends that supported me through this. You know who you are and I greatly appreciate it. And I will return the favor.



I cannot stress enough how much all of you have meant to me getting to where I'm at today. Great news and I hope you all celebrate with me!



post signature

Thursday, October 9, 2008

Baby Shower + Man Uggs?




















Last Friday I flew to Pennsylvania to help my family with a co-ed baby party for my sister and brother-in-law. I loved seeing them and her belly with growing baby inside; obviously baby has grown tremendously since month 3 when I saw her at the wedding! She's looks fabulous. I was so excited to share in this event and we had a wonderful turnout of more than 30 people. It was totally worth 10 hrs of plane time! :O) I would do it again in a heart beat! Steph and my dad love the Phillies (and now our AZ family does too, since I brought home all kinds of Phillies and Penn State gear!) and so he made sure baby had it's first Phillie Phanatic outfit! Very cute. Baby will also need a giant stuffed Phanatic, just like the other grandkids have, Papa.




Things would not be normal if Craig did not offer his two cents on the things I purchased for baby! As decoration, we hung some items on the clothesline, and for this Mallory and I picked out the cutest little furry boots for baby. Of course, Craig saw them and immediately described them as Man Uggs. I don't think they look like Man Uggs but even if they do, they are sooo cute! If she has a boy he can still wear these little boots around town. It will be November, he/she needs a nice pair of warm shoes, right? Oh well,they can just put them on him and take his photo to share with Aunt Vic! And, if its a girl, then she has a gorgeous pair of furry boots. I'll keep her fashionable?




I'm so happy Steph's going to have a baby and I get a niece or nephew to spoil! She's got a lot on her plate right now with the baby and some other things, so I want to tell her just to take things as they come. All will work out for the best and enjoy this time! We love you so much and we'll see you (and baby) in January!



post signature

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Eyes Semi-Open?

I have lots of cool photos of the baby shower we had for my sister in PA over the weekend (what a whirlwind of flying time that was in 3 days) but I still need to download the photos from the camera. I will do that.

Right now, I just wanted to make mention of the fact that I have not gone to bed from yesterday. Yup, stayed up all night working on a project schedule for a 3:30 meeting today and never got to go to bed. This causes all kinds of issues; however, somehow I've managed to get myself to work. In order to stay awake and alert until my meeting, I have purchased what I consider the essential items: 2 Diet Dr. Peppers, 2 sugar free RockStar drinks, 1 bx of Nerds candy. I have no idea why I bought the sugar-free RockStar, isn't that directly counterintuitive to the concept of the drink? On my way to work, I was trying to remember other times in the past where I've not slept in 24 hours or other such long periods of time. This is what I came up with:
  • August 9th, 1996 when Mallory was born. I was in labor for 31 hours and didn't sleep for any of that time even though I had the epidural. I was certainly running on adrenaline. Not so much today.

  • May 18, 1999 when Nicholas was born. Labor = 33 hrs. Again, lots of adrenaline, not so much today.

  • July 13, 2006 at Syntax-Brillian, my last job. We had a new guy come in to take over our projects and he kept us in meetings for 9hrs a day and then demanded we work on the collateral for the meetings overnight I guess. No adrenaline, lots of bitterness.

I'm thinking the meeting will go over the hour we've alloted. It's with Brisbane and they are just getting into the office, so not really as motivated as we are to leave the office. They could talk all day! I will do my best to cut my presentation as short as I possibly can, after all I sent it to the team in advance right? They should have reviewed it in preparation for our meeting, yes? Short presentation, no questions, that's my strategy. Doesn't that sound like our President's philosophy at press conferences? hahha... Tired Girl's got jokes!

DISCLAIMER: I am not a Democrat nor a Republican. I just think Bush is sort of funny sometimes.

post signature