Jack ‘n Tracie

It was sunny and 75, Kayla came over to spend the weekend which was a real treat. We got a lot of laundry, yard work and house cleaning done, as well as moved the basketball hoop out to the street and shot some hoops for a few hours on Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday evening we had a nice family barbequeue, just the 10 of us. (Brother James and 3 of his kiddies were here of course!)

We even got a visit from our dear friends Ralph and Denise!

It was a great but tiring weekend.

P.S.
Kayla got a response from Disney to her application for internship and she gets to go down there this Summer for a job! (She even gets to become a certified Jedi!) She’ll train in performing various duties at Disneyland, ranging from playing a disney critter to being a Pirate in the Pirate’s of the Caribbean restaurant! (We might even get guest passes!)

Wish her luck. What a big move… this Dad is nervous for his little girl.

We have Brother James living with us for a while now as life just keeps kicking him when he’s down. He’s tried so hard to be a good father to his kids, but when the states are taking 50% of his wages there’s just so little you can do.

If you have a moment say a prayer for him and keep him in your thoughts as he’s got a bit of an uphill battle ahead of him.

When we went to pick him up we were at Grandma Carolines and her dogs went nuts on each other and attacked one of their own. That dog had to have a ton of stitches. It made for quite the stressful beginning that’s for sure!

On the brighter side, Tracie is feeling mostly better, and the small cough I have is nothing compared to what she went through.

P.S.
Spring is here. Which means the grass is growing and the pollen is slowly starting to seep from the trees and bushes. I hate allergies. We did manage to dig up about a 60 sq. foot section of lawn over the weekend in an attempt to reseed it with grass. Wish it luck too lol.

I can’t believe my little guy is 7 years old. I remember vividly being that age. What a wonderful time. The world was still full of magic, but you were JUST starting to figure some of it out. We had a great day of playing Halo and Godzilla games on the XBox and some other random fun. It was a very tiring day

Grandma Carolyn came over for his birthday too! That was quite a treat. She bought him the coolest Spiderman utility-wrist thing. It was like some kind of Batman utility belt. It had a web shooter that shot silly string (Grrr!), a Water gun, a rubber web shooter, a 6 shot missile launcher and a nerf dart shooter! We got him some cool learning toys. A motorized gear set where you can build all sorts of gizmos out of gears and pulleys and power it with a battery operated motor, and a Veterinarian playset where you can take X-Rays of dogs and perform all sorts of puppy medicine. He loved that.

We’re also picking him up a GOOD bike for once. We’ve gotten him a few bikes from the local stores only to have the fall to pieces within a week. (His last bike had BOTH tires literally explode the next day while it was just sitting in the back yard.. not even in direct sunlight, then the seat broke off after we replaced the tires. We went to Battleground Bicycle shop but they were closed on Sunday, in spite of advertising that they were OPEN in the yellow pages. (We’ll get it this weekend, on Saturday.)

We then went to Chuck-E-Cheeses and gamed our butts off and ate cake and ice cream. I love the simple times.

Spent this week in Oakland, CA. (Concord actually) at some training for Email Security. It was an interesting class, but since I was all by myself it made for a rather boring trip. There wasn’t much to see in Concord, but it was sunny and 65-70 most of the time.

I now know how to filter corporate Email and configure a compliance server to catch sensitive material in Email automatically. Oh, and I can setup an image scanning program that checks image attachments for pornographic images. This won’t catch something like the Demi Moore tastefully naked and pregnant Vanity Faire cover, but it will stop this picture of Johnny Vegas posing as Demi Moore naked and pregnant on the Vanity Faire cover. (The porn engine is also expert at catching naked mole rats and oddly enough, laminate flooring…. so Bob Villa beware.)

One interesting thing I saw was a pair of Canadian geese perched on the side of a building like doves, only bigger. I hadn’t thought about WHAT it was that geese did when they flew south for the winter, but now I know. They hang out on the sides of buildings in sunny California!

While I was gone Tracie came down with a horrible stuffy-nose coughing cold and was a miserable lil’ sickie the whole time! It was very sad. They even had snow for like two days! No accumulation however, but it was beautiful.

It was a rather uneventful February/Early March, which is rather nice after the holiday season just to relax and absorb life.

This coming Sunday I’ll be on a plane heading to Oakland, CA. for 4 days for some Email training. Wish there was a class closer to home…

We had a friend from Vancouver, BC. come down and spend a few days in town visiting, that was nice. We took her to Cinetopia to watch 10,000 B.C. (Good movie, but not quite what I expected from the previews.)

Cody-man turns 7 this month! He’s really wanting a new bike, and I can’t wait to see his face when he gets it!

Katherine quit her job at Taco Del-Mar. I would have quit a month ago from the way they were abusing her schedule.

Last but not least, Kayla’s going to the State Cheerleading championships in Seattle on Saturday! Wish her luck! I wish I could go, but I can’t get my on-call covered and can’t be that far from the hospital during the weekend.

That’s it for now!

UPDATE: Kayla’s team finished the finals in third place! This means they are third in the US. Not too freakin’ bad!! If you choose the link below and search for ’skyview’ you’ll see their final performance. It is the same routine but Kayla had a bit of a wobble in their final performance (where someone else had a slight wobble in the first performance).

Currently Kayla’s team is in Disneyland in California competing in the national cheerleader’s competition. As of yesterday her team is third in the nation. (Preliminary results.) Skyview competed a few moments ago and will find out where they placed overall in her division this afternoon.

To see yesterday’s performance go here: Skyview Cheer Leading 2008 and in the search box type: skiview (yes I know it’s misspelled, it’s annoying). You can spot Kayla in the video easily by looking at their feet. Kayla is the only cheerleader wearing a black ankle brace. (Not to be confused with the spotters in the back in red shirts also wearing black socks or something). She nailed her back handspring!

Hopefully more videos will follow.

Happy Birthday to you…
Happy Birthday tooo youuu…
Haapppy Birrrrrrrthday dear Tracie!

Happy Birthday to you!

Hope you have a wonderful day sweetheart!

Today ends a 4 day weekend for the kids. Lucky bums! They had a pretty good time though. I worked Saturday night until Sunday morning around 5am, so I was fairly zombified on Sunday, and Tracie’s had a heck of a cold all weekend, but luckily we didn’t have anything great planned.

Valentines day we ate at Carl’s Jr. (No way we wanted to wait in 1 hour lines for dinner!) and went to the movies. We saw Juno. The movie was all about whatever Tracie wanted to see as it was Valentines day, but I was amazed at what a fantastic and cute movie this was. Highly recommended! Kayla came by and spent the night as well, but we were feeling a little under the weather already, so we hit the hay when we got home.

This weekend we have (Hopefully) a Cathy trip planned! Tracie’s birthday is Friday, so with any luck she’ll be spending her birthday in Trout Lake! I’m not on call, and there’s no monthly downtime planned… cross your fingers!

And I wish it was on beer.

Sitting at the stop light at 76th St. this morning on my way to work I was shook out of my “On-the-way-to-work” stupor by a nice kid in his Ford F-150 seeing the light turn green and going for it. Whilst I was still stopped in front of him… and the car in front of me was still stopped as well. I came within an inch of hitting the guy in front of me, but got my brakes on in time. (That and I had stopped a safe distance behind him thanks to Tracie’s gentle reminders about stopping further back, just in case.)

There’s not a ton of damage, it was a bumper to bumper…. well… bump. It cracked the bumper guard, and do you think he had insurance? NOPE. Big fat NO NO. (What I wouldn’t give to be hit by someone with insurance… just once.)

It was a 20 year old kid from Israel (Dunno when he moved here, but he still had a thick accent.) I didn’t call the cops. I’d like to think I’m better than that, or maybe I’m just trying to build up Karma for me or my Family members. Either way, it woulda been really crappy of me to do that to him.

He is however gonna be replacing my bumper. (He works at a body shop)