Missing Pizza Palace...

 Here's a great shot of the fam having a great time making pizza at my parents house.  Of course we all miss Pizza Palace for the easy to access dough and pizza making items.  However, we don't miss not being able to get together to have fun!

-s

Livvy Graduated!

 Last week Livvy graduated to Children's Community.  It was a tough week at first.  She cried that she didn't want me to move all her clothes from her bin in Nido to her cubby in CC.  Well, after we got over that, she started getting used to it.  Now she's all ready in the morning to see "Nett" (Jeanette) and "Ms Dbe" (Ms. Debbie).  She's been bringing home a lot of beautiful paintings on both paper and her clothes.  It's been quite a week.

Mommy is getting used to it too.  The first day I entered the room with a screaming child and saw the teacher over by the sink and the children in the back of the room gathered in a circle.  As the teacher was getting breakfast ready the 3 children in the back of the room had their own band going.  One was playing the banjo, one the drum and one the xylophone.  If that's not cute enough, they were all singing their A, B, C's in unison.  These kids are between 2 and 3 years old!  It's amazing how different Nido is from CC.  I now have to ask Livvy what she did during the day and she'll tell me in her own language.  Sometimes I translate well and sometimes I need a Livvy-to-English dictionary.

More stories to come I'm sure!

-s

Ria's Cake

How cool is this cake!
 

Where did spring go?

 Livvy is really confused by the weather... 80 degrees in April is quite odd. So, she decided to go to school prepared for anything...

Happy Easter!

On Tuesday night we went to the mall and got a picture with the Easter Bunny. Livvy loved it. She even allowed me to change her into her outfit right there in the mall. She pet the Easter Bunny and kept saying "Bunny!!!", giggling and laughing. Last night we colored Easter eggs and had a great time getting the dye all over the place. Livvy said all her colors and was so excited to mix the eggs in the dye. She also enjoyed chucking the eggs into the cup of dye instead of gently placing them there. Most of them didn't crack. :) Happy Easter everyone!

Count Livvy

Last night was interesting. After visiting the doctor for the 3rd retry at an 18 month checkup and finding out that she has another ear infection, I was about to go insane. BUT Livvy pulled me through. She was delightful last night; talking away, singing, eating her pasta without complaints. We were sitting on the floor, stacking blocks and she was knocking them down when she started to stack them herself. She'd stack 5 blocks then knock them down. Over and over again. Then, she started to count as she stacked... "One, Two, Three, Four, Six, Nine, Yea!!!" and knock them down. I'm not sure but I didn't think an almost 19 month old is supposed to know how to count. Well, we have a genius on our hands! All this time I've been working on colors and she's wanted numbers. :)

Well, she's finally moving up to a new classroom next week from Nido to Childrens Community. I can't wait to see what she learns next.

-s

Sleeping in her food again...

 

So I was sitting at the kitchen table paying the bills and suddenly I heard something that sounded like a snore... 

Sprinter Season

 

We had a great time up at Mount Snow and Okemo (VT) this weekend.  Livvy got to go sledding and jump in mud puddles while J and I enjoyed some beautiful weather this sprinter (Spring/Winter) season.  It was 55 degrees on Sunday at Okemo.  While I slushed through black diamonds and double diamonds by myself, J and Livvy were taking pictures and as I said - jumping in mud puddles.  It's so much more difficult to ski in slush than ice or snow.  My thighs are killing me!  I took a nice fall on Friday killing my knee and then on Saturday I decided to take on the chair lift... the chair lift won.  But all-in-all, it was a great trip.  I got to experience some really fresh glades at both mountains.  Our drive up and back only took us 4 1/2 hours each way... thanks to cruise control and 80's music (since I've given up coffee for lent it's been a challenge).  I'm tired now... will write more later.  Unfortunately it's back to work tomorrow.

-s

1920 X 1200 Pixels

Have you ever seen this resolution before connected to a PC?! How awesome is this?! Thanks to Doug for stealing/finding the monitor and then finding the converter box for PC's. Now I'm trying to figure out how I can get a 3rd monitor to work with my docking station.

PS: sorry for the blurry image - I used my blackberry.

-s

Stuck in the elevator

It's been 9 years (actually will be 9 on Friday) that I've worked here at the software company (previously prefaced with "boring 'ol"). I've heard stories of people getting stuck in the elevators here for hours. Tall tales I thought until all of that changed this past Friday...

I got on the elevator with a colleague on the 1st floor to go up to the 6th floor. As the elevator travelled up, it stopped on 2 to let two people off. Then, going from 2-4 it seemed like it totally skipped floor 3. Everything shook, and we made it to the 4th floor without diving into the basement. Well, the smart person; my colleague got off the elevator then and there. No way was she staying on, and she needed to stop on 4 anyway. So, Ravi (who thought the darn thing was going down instead of up) jumped on the elevator with me and said, "I'll take the ride, I have to go down though". Yea, well what a ride he took (hey you dirty people... this is a kid friendly blog, I'm talking about the damn elevator ride!!! Get your sick minds out of the gutter.)

The elevator started going up and then stopped, jumped, lights flashed, screeched to a halt and then we were stuck. Ravi jumped for the emergency bell and I opened that phone looking box to see if we could call for help. Well, have you ever opened that phone looking box before on an elevator? There's no phone in there! It's just a red box with a button. How do you call someone with one button?! So I push the button, it doesn't tell you to stop pushing it but then this guy comes through from security and says, "security, can I help you?". Now what do we do... we're talking into a red box with a button.. where do you talk into? I start talking holding the button. Don't know if the guy hears me. He responds though saying someone is on their way. We wait, and wait... about 10 mins later someone outside says - "we're here to get you out". Nice!

They start manually moving the elevator up and down and then they try to open the doors. The guys sounds like he's trying to pry them open but nothing is working. The lights go out and then he tries to pry open the doors again. It doesn't budge. Well, a few minutes later something happens and the alarm bell sounds for about 3 minutes. That allows them to open the doors. We're about 4 feet above the 5th floor and our heads are in the 6th floor. I'm guessing that they want us to get out and jump down... now with heals on an a laptop in my hands, it's not a very easy task. So, they finally help me down, then Ravi gets down. There are about 20 people in the atrium looking at us clapping. I guess we did something spectacular so I bow and wave and walk off to the staircase.

For the rest of the day and the following 3 days I decide that I will not be taking the elevator anymore. Well, I gave that all up today because my damn feet hurt and Livvy hasn't slept through the night for the entire week so I'm exhausted. Yea, so much for giving up the elevator. At least it was a good story though...

-s