So life has finally calmed down again. Yeah!

Last weekend was Katie and Jason's wedding. It took a lot of work to pull it off (8 hours of set-up on Friday), but it turned out wonderful. It was fun to see the transition from church wedding to luau reception. Katie looked beautiful and very happy, so that's all that matters. After 3 whole days of wedding (Friday= set-up, Saturday= wedding, Sunday= party for friends and family) I was very content to go home and curl up in bed with my husband and kitties. Luckily, my cats figured out this time to cuddle early and then leave me alone at 2 o'clock in the morning. They are notorious for wanting early a.m. cuddles!

The weekend before the wedding was the bachelor and bachelorette parties. It seemed the boys put together box cars (with welding and everything) and then raced them down a very large hill. Personally, I was a little concerned about the groom possibly having a black eye and/or cast for the wedding, but the bride was very calm. Maybe that is because we spent Saturday relaxing at Glen Ivy and Sunday wine tasting. All in all, a very fun weekend.

As is our current trend, Robert and I spent the weekend of our wedding anniversary celebrating another's wedding. It seems that we married during at a very popular wedding time. However, Robert took Monday (the actual day of a 2nd anniversary) off of work, and we spent it together. Rob gave me this amazing gift. It was a collage of pictures of us (and of course the cats, too) that was then turned into a puzzle. We spent a good chunk of Monday putting the puzzle together, and still have quite a way to go. You would think that putting together pictures of yourself would be easy... but it was a bit harder than expected. I gave Rob the Wii Sports Resort game that he kept on looking at. That was fun to play with too. I have to say, Robert has done a better job on the thoughtful gifts this past Christmas and anniversary. I think it is because with my family I was trained to give practical gifts. It's something I will have to work on.

We also currently had a discussion about gift-giving with my mother. I'm not quite sure how it happened, but we were talking about how Robert gets up at like 6am on Christmas because he is so excited about giving me my presents and opening his own. I guess that when he was a child, it was common for him to get up even earlier. As a child, I didn't even know a time before 6 o'clock in the morning existed. Instead, we slept in, ate breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and then opened presents. I think we came down to the conclusion that though Sean's and my presents were very exciting, they were either something that we couldn't play with at right that moment, or couldn't use ALL day. For example, when Rob asked what presents we remembered the most Sean's response was a telescope and the wheels for his old car. Obviously, the telescope wasn't used during the day and the wheels didn't go on the car until a week or so later. While Rob's presents growing up were something that would keep his attention all day. So either my brother and I are ADD and don't have Rob's attention span, or his family worked really hard at finding/making something really creative. It was definitely food for thought for when we have our own kids. Though I agree with my parent's philosophy of practical gifts (which helps makes the cost of Christmas presents be something that you needed to spend money on anyway), we also need to make sure that one present is like Rob's childhood Christmas. That way our kids will have Rob's adorable excitement and memories about holidays.

Deano

So this is a random posting more for myself than anyone else, so I apologize to anyone browsing Facebook and stumbling upon this. On this Friday night I made the decision to start a major project; a complete rework of my entire music collection. Having 4,000+ songs on my computer, this is a significant project.

Being enough of a nerd to still like the sound of more than just a guitar, a bass guitar and a drum set in a band, I immediately started searching Amazon and other sites for Ska bands. The same results kept popping up:

Reel Big Fish

Less Than Jake

Rx Bandits

Save Ferris

All old bands, who's music I have been listening to for years.

Then another old band came up....Mighty Mighty Bosstones. Chuckling to myself I clicked on the link to take a walk down memory lane. I opened the first link to hear a preview of the song "The Impression that I get." For those of you who don't know it right away, you would if you heard it. Hit up Amazon and check it out.

I was instantly reminded of a happy (and sad) memory from the past. An effect many songs seem to have on me.

I remembered being at the Baywood apartments in Newport, right across the street from Fashion Island. I had a cousin named Dean who I knew as "Dean-o." A step cousin, but none-the-less, a cousin. At any rate, I remember blasting that song on a CD in his boom box in the living room of a one bedroom apartment he shared with his mom Juliana and grandmother Kitty. Juliana and Dean were from Barcelona, Spain and were here on a temporary visa.

Those were the days of what I would call my mid-years, in between elementary school and high school. A period that proves to be rough for most youth, myself being no exception. Escaping t to an area where no one knew me and I knew nobody was a great relief.

I remember how refreshing it was to hang out with Deano. He was so full of life and excited about everything around him. I remember that he was a huge Jean Claude Van-Damme fan. One day on the way down from their second floor apartment to the pool I watched him mess up a harmless ficus tree like nobody's business.

We would swim one day of the weekend, and on the other walk across the stree to Fashion Island to see a movie and spend hours in the music store.

I am not quite sure of the specifics, but from what I understand Kitty's visa had expired, and eventually Kitty and Deano were forced to return to Spain right around when I started my freshman year of high school.

Several years later, in my freshman year of college I believe, my mom let me know in a fairly coincedental conversation that Deano had passed away. Apparently Kitty had left Deano at home with his sister, and when she called to check on them, no one answered. When she returned she found Deano collapsed in the shower. He would have been about 19 years old.

I never really got the details, but I remember a conversation about how the utilities in Spain were not as safe as in the U.S. I believe it was something about not adding an odor to the gas that would let you know if there was a gas leak. Here in the states a gas leak will smell like a rotten egg. The doctors believed a gas leak had caused a build up of methane in the shower and that Deano had passed out and eventually died from asphyxiation. Juliana found his sister in the other room just fine.

At any rate, rather than a moment of sadness, it was a pleasant moment...thinking about younger years and the enjoyment of careless summers. Summers much like the summers I used to share with my cousin Sean.

Usually such a "pop" song would not be palatable; but remembering Deano's face as he sung The Impression That I Get so enthusiastically, and busted his Jean Claude-like dance moves, brought a real smile to my face.

So I paid my $0.99 and added another song to my collection.

Preparing for Katie's Bridal Shower

Hi everyone. It's Shannon. I guess I'm supposed to begin blogs introducing myself since it links to Robert's Facebook page. He doesn't want people wondering why he is throwing a bridal shower :) And yes, I am still boycotting Facebook. We'll see how long that lasts, but it just seems like too much work.

Anyways, this is blog, as always, is a bit outdated. Katie's Bridal Shower was last Sunday, and I'm just now talking about preparing for it.

Since I'm a teacher I have my summers off and need things to keep

me entertained... so I had lots of fun preparing for the bridal shower.

The other bridesmaids and I decided to have a wine themed dinner

party. I decided to take old wine bottles and spray paint them ivory

and then and then add black and red decoration. After inserting red

flowers and ivy, they looked very classy. You can't see the wine bottle

in this picture, but you get the idea.

I also made wine charms as party favors. Each party favor was tied to a glass wineglass. Guests were able to choose a glass based on which wine charm they liked and then put the wine charm on their wine glass.

Of course I also had to hand paint glasses for the bride, mother of the bride, and the 3 bridesmaids. Unfortunately, I had a mishap with the bride's glass. She was supposed to have silver wedding rings painted on her glass, but I ran out of the correct paint. The one that I tried to use rubbed right off, so Katie's glass ended up having red hearts on it also. Oh well...

The one food item that I didn't make was the cake. But it turned out so cute that I had to include a picture. Christine did a wonderful job. I did. however, make the rest of the food. For appetizers we had tiropitas, spinach artichoke dip, bruschetta, and sausage bites. Dinner was a salad and homemade spaghetti and meatballs (with the marinara sauce and the meatballs made from scratch. It's sooooo much yummier that way!) There was supposed to be Parmesan twists also, but there was a minor catastrophe and they had to be scratched last minute. I just hate when things go wrong on spot.

All in all, it was a successful party. Now I can plan the Bachelorette Party!!!!

Fourth of July

Well it was a pretty nice fourth of July weekend. On the third I got some more yard work done and did a little napping before we headed out with some of our friends to the Frog's Breath cheese shop in Orange circle. We did a beer and cheese sampling string that consisted of about eight different cheeses and four or five beers.

Two of the beers I have had before and didn't really enjoy very much, but a new white ale and an amber I hadn't tasted were pret

ty interesting. Shannon and I did find a cheese that we both really liked called Tintern. It is a creamy cheddar cheese with some chives and shallots. We bought some for our fourth of July party the next day at Shannon's parents momentarily forgetting that her father is allergic to onions, and that her brother doesn't really enjoy them either. Oh well....$7 well spent.

The outing included the usual suspects, starting on the left and working around: My beautiful wife, Ben and Carrie, myself, Meredith and Dan (who are getting married soon) and Chris.

It was quite a pleasant afternoon. I can't say I regret moving out of Orange, but I do miss hanging out in the circle.

Yesterday Carrie came down and she and Shannon went to Lake Mission Viejo. There's nothing like getting a call when you are at work from your wife telling you, "Carrie and I are laying out at the lake right now, and I love you for moving us to Mission Viejo, but now I am never going to want to live more than a hop, skip and a jump from the lake."

On the fourth we spent the day with Shannon's

family hanging out by the pool drinking mango

pina coladas (really just pina coladas made using Malibu mango rum instead of light rum). Her brother Sean has a new puppy and he is a blast to play with. He is not quite used to the water yet, but has plenty of energy on land.

In the evening we had a few people down and watched fireworks from our driveway. One more benefit of living near the lake.

That's the update for now. As usual life is great and we couldn't be more fortunate than to have loving family and friends to hang out with.

Rob and Shannon

As usual...

Well as usual it has been a really long time since our last post.

I woke up at around 5 AM this morning to a couple of rambunctious cats. Not remembering whether I had fed them last night, and still in kind of a haze I stumbled down the hall and pored some of their diet food into their bowl.

Suddenly I knew I was up, and as usual there was no way I was getting back to sleep. If I even tried I would more than likely just toss and turn and keep Shannon awake. So I checked my email. Glancing at my chat section I noticed the following people showing as online: Rob Heaton, Susan Mack and Richard Lagrand. Hmmmm, I wonder which side of the family my early morning genes come from...

So at any rate, I got up and worked some more on the side yard, trying to get an area cleared out to plant our Orange tree.

Monday was my brother Jeff's birthday and we all went to Lucille's to celebrate. As usual the nephews were very cute. Here's a couple of pictures from a different night at a restaurant:

Life has really been pretty great recently. So far we have managed to be relatively unaffected by the downturn in the economy. We had feared for a while that Shannon's school might go under and she would be out of work, but she just found out she will be signing her contract for next year on Wednesday which is definitely a relief.

As far as my work goes, I love it. I really enjoy everything about the job from the work I do, to the people I work with. I have a good mix of projects; some fairly mindless like proof reading, and some more exciting that keep me busy all day long.

I've started to lose interest in one of my favorite

games recently, which I am sure my cats and wife will be grateful for. They are making a fundamental change to the game that kind of bugs me, but also I just don't enjoy it as much anymore.

I am sure some people will think, "He's finally grown out of it" which is a mentality that really irks me. I have had two conversations in the past week along those lines. One with my co-worker Sarah, and one with my mother in law.

Sandee (my mother in law) mentioned how she can't understand how someone could sit playing a video game for more than an hour, and how she felt video games were for kids; a mentality that prevails amongst the pre-atari generations. After some chatting she did admit that this was likely a bias because she had not grown up with games, and since she had only ever really seen kids play them, she labels them "childish." Keep in mind 90 year olds still love gathering around a Scrabble board or playing a rousing game of hearts. "But that's different, there is a social aspect to those games" you might cry. If you do, you clearly don't understand modern "video games."

With Sarah the conversation centered more around various forms of recreation. In the end I pointed out that essentially some of the most intelligent people I know use video games as an escape device similar to how many people use books. We talked about how most people would perceive someone who reads books in their spare time--as opposed to playing video games-- would likely be considered intelligent. To me, that conclusion is ridiculous. Reading a grocery store romance novel seems no better an indicator of intelligence than matching gems in bejeweled. But the reality is, most people don't distinguish one video game from another. They are simply all "video games." To me this is like lumping Shakespeare in with Stephenie Meyer. At any rate, it was actually a really good conversation with a lot of good points made on both sides.

Side note: One of the points I made was that if you spend 3 hours fishing and don't catch anything, it is looked upon far more favorably than if you spend 3 hours chatting with 24 people from other parts of the world while playing a video game. Another co-worker mentioned an old saying; "Fishing is the only activity where you can spend hours trying to outsmart the dumbest animal in the world, and consistently lose." And yes, I love fishing too.

So needless to say I will not be done with games any time soon.

Last night we started to really lay out the Haunted House for this year, and as soon as we get the side yard done, I need to get to work on it. It is really going to be something this year, so if you can make it out I really encourage it. We plan on hosting it once again to benefit the Orange County Food Bank by asking visitors to bring canned food.

That's all for now, hopefully not another long stretch before I post again. Happy Fourth of July!

Callback

So I FINALLY got a call back from the Dr. doing the Keratoconus study. They have been approved to start screening patients and want me to forward my documentation which I will do in the next couple of days here.

I guess they review the documentation and then call me in if I have been approved as a candidate.

At any rate, exciting :)

And...we're back.

So we had a little hiatus from posting there as the holidays got busy and we both got sick. I had Bronchitis just before Christmas which cleared up pretty quickly, but Shannon and I are both fighting a cold right now. 

I have never really had this traditional cold where your head feels like a baloon and you are stuffed up and have kind of a dry cough. The good news is that it broke last night and today I feel a lot better. Shannon however may be in for a long night as yesterday was my worst day and she is about a day behind me.

I think we probably caught it camping at San Clemente for New Year's. I know some people think being cold has nothing to do with catching a cold, but it is too convenient that we were camping in freezing weather and both got sick. 

The San Clemente campsites are really something. They are WAY better than San Onofre.

Shannon and I have some New Year's resolutions we are really going to try to keep. We have 3 goals each and then 3 family goals.

Shannon's Goals:

Grade all papers within 4 days except for major assignments.

Exercise 1 hour 3 days a week.

Pack lunches for Mon, Wed, Fri.

Robert's Goals:

Practice Piano 30 minutes a day at least 3 days a week.

Exercise 1 hour 3 days a week.

Pack lunches for Tue. and Thur.

Family Goals:

Buy a house or save $10,000 towards a down payment.

Attend church at least twice a month.

Each clean 20 minutes/day

I am sure to many they will not sound terribly ambitious, but if we did these things I think we would get on track for some bigger things in 2010.