Three Years and Counting...

While we were in the Bahamas, George and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary! It felt extra special to commemorate another year on the beach because it was so similar to our honeymoon... does the picture above look familiar? It's funny how time works, knowing that we've been married for 3 years, which seems like a blink of the eye and forever at the same time. Either way, we have grown tremendously in our love for each other during our marriage so far and feel so blessed and excited to see how the Lord works in our lives over the course of the next three years and beyond!

Anyway, we started out our Bahamas anniversary with a lovely breakfast with a view and then hit the beach for a little reading and sun.


After that George beat me in croquet... twice, which must be because of all the golf he's been playing.

Later George arranged a surprise for me which really made the day feel extra special and even more like our honeymoon. Waiting in our room were some of the most beautiful, fragrant flowers I've seen and chocolate-covered strawberries - my favorite! During our honeymoon, there were roses and chocolate-covered grapes (no strawberries in the Dominican Republic!) in our room every time we came in for the night. It was so sweet and special for George to make that connection and surprise me. I'm a lucky girl!

Abaco Livin'

This past week we were fortunate enough to be invited to Abaco Island in the Bahamas by our dear friends, the Andrews, whose uncle has a house there. We shared the week with our other good friends, the Dolezals and the Nash-Webbers and were thoroughly spoiled with incredible views, relaxing sunsets, great food, and lots of laughs. Simply put, it was paradise.

Here's the group below... Mike and Ginny (24 weeks prego), Coley and Alisa, Nash and Christa, and George and me.

View from the front porch and the back deck of the house...

We zipped to and fro on golf carts as our main form of transportation on the island. First pic, Christa and Nash and Coley and Alisa. Second pic, Mike and Ginny and me and George.

Here are some other fun shots from the trip.... the boys: Coley, Mike, Nash, and George

Our gracious hosts, the Andrews...

Another group shot... Nash, Christa, Coley, Alisa, me, George, Mike, and Ginny

Other breath-taking views...

Turn Off the TV Week

This past week has been Turn Off the TV Week for the third graders to whom I teach Stanford's S.M.A.R.T. curriculum. S.M.A.R.T. stands for Student Media Awareness to Reduce Television and the Stanford developed curriculum teaches children to be aware of the amount of time they spend in front of a screen, either watching TV or playing video or computer games. Through a series of 14 weekly lessons, the program has been proven to reduce television and video game viewing and thus reducing the BMI (body mass index) or weight of participating students. I have LOVED being an active part of this program and getting to see another side of the kiddos at East Palo Alto Charter School (same place where I help with Garden Club).

Anyway, this past week was our big push to try to get the third graders to refrain from watching TV or playing video or computer games for an entire week. Up until this point our lessons have been about awareness of how much TV they are watching and generating ideas about other fun activities they were missing out on by spending so much time watching TV. Then this week we challenged the kiddos to prove that weren't addicted to television and to go without watching TV or playing video games for 7 days. To help them meet the challenge, we hosted a few week night activities such as Family Game Night where every family got at least one new board game to take home!

No TV Week ended this Tuesday and I am so proud to report that out of the students I teach 75% of them participated in the challenge and almost half of them went without watching any TV or playing any video games for the entire week! The kids kept journals of their experience in which several responded with comments like, "it was kinda fun" and "my time felt more special" and "I enjoyed being more productive". Needless to say, I was really impressed and so proud of each one of them.

Delinquent Blog Behavior

Hi... so it has been a while, hasn't it. I apologize for my delinquent blog behavior, but here is an update of what we have been doing for the last month or so...

This year we spent "turkey" day with great friends out here in California. George had the week off from school and since we weren't hurrying off to another state we had a nice relaxing break. Also, I commemorated my first official vegetarian Thanksgiving by making a Tofukery (a tofu turkey) and veggie gravy. There was of course also the most beautiful turkey you have ever seen, thanks to our good friends the Henderson's. Begrudgingly George sampled both and I'll let you guess which one he favored. And thankfully for him, the Henderson's took pity on him and sent him home with lots of turkey leftovers.

One highlight from this past month was co-hosting a baby shower for my dear friend Ellie who is preggers with a baby girl due at the end of December. It was an arts and craft shower with activities including ironing adorable designs on onesies, writing funny messages on diapers, and creating a memory scrap book for Ellie. It was such a sweet event and so special to get to shower the mommy-to-be. Here's a pic of the amazing group of hostesses with the guest of honor in the middle. (left to right: Carrie, Angie, Annika, Ellie, Ginny, me, and Michelle)

Another highlight was that last weekend George's Stanford GSB intramural flag football team won the championship for their division. Needless to say, the boys were very pleased with their victory and as a proud, yet freezing fan, I was pretty happy that the championship game meant the season was over. :) There's the Championship Team picture below. George is on the far left in the back row.

And here I am with two of the other proud, freezing (hence the steaming Starbucks beverages) fans. Moey, who is 8 months pregnant and Caitlin, both of which a much more devoted fans than I.

George also finished school for the quarter and next week we are off to the Bahamas and Missouri and Texas for the holidays. Should be fun!!

Is there a Joe in the house...?

This year for Halloween George was Joe the Plumber and I was Joe Six-Pack. I wore a nasty long mullet wig and George wore a creepy bald cap. At the party we went to, a few good friends didn't recognize me and George got several questions about whether he really shaved his head. Yikes - it was fun for the night, but I'm not sure that either of us will be rushing to use those accessories anytime soon!

Still, we were among good company including a couple who was wind-blown, girl scouts, a gumball and gumball machine, Juno and Bleeker, McCain and Palin, Meredith and McDreamy, and several other creative and in depth costumes. Here's a group shot of the boys and then the girls.

Happy Birthday George

Hey Everyone,
This past Wednesday was my 27th birthday and as always, it fell right in the middle of midterms week. I had a midterm on Tuesday afternoon and one on Thursday morning. However, not to be dissuaded, I accepted a last minute invitation to go fly fishing with some buddies up near Mount Shasta (near the Oregon-California border). So we left Tuesday evening around 7pm and drove five hours north. It reminded me of my younger undergrad days where Tim, Brian, Brad, et al would leave on a whim to drive to Shreveport for a night at the casinos. Luckily, the long car ride was with good company so it went by fairly quickly and the next day we were out on the Klamath river.

It was a beautiful fall day and in the afternoon, the breeze picked up and started blowing the leaves from the trees into the river. It was fantastic. Below is a picture of all the guys on the trip: Peter, Mike H, Mike D, Eric, Me, Grant, Logan, and Coley.

You'll notice I didn't post any pictures of me with all the gargantuan fish I caught. Well, that's because I didn't catch any. I caught one little rainbow trout about six inches long. One trout. 12 hours of driving in less than 2 days for one six-inch trout. The kicker is that several of the other guys caught 6-10 fish each. Unbelievable. I'm still bitter. I've yet to experience a really great fly fishing trip. Nothing yet like that incredible fishing trip in 2005 for J Kuper's bachelor party in Port Aransas when we caught so many Red fish that I thought we might sink the boat. That was incredible. (See pic below).

So after fishing we drove the 6 hour drive back (6 hours because we had to drive an extra hour north to the river that morning) and I tried hopelessly to study for my midterm the following day. I ended up ditching the studying and just getting up really early the next morning to cram. I don't have the test back yet but I'm guessing it's in solid P territory (that's Stanford lingo for "Good enough to pass, but not good enough to warrant excitement").

And after all that, my wonderful wife made me a birthday cake! She's so great.

Thank you to everyone who called, sent cards, emailed, and sent gifts for my birthday!! I appreciate you all thinking of me! (Especially you Les, with your "Legend" t-shirt).

Pumpkin Festival

On Saturday, George and I went to the Half Moon Bay Pumpkin Festival to full immerse ourselves in all things pumpkin. And we did as we enjoyed pumpkin bread, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin ice cream. We went in the morning otherwise we would have added some pumpkin brew to the list. Although admittedly, George also enjoyed a garlic chicken sandwich while I found a hidden gem of veggies among the meat and pumpkin - marinated artichoke hearts, sting beans, and brussel sprouts. Oohh - I was in heaven!

Here's my pumpkin with one of the many pumpkins we chose to come home with us.

Then all pumpkined out we came back home. Just in time for George to relive his glory days on the football field on his GSB intramural football team.