Bye Bye Mama

Jenna used to cry whenever I left for work. Sometimes it wasn't just crying but actually turned into screaming. I put a video up on youtube and copied the link here to show you that apparently she doesn't care that mommie leaves anymore. Here is another video of her on her rocking horse. She loves that thing!

Every day I wake up to read a new vocabulary word in my inbox. Today's word was theriac. The definition of this word was treacle. This does not help me. I must be vocabularily challenged because I have no idea what either word means.

My friend Nicole had her baby last night at 10:41pm. Her name is Mclaine Noel and she is beautiful. Jenna and I went to visit her today. Mclaine has brown hair which is very strange considering Nicole and Gregg have blonde hair and Kael (their 3 year old son) has red hair. So their family has a mixture of hair color.

Today the Quiddler score to beat was 95 but I got 81. Maybe I need to go through it again and get a better score :).

Renfest

On Saturday we went as a family to the Renaissance Festival all decked out in our medieval attire. Even Jenna was dressed up! We bought her a chain mail bracelet that she dropped (bye-bye) and lost forever.
She did like her wand and tiara. Everyone around us also commented on her cuteness as you can see from the picture. You can't see in the picture but Erik is wearing chain mail beneath his blue coat.

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Jenna had a good time riding on a wooden merry go round. In the picture she doesn't look happy but that's because I wouldn't let her walk around and made her sit on my lap. She loved the Neigh Neighs (horses) though.
Jenna had an incredible time at Nanas and Papas while Mama and Dada were in Niagara Falls. She had her nails painted by Aunt Missy and now whenever she looks at her nails she says "Mizzie" and "pink". So cute!!

My mom took my favorite picture of her. She is smelling a rose and it is beautiful!

In other news:

1. I am reading Stephen King's Dark Tower Series and am in the middle of Wizard and Glass. This is such a good series and I can't stop reading it!! I just read my favorite line of any book ever (maybe I shouldn't say that just yet). Susan and Roland are in love and she says to him "If you love me then love me". To which he responds "Aye lady I will". Wow - I told Erik he has to say that to me but I'm not sure he'll comply.
2. I made baked alaska for the first time. It is cake, ice cream and meringe topping. You bake it for a few minutes at 425 which doesn't actually melt the ice cream. It was yummy.
3. Jenna has been obsessed with washing. She spent about an hour today washing her hands. I hope she doesn't have some form of OCD.
4. It's sunny and 70 outside - perfect weather!
5. I got 52 on Quiddler because I lost the CL but I made the words trashy and drool :)

Kumbaya

Last weekend we went camping with the Masts. It was Jenna's first time camping and sleeping in a tent. We all had a great time! It was hot during the day but cooled off significantly at night and was perfect camping weather. We made a fire, ate smores, played games by a lantern and had an excellent time! Until 3:30am when Jenna started screaming at the top of her lungs. We put her in the sleeping bag with us but didn't get her calmed down until 5am. She did end up going to sleep though and the rest of the night was uneventful.

She loved saying "tent" and "camp". We bought a three room tent with the side rooms big enough to hold a pack and play. So Jenna slept in one room with the pack and play and we slept in the other section. You could zip up the room also so she couldn't see us.

I've uploaded some pictures of our trip. It was great fun! This upcoming weekend Erik and I will celebrate our 9 year anniversary by going to Niagara Falls sans Jenna! She will be staying with my parents for the weekend while we sleep...I mean spend a fun fill weekend in Niagara Falls. I'm so excited for this trip and have been for a long time. It will be our first trip without Jenna and her first overnight trip away from us. I've been telling her all week that this is going to happen. Hopefully she'll remember.

These next few weeks will be very busy for me as I'm auditing two courses at Wright State. I'm taking Algorithms for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Computation. Auditing means that I will not receive credit but I still attend class and do the work (if I so choose). That coupled with the three courses I am teaching and my research is making me busy. However I still have plenty of time to go camping and to Niagara Falls :).

Today I got 64 on Quiddler since I lost the D and R. Not a good showing today as the min score was 82.

Go Bucks!!

Go Bucks

On Saturday the OSU buckeyes started out the season winning their first game against Northern Illinois. Erik and my dad went to the game together while Jenna, Mom and I stayed home. Mom made pork and saurkraut, pig in the blanket, and masked potatos. I wish I could waft the smell of that cooking through the computer. I LOVE IT! Every time my mom makes it, Erik complains about the smell and tells me that some towns have outlawed cooking cabbage. To which my response is "so what - Powell hasn't outlawed it!" I also made buckeyes and we had our own little buckeye. Here are two pictures of Jenna wearing her OSU cheerleader outfit. The outfit is pink (clashes with OSU scarlet???) but still cute. When we say "OSU Go Bucks" to Jenna, she will raise her hands to indicate a touchdown. This is incredibly cute and I have included a picture.


Erik flew to Boston yesterday for work. He flew a little early so he could go to a Red Sox game. However he ended up being not so early as he had difficulty navigating through Boston. Erik has a great sense of direction. He managed to find his hotel and Fenway Park. If it were me I'd still be driving around those crazy streets. It was good he went to the game since the Red Sox won in the 10th inning! It was a good game. However Erik didn't call until 11:15pm. I was just about to call the hotel since I hadn't heard from him all day. I need to calm my anxious heart!!

Jenna and I went to Canton to see my parents yesterday. She was a total ham. She knows when she's cute and she flaunts it. What a stinker!!

This weekend we will take her camping for the first time. Just one night - Saturday - Sunday. We'll put her in the pack and play in a tent. Hopefully she'll sleep okay even though there will be outside noise. This will certainly be a test!!

53 was my score today. The best people got 103. They beat me by 50 pts!!