Our Church Festival

Our new church had a festival potluck with music, games and a fire truck! Jenna met another girl named Jenna born Dec. 2004 so only a month older than my Jenna. Here is a picture of the Jenna's dancing. My Jenna doesn't look all that happy. I also uploaded a picture of Jenna in the fire truck. Even though she doesn't look happy in any of these pictures, I think she had a great time!

Yesterday Jenna wanted to play with her potty. I left her alone for a few minutes and noticed that all the toilet paper was gone from the roll and it was all in her potty. Well at least she knows what to do with it (sort of).

In other news:

1. The Frontiers in Education conference at which I'll be presenting my Bioinformatics paper is Oct. 10-13 and I'm all registered! Yea!!
2. Mom is taking Jenna for three days so Erik and I can go out on a date for our anniversary. We are even talking about seeing a movie!
3. Erik bought me a fancy 5 star chef's knife for our anniversary (and I bought him a sword). We bought each other sharp implements!
4. Erik is no longer working from home so I'm not going to see him much - considering I work nights!
5. I am currently reading the King in the Window by Adam Gopnik and I really like it! David said I would but I ignored him :) (who doesn't?)
6. We saw Pan's Labryinth and that is going to be very high on my movie list (if I ever reorder it). That was an excellent movie!
7. I got 79 on Quiddler today - that was just the minimum. At least I wasn't negative.
8. The previous list item was the only one without an exclamation point!
   
   

D&D fun!

This weekend we spent Saturday creating dungeons and dragons characters. I've never played before and as my first experience, it was a lot of fun. Jon, the dungeon master had notebooks and snacks for everyone. He and his wife Michelle made bags with cheese wheels, beef jerky, homemade loaves of bread and apples. Just what you need on a trek through the wilderness. Hello!!! Where's the chocolate :).
We made characters and I made a Cleric named Christabel. I took the name from the Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind and I liked it. A cleric is a healer. So I'll be helping people instead of hurting them - I guess. Here are all the characters (hopefully spelled correctly!):

• Erik = Rogue named Caed
• Gina = Cleric named Christabel
• Michelle C. = Monk named Kieryn
• Mike = Ranger named Tiraxyss (an extra s for emphasis!)
• Jen = Druid named Erith (I think!)
• Aaron = Wizard named Kesal
• Michelle H. = Barbarian named Drusan
• Matt = Cleric named Bogg (the extra g is also for emphasis)

So this should be a good group. We only had one combat but I can tell it's going to be fun. We scheduled another meeting and a trip to the Renaissance Fair. I can't wait! During all of this (and this was all day), Jenna was very good. In fact, she plastered herself with stickers. I am not sure why she loves stickers so much but she does. I have included a picture of her plastered with stickers. She is so cute.

Today as I turned my back to make no bake cookies I noticed all my kitchen towels were gone. I found Jenna on the floor with the kitchen towels. They had become beds for her aminals (no I did not spell it wrong, that's how she says it). Share bear, Tenderheart bear and tigger were all taking naps. How nice!

I got 71 points today at quiddler and was stuck with the letter W, but I got to make the word gyp. I didn't even know that was a word!

Scrabble for me too

Since everyone else was doing it..

Pholph's Scrabble Generator My Scrabble© Score is: 22. What is your score? Get it here.

My scrabble score is really low! Erik's is 33. Jenna's score is 30. Sarah's name is 26 and Matthew's is 43. So I have the lowest score in our family. We need to have a third child with a really short name. Sounds like a great idea!!

For our 10th anniversary I got Erik an Erik the Red Viking Sword. Here is a picture of him. He really likes it and even woke me up from my nap by putting the sword to my throat (very nice way to wake up!).

I got 51 on Quiddler today - miserable!!

A Lifetime of Fitness

On Monday Erik and I finally decided to join a Health club. We joined Lifetime Fitness which is just down the road. It is outrageously priced but we've talked about ways to offset the cost and health is important. I went to water aerobics on Tuesday and Wednesday. I thought - it's in the water, it can't be that hard. Yea right. Now my arms can't move and I'm barely able to type this post.

Erik's parents have now moved to Morgantown. yea!! They are much closer to us now and we are excited to leave Jenna with them for a few days....I mean we are excited to visit them. We are planning a trip later in August.

Anyway, because I LOVE lists, I've made a list of my favorite worship songs (in order):
1. Before the Throne of God Above
2. Arms of Love
3. Your Beloved
4. I love you, Lord
5. Did you Feel the Mountains Tremble
6. Hold me Jesus
7. Indescribable
8. Be thou my vision
9. Hungry
10. God of Wonders
11. If we are the body
12. Lord, reign in me
13. Here I am to worship
14. Better is one day
15. Awesome God
16. Blessed be your name
17. What if His people prayed
18. We will dance
19. Shout to the Lord
20. Sometimes by step

Today I got only 50 points on Quiddler but I couldn't make a word out of the Q. I did get a 6 letter word - loader. yea!

hot hot hot

It has been very hot lately! So hot we all are afraid we will melt. I pulled out the sprinkler to see what Jenna would think of it. She walked up to it and put her fingers in it, then decided that she didn't want the water to be on her head. You can see the before and after pictures here :).

I'm not sure when I should teach Jenna not to play with her food. Every day the spoon from her cereal becomes Cinderella and starts dancing with her sippy cup (the prince). She wants me to fashion dresses out of napkins for the spoon - just so it can look spiffy for the ball. While this is incredibly cute, I'm thinking it's not good manners and maybe I should be teaching manners, right? Here's a picture of Jenna with half a banana in her milk. The banana was taking swimming lessons. Obviously!!!

On that note, Jenna has been taking swimming lessons every Monday. She absolutely loves them and when I mention swimming lessons she is very cooperative (lets me change her diaper and remove bananas from her milk without protest). We have 3 more weeks of swimming lessons and I expect her to be a champion swimmer by the end.

I gave a test tonight in class and since giving a test is a little boring. I decided to come up with a list of my favorite nuts. Nuts are so yummy and full of vitamins and minerals. I feel like I should eat them all the time. here is my ordered list:

1. Cashews
2. Pecans
3. Pistachios
4. Peanuts
5. Hazelnuts
6. Almonds
7. Walnuts
8. Macadamia nuts
9. Pine nuts
10. Brazil nuts

If I've forgotten any nuts let me know. I can rank them. Although if I've forgotten them they probably won't be very high.

Later I should rank the Harry Potter books. #7 is my favorite!!!

Today I got 79 points on Quiddler today. Rather rotten!