Christmas pics

Now that we are halfway through January, I thought I'd post some pictures from Christmas. I have the obligatory picture of the pediatrician (David) holding my two daughters in crazy ways. The picture of the girls with their new nightgowns sewn by Grandma Cooper, Jenna with her new fairytale ponies (a highly sought after gift), Jenna with the Tigger that Grandma also sewed (although Sarah plays with it all the time), and my I Love Spreadsheets shirt. This shirt is completely awesome. My husband is even more awesome for getting it for me!


We loved having family over and forced David and Becca to play games with us all the time. Sarah loves the name "Becca" and even when I show her pictures of Uncle David she calls him "Becca".

In other news:

1. Erik and I will be going to the Ohio Right to Life banquet March 5. The speaker is Sarah Palin! That should be exciting. To get ready for the banquet I'm reading her new book Going Rogue.
2. We bought unfinished bunk beds for the girls. Erik is in the middle of painting them now and in a week or two we should have them in Jenna's room. We will be moving Sarah into Jenna's room to consolidate the children. They may fight over who gets the top bunk!
3. I'm taking a photoshop class this semester to improve my photoshop skills. Why you ask? I already have mad skills! Well I still need to improve....a lot.
4. During my two week break I sat on the couch basically the entire time. I watched all 6 Star Wars movies and read the Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman. That trilogy was well written and exciting with lots of plot twists. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to reading more of Friedman's books.
5. Erik and I have been playing squash a lot lately since I'm feeling better. My dexterity was not what it once was. My armor class really stinks now (D&D reference).
6. This semester I'm only teaching two nights a week. It is so awesome! Of course next semester I'm teaching 4 nights a week and am not looking forward to it (Erik reminds me the Bible says "do everything without grumbling or complaining" - grumble, grumble, grumble).
7. 73 points on quiddler today - I made the word "linking" a 10 letter word!
   
   
   
   
   

My 15 Favorite Things of 2009

I've compiled a list of my favorite things of 2009. It was a great year and I'd like to commemorate it with this awesome list.

1. Favorite Book of 2009: The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson. This was one of those books that you cheer out loud when reading (yes - I do that).
2. Favorite Meal of 2009: buffet at the Monte Carlo in Las Vegas. Buffets are awesome to me since I love variety. This buffet was high quality, and delicious, and I stuffed myself silly. Next time I go to Vegas I'd like to try more buffets!
3. Favorite Blood type of 2009: A+. Who wouldn't want A+ as their blood type? It is an awesome blood type and definitely the best one of 2009.
4. Favorite goal met of 2009: finishing my PhD. I worked on my PhD since 2001 and to finally finish was so amazing. I had many people say to me they didn't think I would (including my husband and advisor) since I had two kids but I proved them wrong!
5. Favorite new technology I started using in 2009: Twitter. I like to tweet and read others tweets. Mostly I read what other people say and it is inspiring and fun. Erik made me include this really long title since he said Twitter was not introduced in 2009.
6. Favorite song of 2009: Mighty to Save by Michael W. Smith. I sing this song all the time. It's so catchy!
7. Favorite binary digit of 2009: 1. While 0 comes in as a close second, 1 is considered on (generally) and I'd rather be on than off.
8. Favorite movie of 2009: Avatar. I saw three movies in the theater in 2009 and of those Avatar was definitely the best. I'm hoping to take Jenna to her first movie this weekend for her birthday: The Princess and the Frog. I don't think it will be better than Avatar.
9. Favorite gift of 2009: Baby 3! This baby is a gift from God and I'm so happy to have 3 kids. When I told one of my friends I was pregnant, her first response was "you won!". I love it :).
10. Favorite TV show of 2009: The Next Iron Chef. This show featured excellent chefs who created new exciting meals every week for judges to test. Then a chef was eliminated every week until someone became the Next Iron Chef. Now he'll be competing this Sunday - I can't wait!
11. Favorite answered prayer of 2009: Jenna's preschool teacher became pregnant after 2 years of infertility treatments. I prayed with her at Jenna's school. It was an exciting, tearful time to hear that she was pregnant. Her baby girl is due any day now!
12. Favorite milk of 2009: 2% milk. We moved from whole milk to 2% even though Sarah is still in the 3rd percentile for weight (her 2 yr appt was the 5th - she's such a peanut). I was happy with the change. I felt drinking whole milk was like sludge.
13. Favorite camping trip of 2009: Cross Creek Camping trip June 26 - June 28. This camp ground is close, the pool is huge and wonderful, and there are a lot of activities. Whenever we start camping again, we are going to go back here. It might replace Buckeye Lake as our favorite (especially since it is cheaper!).
14. Favorite vacation of 2009: Our family trip to Florida in August. We stayed at a little paradise in Florida with a hot tub and heated pool. It was an amazing time and we can't wait to go back, although we will have to wait as we probably shouldn't go next year close to my due date.
15. Favorite Bible verse of 2009: Psalm 19:14 "May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer." This verse has become a daily prayer for me. Note: this is not my favorite Bible verse.

54 points on Quiddler today - terrible showing.

The House

I was going to post a nice message about Christmas with cute pictures of the girls and talk about how wonderful a time we had and the great relaxing break we had but no. No, I thought I'd disclose something a lot more personal.

For quite some time I've had dreams about a particular house. It is always the same house even though I may dream about different rooms or the driveway or different parts of the house. I had one such dream the other night.

I was in the kitchen and with me was an older man in a wheelchair. I talked to him as though we were familiar but not in a respectful familiar way, rather in a familiar contemptful way. I looked over in the corner and saw a large spider in its web with a huge worm/snake still wiggling and moving that would soon be a meal for the spider. Close by was another spider as well. Ugh! I thought. I'll have to get Erik to call terminix to get all these bugs out of here.

I turned to the man in the wheelchair and said (rather disdainfully) "why do you stay here with all these bugs?" He just turned away from me and didn't answer.

When I woke up I had the usual thought that someday we would own this house. Why else would I keep dreaming about it? Then it hit me.

It's my heart.

Why is my heart filled with bugs? Is the man in the wheelchair God? Why was I so disdainful to him and limiting him by putting him in a wheelchair? What a yucky heart I have!

I didn't understand this. I thought I was doing well. I wasn't struggling with some sin like sometimes in my life, I was journaling every day and while I had stopped fasting and praying at the abortion clinic, I actually felt that God released me from that for this season in my life. Why would my heart be so yucky?

Ohhh. Pride.

Pride is a sin that you don't think about. It is the sin that says you don't need God - you're doing fine on your own. It's the sin that creeps up on you.

Ben Franklin wrote "There is perhaps no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive. Even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my humility."

So wise and so true.

"May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" ~Gal 6:14

N names

Today was our second day sans children and it was a very relaxing day. We spent $700 to fix the Explorer but that was the only place we went today. We cleaned the house (super exciting!) and I sat on the couch and watched movies and finished up changes to my courses for next semester.

One useful thing Erik and I did was think of names for our baby. Our two girls have middle names that begin with N. Here is a list of names Erik thinks we should use as a middle name:

• Nektulos (the name of a forest in EQ2)
• Nektropos (castle in EQ2)
• Null ()
• Nobody (Erik thinks it would be awesome to introduce yourself as nobody)
• Necronomicon (book in stupid "Army of Darkness" movie)

Since none of these names sound normal, Erik thinks "normal" should be the middle name of our baby.

I'll keep you posted on our name possibilities.

Today I took a Pilates class at Lifetime fitness. It was exciting that I actually exercised and that I'm feeling better from this morning sickness. Saturday Erik and I even played squash - I only scored 4 points so obviously I'm a little rusty.

I also picked up the book "If God is Good" by Randy Alcorn. It is awesome with many stories that make me cry. He writes in the book that the reason most athiests do not choose to follow God is not because of science but rather because of pain and suffering. Many of them ask the question - "how can a good God allow evil and suffering in the world?" He brings up many good points explaining that an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving God could have reasons to allow suffering. Kind of like working out makes us stronger (well that was one example - he had a lot better ones).

66 points on Quiddler!

Sarah is so jokey

Sarah is over the hill. On Sunday we had a whirlwind day in Canton. We went to Amanda's graduation - congratulations Amanda! She graduated with a degree in Business from Walsh University. It was such a cute University - too bad it doesn't have a math and computer science degree program.

Then we celebrated Christmas with my family. The girls got several presents which they loved opening including mermaid barbies, clothes, a singing skirt, and guitars among other things. Sarah also received birthday gifts since we celebrated her 2nd birthday!

She's such a spitfire at 2, I can't imagine what she'll be like when she is older. Sarah wanted a pink cake and Erik decided that Jesus wanted a chocolate cake, so we'll be making a chocolate birthday cake for Jesus on Christmas Eve.

On Saturday we had a few inches of snow, so we all went outside and built this beautiful snowman. After building the snowman, I was pelted with a snowball.

Then it was on.

Erik and I threw snowballs at each other, hid around playground equipment, and used children as shields (well I guess we didn't do that last part). It was so much fun when we got inside Jenna drew a picture of us playing outside with Mommy and Daddy holding snowballs. Too bad I couldn't call up my best friend Craig to help me throw some snowballs at Erik.

In other news:

1. I finished Black Sun Rising by C.S.Friedman. Wow was it good! It was so good I immediately started on the second book in the trilogy much to Erik's dismay. This is not one of those books I read leisurely, this is a series I can't put down.
2. I also finished Bad Moon Rising by Sherrilyn Kenyon and I don't think I'll be reading any more of her work right now. It's too much for me and the writing is not as rich as authors like Friedman.


3. The girls are staying with my parents for a few days (translate = sleeping in) so Erik and I went out to dinner to J.Alexanders (YUM!) and went to see Avatar in 3D. It was AWESOME! The story, special effects, and character development were excellent in Avatar. It was good even though you were rooting against the humans.


4. I have to post this absolutely adorable video of Erik dancing with the girls. Apparently he does this a lot when I'm gone at night teaching. He puts some music on and they all dance. The girls love it!
5. I got 80 points in Quiddler but was dismayed to find that Quiddler online does not accept the word "jokey". This word is a scrabble word I played years ago that Erik, Tim and Jen did not believe was a word. However, I found it in the dictionary and learned that it is a valid word. I'm sad to learn that Quiddler online does not recognize the validity of "jokey".
   
   
   

Football players and Smorgasbords

It's been an interesting week at the Cooper household.

On Saturday, Jenna, Sarah and I went to a birthday party for Jesus at New Hope Church (Jenna's preschool). It was a huge event and we were put in a room with 3 year olds. Sarah was one of the youngest kids there. The room leader, Beth also had a daughter who was 21 months and a son who is 4 so we talked about our kids. She said her husband would be coming shortly with their daughter.

Jenna and Sarah and I were sitting in the sanctuary when her husband came in and sat down next to me. He was very tall and friendly. I talked to him quite a bit. We chatted, I sniffed Sarah's bottom, we joked about terrible twos, we ate pizza together, we did crafts at the same table, Sarah fell on him.....then I looked at his daughter's name tag. I knew that Craig Krenzel went to that church but didn't think I would be so blind as to be sitting next to him all day and not know it was him (especially since I was sniffing Sarah's diaper). I went home and searched online.

Yup. It was him.

I loved his wife! I talked to her quite a bit and she seemed like someone who could be my friend, except that she's Craig Krenzel's wife so I don't know why she'd be my friend.

Anyway, that was an interesting day. Craig Krenzel = important football player.

On Sunday our church had the Christmas smorgasbord and children's program. Jenna sang in the program and was very excited to participate. Sarah kept trying to go up there too but kids had to be at least 4. Since the smorgasbord was a buffet I planned on making a Christmas tree cake. I baked a cake in a 9x13 pan and planned to cut it out in the pretty shape of a tree. That was the plan at least. I tried flipping the cake over and then it fell apart in a million pieces. So I ate 999,999 of those pieces.

Then I got sick.

So I made chocolate peanut butter bars - a super easy recipe that I can make quickly and can lick the bowl without feeling bad since there are no raw eggs. Not that I needed to lick the bowl since I ate so much cake earlier.

Jenna woke up with a pink eye and discharge from her eye along with a runny nose (no fever). We called the doctor and now we have drops to put in her eye. I don't like when anyone puts drops in my eyes and she is just like me. She fights me when I try and put the drops in her eye. Too bad she had to miss the Christmas party at school this week.

Today Sarah decided she wanted to use the potty (this is Sarah's personality by the way). So I couldn't keep a diaper on her. She kept taking it off and would walk around with her little naked butt all over the house. She did pee on the potty today which was a very exciting step. We will see if this lasts or is just a whim.

I snapped a picture of monkey Sarah on top of the play car. Jenna asked how Sarah got up there. It's her monkey genes :).

73 points on quiddler today.

Gingerbread Nummie

It's been a long time since I've updated my blog. This is partially due to the fact that I've laid on the couch every day with morning sickness and partially due to the fact that due to my lack of enthusiasm for moving, not much is going on.

Today the girls and I decorated our annual gingerbread house. The girls both ate more of the candies than they actually decorated with but I think everyone had a good time. Sarah liked the tiny gumballs and kept saying "balls nummie" translation "these gumballs are so yummy!"

Sarah's language has exploded. She has been saying full sentences for awhile and knows 9 colors and has started to count. She talks all the time...ALL THE TIME. Jenna talks all the time...ALL THE TIME. Mommy is exhausted by all the talking. The other day, I set a timer for 5 minutes. No one was allowed to talk for that 5 minutes. It didn't last.

Peace and quiet...where art thou?

Not in a home with 2 and 4 1/2 year old girls.

In other news:

1. Our small group made dinner for the Ronald McDonald House. I've posted a picture of me and my friend Jen making quesadillas. We served the families that stay at the house and really enjoyed this service opportunity. We do like to serve at Faith Mission too but this was different since it was families rather than just men.
2. I am reading two books with virtually the same names. Bad Moon Rising by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Black Sun Rising by C.S. Friedman. Both are fantasy yet very different stories. However the names are close so that is exciting to me.
3. Our church is starting a Dave Ramsey course for 13 weeks called Financial Peace University. Erik is thinking of going. I'm thinking of not going. I don't think much about finances - that's Erik's job. He doesn't think about showering and laundry - apparently that's my job.
4. I refuse to wear maternity clothes in the first trimester even though I'm ballooning up with this pregnancy. All my clothes are tight and I look like I'm about 20 weeks pregnant. I'm not sure how I'll survive through this pregnancy.
5. 86 points on Quiddler!

Iron Chef Battle: Missy vs. Amanda

On Saturday we had another Iron Chef battle in kitchen stadium (our house). Erik and I chose the secret ingredient: cheddar cheese. Missy and Amanda were the iron chefs and I was paired with Missy as her sous chef and Erik was Amanda's sous chef. We had 1 hour to create 3 dishes apiece featuring the secret ingredient.


Iron Chef Amanda created:

1. Japanese shrimp dip. This dish had several components to it. The shrimp was breaded in panko breading and fried. A spicy and complex cheddar cheese dip was created to dip the shrimp in. The dip was really delicious. She also had sushi for us to dip in the cheese - yum!
2. Not your original mac and cheese. Her second dish was a mac and cheese dish with chunks of chicken and green onions. It had 4 different kinds of cheese in it and melted in your mouth!
3. Apples and cheese play tic tac toe. Apples and cheddar cheese were cut in neat squares and little sandwiches were created out of them. They were sitting in a honey lemon sauce too. A very cute presentation.

Iron Chef Missy created:

1. Deconstructed quesadilla. This dish required you to create your own quesadilla. She made a cheddar cheese sauce and had a bowl of green onions next to a bowl of fresh tomatoes. You could create your own quesadillas on tortilla chips. The sauce was excellent!
2. Proshrimp white cheddar lasagna. Missy made a white cheddar cheese sauce with onions, garlic, prosciutto, and shrimp. She also cooked lasagna noodles and layered them with the cheese sauce and baked it for half an hour. This was superb and definitely creative.
3. Cheddar apple tarts. These tarts consisted of a pie crust with cheddar cheese and sauteed apples as the filling. Whip cream and caramel sauce on top made them much better.

This was a wonderful iron chef competition and we all had a lot of fun. It was Missy and Amanda's first time as iron chefs. and they performed spectacularly.

The score was very close. Amanda earned 49.67 points and Missy earned 49 points. So Amanda won by 0.67 points! A very close iron chef - congratulations Amanda! Missy has already challenged her to a rematch.

58 points on quiddler today.

Gina's Guide to Getting Pregnant

Gina's Guide to Getting Pregnant

1. Rejoin the health club you quit earlier this year.
2. Start running 2 miles three times a week to get back in shape
3. Buy a really expensive polar heart rate monitor to help you get back in shape
4. Renew your KOA camping membership since you'll be doing a lot of camping next year.
5. Give away most of your baby clothes and baby items since you won't be needing them.
6. Decide to stick with the number of kids you currently have.
7. Start writing a paper for a conference next year.
8. Plan to go on vacation with my family next year
9. Decide that I want a third child before I turn 35 (got pregnant and my due date is - of course! my 35th birthday)
10. Listen and accept Erik's mantra "happy wife, happy life".

Erik read the list and said "those aren't the things that got you pregnant."

My princesses

I can't believe it is finally here. Saturday I graduate from Wright State. I tried on my cap and gown (all $780 worth of it!) to see how it looked. What do you think? Sharp huh! I think my masters cap and gown was like $60. Really, why the big price difference here?

So our dishwasher broke today. Right before everyone is coming over for my graduation and a week and a half before Thanksgiving. Bummer. And that dishwasher was only 5 years old. I said to Erik, we just bought it - it certainly must still be under warranty. That's when we realized that "just bought it" means 5 years ago. Where does time go?

A few shameless plugs of my adorable girls. The girls were baking cookies with me on Monday and I snapped a picture of them. They are two adorable sous chefs!

I also snapped this video of the girls yelling "surprise" as they jump out from behind the couch. Sarah's surprise sounds more like "pie". For awhile I thought she was saying pie. Really Sarah, how hungry can you be?

They also want to dance with Daddy at every opportunity. He is always the king and they are the princesses. Of course the queen just sits on the couch so the queen can become a fat bottomed girl. Check out that pun. Booyah!

On that note, I only got 34 points on Quiddler today because ith is not a word. I did that before too. It sounds so much like a word to me!

The Gathering Storm

While the title "The Gathering Storm" could most certainly refer to Sarah, I'm actually referring to the new Robert Jordan/ Brandon Sanderson book in the Wheel of Time series. I recently finished this book and loved it! Brandon was true to the characters and the story moved along nicely. There were two awesome endings that I actually cheered about. I won't give any spoilers away, but I loved the book. I'd put it as one of the top in the entire series. Now that I'm finished with the book, I can pay attention to my family again.

We have been giving Jenna an allowance for the last several weeks and she has finally earned enough to buy this stuffed unicorn she wanted. So we took a picture of her with her new unicorn named "Pinky". Of course now that she bought the thing she wanted, she doesn't want to do her chores. She knew she was trying to earn the unicorn and now that she has the unicorn who needs an allowance?

Erik was gone all last week in Boston at his new job. He loves his new job especially since he got a phone with internet on it *jealous*. He also got a nice new laptop and can work from home. It's really an awesome job. Upon his arrival home I made him a key lime pie as that is what he asked for. I also made yellow cupcakes with cookie dough in the middle topped with a chocolate buttercream frosting I made. Delicious! That coupled with all the candy I've eaten lately has made me want to go back to the love handler!

Today I made the words "voting" and "quietly" on quiddler. Immediately I was kicked out because there were no more letters that could be made into a word. Bummer. So I only got 65 today.

Trick or Treat!

I'm a little worried. Sarah has discovered that she is cute and can use her cuteness to her advantage. Can someone who is 22 months old be manipulative? I would think not but evidence supports the opposite conclusion. Tonight was Beggar's Night (trick-or-treat). Jenna was dressed as Sleeping Beauty and Sarah was Little Red Riding Hood. They were both adorable. Even so, Jenna did not use her cuteness to obtain extra candy at neighbor's houses like Sarah did. This is a little disturbing. Sarah came home with more than Jenna and mostly M&Ms which she calls "nummy".

On Wednesday I went to the doctor because I had been sick for the past couple of days. It was getting so bad that for three days I just laid on the couch and let the girls watch TV (Jenna thought it was great). The doctor listened to my symptoms and said she thought I had H1N1. Bummer. I told my deans that I probably wouldn't be able to go to work that night and they said they didn't want me to go in Thursday either. That was kind of a bummer since I don't like to miss class. It was good though because I really couldn't do anything but lay on the couch anyway.

In other news:

1. One of the fantasy blogs I read has talked quite a bit about Sherrilyn Kenyon. So I picked up Acheron at the library. This book is so interesting. It is fantasy set in 9548 B.C. and is about Atlantian gods. Most fantasy is set in a medieval setting, this is more interesting for the setting and the writing is compelling. I'll definitely read more of her work.
2. The Gathering Storm by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson arrived at my door today. So I'll be occupied for the next few days ;).
3. Erik starts his new job on Monday - Yea! I'm so excited for him and he is just as excited.
4. 74 points in Quiddler today and ith was not a word. "ith" is definitely a word! When you are referring to a series and talking about the ith item in the series you would use that word. I need to take this up with Quiddler.
   
   

Favorite Programming Language

Per Joel's request - I have created my list of favorite programming languages! I only included programming languages that I have programmed in - not languages like Ruby on Rails even though that would so be on my list if I included everything.

1. Perl. Oh perl how I love thee... let me $count the ways. Perl is loosely typed. Named after Matthew 13:45-46 (so it's God's language). It is a perfect language for all things bioinformatics. I can do so many things so quickly in perl. It's flexible and quick. Here's a line of code from the final exam I gave in my BMI courses to extract data from a microarray file: ($line=~ m/(\w+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)\s+(\d+)/). Now that's good stuff.
2. SQL. Whether you are purist and pronounce it "essquel" or someone who goes with the flow and pronounces it "sequel", SQL is a great language for manipulating databases. I've grown to love this language as I teach it all the time. It's easy to use and just makes sense.
3. VBA. Visual Basic for Applications is a programming language you can use to write macros in Excel. This is one of my favorite things ever! Every semester students bring spreadsheets they need help with and I write macros for them to make life easier. Such a fun language.
4. HTML. This is such an easy versatile language, what's not to like? In about half an hour I can teach anyone how to program in HTML. It's easy and fun.
5. ASP. NET. I love to create websites with database backends. This you can do easily with ASP.NET. I've created several for work and hope to do one soon for PDHC.
6. Matlab. I've always loved Matlab. I wish I could work with it more. How else can you do linear algebra so fast! Matlab has a bioinformatics toolbox that we used in the BMI courses and I miss it.
7. VB.NET. The .NET platform is leaps and bounds better than VB6. Unfortunately I was too lazy to convert many of my programs to VB.NET so I still have some in VB6. Even so, I love VB.NET
8. Java. I wrote my entire genetic algorithm for my research in Java so it should definitely be on the list. While I wrote a lot of classes and all that, I prefer the lazy programming of perl.
9. C++. Before Java I used a lot of C++ in my programming courses. It was actually difficult to move from C++ to Java for my research because I was so used to C++. However I've come to like Java more. Still C++ holds a special place in my heart.
10. Basic. When I was 10 years old I wrote my first program in Basic and never looked back. It showed me a world of working with computers that I knew I would always enjoy.

What are your favorite programming languages?

Falling leaves

Fall is upon us and with fall comes leaves. Lots and lots of leaves. The girls love to play in the leaves in our backyard so I rake them up only to have them jumped in and scattered all over the backyard.


Fabulous and fun!

I wanted to get a picture of the burning bush by our driveway. It is such a beautiful red but this picture does not capture it. I love to look at it - a burst of color.

Last Thursday we went to a pumpkin patch with a corn maze, real hayride (yes I had hay in my hair!) and animals for the kids to pet. After the hayride we had apple cider and popcorn. I gave the girls the popcorn in the car because we had to leave early since I had to give a final that night. When we got home, I was not prepared for the mess. Apparently it's a bad idea to give little girls popcorn to spread all over the car.


I've been looking forward to the end of this semester. With two new classes I was really stretched but they went really well. Now this semester I'm teaching math and basic computer applications. Much easier!


In other news:

1. We are all SICK! I think I might have the flu. My whole body hurts and my head feels woozy (if that's a word). However we know God is protecting us. Sarah woke up saying "Jesus". Erik asked her questions about Jesus. She said "yes" that Jesus was in her room last night helping her feel better. So cute! Of course when we tried to get a video she didn't cooperate that much. Check it out here.
2. We have had fabulous attendance at our Bible study since I've been making dinner. In fact, one week we ran out of food! This week I'm making 3 meatloafs, mashed potatoes, homemade dinner rolls, and sesame green beans. I hope I have enough.
3. Erik starts his new job Nov. 2. We are both so excited! He is going there (Boston) for a week to train for his new job.
4. The same day he starts his new job, I get to sub a Photoshop class! I'm going to use some of my examples (especially my Fremen eyes picture) to show them the awesome things you can do with Photoshop.
5. Speaking of Fremen, I just started reading Children of Dune by Frank Herbert. I read Dune and Dune Messiah many years ago but hadn't continued the series. I don't know why I didn't continue the series. I love the world of Dune.
6. I also just finished A Merry Heart by Wanda Brunstetter. This book was okay. It was a book about an Amish woman who was jilted in love. It's hard to go from Children of Dune to A Merry Heart. I don't know why I mix genres so much.
7. 46 on Quiddler today. I really have to remember not to use all my U's when a Q might show up.

Fall Festival

On Saturday we went to the Fall Festival and chili cook off at church. There was a "turtle lady" there who had turtles and snakes for kids to pet and watch walk around the church. Sarah tried to climb in the cage with the turtles.

I tried 8 different chilis which was wonderful! I love chili but do not make it often since Erik is not such a fan. I was stuffed! There was a bouncy house and hay ride at the fall festival too. Jenna has also made some good friends. You can see her here with Paige (left) and Kate (right). These girls also come to our Tuesday home group and Jenna really likes them. Jenna spent the entire night holding hands with Paige. I'm so glad she has found some good friends! Towards the end of the evening, our whole family was roasting marshmallows outside by the bonfire, but Jenna and I decided to come in. After about half an hour Erik and Sarah came in and Sarah had a marshmallow in her mouth just as you can see in the picture. I thought it was the same marshmallow (yucky). However, Erik said she ate tons of marshmallows while she was out there. Great. I've won mother of the year this time! Sugar overload.

Joel has requested me to write a list of my favorite programming languages. I'm working on such a list right now. So you can sit on the edge of your seat waiting for my awesome list (yes awesome it will be!)

We are planning on going to the Fabulous Food Show in Cleveland the weekend of Nov. 13-15. I'm so excited about this! Celebrity chefs will be there along with food tasting and cooking demonstrations. This should be completely awesome.

Now you might wonder why I have flexed my photoshop skills again with my picture. My highlights had grown out to the point that half my hair was brown and half was orange, so I decided to color it with Revlon's natural dark brown/black. Well it is mostly black. I am not a big fan of my hair as it is black as night (which apparently helps me fit the role of snow white according to Jenna). However, I noticed that Megan Fox has dark hair/ almost black. So I wanted to see if I looked much like Megan Fox now. My brown eyes may have gotten in the way so I colored them blue. Then my nose was much bigger than hers so I shrunk it a little. What do you think? Am I a spitting image of the Transformers star?

82 points on Quiddler today and I got to make the word "raver". Tonight I also beat Erik at squash - yipee!

Port: A physical interface between a computer and a peripheral device

As I was sitting by the fire on our camping trip, rather than reflecting on the beautiful night or reclining in a prayerful repose, I came up with a new top ten list! Yipee! Just what you wanted to hear!
This top ten list will be sure to interest anyone who has the bad luck to stumble upon it.
I've made a list of my top ten favorite computer ports.

1. Ultra Wide SCSI - yes! Who wouldn't pick this one as number one! At my old job I had an external hard drive that connected with a 1 nanometer cable (not really that short it just seemed like it) to an ultra wide scsi port on my SGI. Awesome stuff.
2. USB - I know this would be most people's favorite port (those people who are actually cool enough to create a list of their favorite ports!). This port is so versatile - I think I might even use it to do my laundry. It can do almost anything! Throw out your floppies and zip drives - USB drives are way better!
3. Firewire - I'm just picking this one because of the name. I've never used firewire, but if I was a port I'd want to be called firewire. Sometimes it's all in the name. For example, I was talking to Erik about Megan Fox. I said that I think everyone thinks she is so pretty because her last name is Fox. Ummm.... yea. I think those are Erik's exact words but his facial expressions told me that sometimes it is not just the name.
4. Ethernet port - This port deserves high recognition. It connects computers together so they can pass data and information (school teacher definition mode). In my computer communications course in grad school we never called it an ethernet cable or a cat-5 cable, always twisted pair wire. I guess I also call adhesive bandages, band-aids. I'm a little crazy like that.
5. DVI - This port just looks cool with its neat set of pins. When we got our first monitor with DVI I thought there was something wrong with it, like some of the pins got eaten. Half eaten ports are always tops in my book.
6. PS/2 - When hooking up my computer in college, I loved the color coded PS/2 ports for my mouse and keyboard. They are also somewhat round and round ports have really gotten the shaft! lately.
7. Video port - Since I connect my laptop to an LCD projector for my lectures, I just have to love the video port. It's nice to be able to project my screen so everyone in the class can see, even when I forget to turn off my outlook updates. Fabulous!
8. Parallel port - I liked being able to attach my printer to my parallel port. Again it has a lot of pins which makes it more attractive than the serial port. And serial ports always make me think of lucky charms.
9. Midi port - This is a musical port that allows computers, synthesizers, and keyboards to communicate. How cool that the computer likes music too! Maybe I can get it hooked on my contemporary Christian station.
10. Serial port - I mentioned earlier that I like parallel ports better than serial ports but it doesn't mean I don't like serial ports! My mouse used to connect with a serial port before the much more awesome PS/2 port.

Well that's my list. I didn't think through all of the possiblities of ports and Erik wouldn't let me put coaxial cable on there (even though that is a totally rockin' port) because he said it didn't count as a computer port. I wonder if there are others that might blur the lines...

75 points on quiddler today and herm is a word!

Monster ball

We went on our last camping trip of the season this weekend. We went to Buckeye Lake for their Monster Ball. On Saturday the girls painted pumpkins and entered them in a contest (they didn't win). We played in the sand and the jumping pillow Buckeye Lake KOA has. While this KOA is expensive we like it quite a bit. So we decided to renew our KOA membership (it gives you a discount on camping).

At 5pm we rode a fire truck and then a wagon. The girls had a great time on both. Then they changed into costumes: Jenna = snow white, Sarah = little red riding hood and trick or treated at the campground. This resulted in a lot of candy and important disucssions as to the order of eating candy. Erik thinks the best candy should be eaten last. I think the best candy should be eaten first and maybe never eat the other candy. I came up with a tier system for candy:

• Tier 1: reeces cups, kit kat, butterfinger, mr. goodbar, nestle crunch (basically yummy chocolate candy bars)
• Tier 2: snickers, milky way, three musketeers (still yummy)
• Tier 3: plain chocolate, milk duds, whoppers (good - not great)
• Tier 4: nerds, tootsie roll lollipops (I guess I'll eat it)
• Tier 5:runts, sweet tarts, tootsie rolls (not tempting at all)
• Tier 6: laffy taffy, dum dums, hard candy, pixie sticks (might get *accidently* thrown away)
• Tier 7: black jelly beans (yuck)
  
  Erik and I had vastly different candy tiers since he likes wonka and all wonka is basically tier 4 and below.

Saturday night we put the girls to bed and sat outside by the fire. We had a nice night talking and relaxing. Sarah was warm when we put her to bed but gave her some tylenol and thought she would be fine.

At 12:30 she woke up screaming and was burning up. It burned me to touch her! I tried to get her to take more tylenol but she threw it up. She threw up milk and everything else too. On Saturday she didn't eat much but she doesn't eat much anyway so we didn't think she was that sick. I ended up being awake with her most of the night calming her.

Then I decided we were leaving in the middle of the night. Since I have the best husband ever, we packed up in the middle of the night and left the campground. At home I just held her and gave her a bath. She cooled down some but is still sick. Keep praying for her.

On the ride home, Erik = awesome father. Erik decided that instead of listening to rock music on the radio, he is going to listen to the River when the girls are in the car with him. SCORE! He wants them to hear and repeat good Christian lyrics. Mwaahahaha....I will soon turn everyone to listening to my contemporary Christian music!

88 points today on quiddler. No bonuses!

Jesus at Ren Fest?

Today we went to the Renaissance Festival and had a fabulous time as usual! Jenna rode several rides and both girls rode ponies. We ate medieval food, watched the Mudd show and jousting, and enjoyed the general atmosphere. When we were at the pirate show, Sarah started saying "Jesus" and doing the sign for Jesus. I've posted a picture of the pirate - I'm not exactly sure he resembles Jesus but apparently Sarah thinks so.

This year the Renaissance Festival had a board game shop. This was new (we don't remember it last year or previous years - yes we go every year!). The shop had the usual catan and carcassone games as well as some new interesting games. We did buy Kids of Catan for Jenna to play. It looks like fun so I'm excited to play with her.

I know you were all sitting on the edge of your seats in anticipation to see how my experiment with the Love Handler turned out. 6 weeks ago I started rubbing this lotion on my belly to tone up my midsection. Well in the 6 weeks I have lost 0.5"! Wow! I was so excited. However I fasted on yesterday and the day before. So I hadn't eaten for 2 days when I measured my belly. So it probably actually didn't work. Then Erik made the comment that it probably only works on people with a little belly fat. Apparently I have too much belly fat for it to work on me :). Today I pigged out at the Ren fest so maybe I regained my 0.5".

On Tuesday at Bible study everyone ate all of my sun dried tomato chicken pasta. This week I'll be making 5 quiches. I hope it will be enough!

75 points on Quiddler today. Apparently "luver" isnt' a word. Who knew?

Iron Chef Battle: Erik vs. Gina

Battle: Erik vs. Gina with sous chefs Missy and Amanda!

This Iron Chef battle was intense considering I have never battled Erik before. It was nonstop action! Missy and Amanda chose the secret ingredient: Cashews! Yum! What a delicious secret ingredient. Who doesn't love cashews? Missy was Erik's sous chef and Amanda was my sous chef. It was so wonderful to have a sous chef to bounce ideas off of and force to chop nuts for you :). In the grueling hour, we made the following dishes.

Erik:

• Cheesey cashew chicken with cashew olives. This dish was an appetizer course. The chicken was breaded in a cashew mixture and fried. The olives were very interesting. Erik made a sweet cashew spread that he put inside the green olives. That was a creative idea.
• Cashew tacos. This was by far the most creative use of the secret ingredient. Erik mixed cashews, refried beans, and taco seasoning to create a protein filling for tacos. Then Erik and Missy created a little taco bar to make your own tacos. The cashew refried bean mixture was actually good.
• Caramel cashew tart. This was a layered phyllo dough pastry with cashews in between each layer drizzled with caramel and baked. As a finish he put ice cream and whip cream on top. While this was good, it was a little burnt.

Gina:

• Cashew fruit salad with honey lemon dressing. This was a light refreshing salad with a sweet dressing. This salad had pineapple, mandarin oranges, strawberries, blueberries, coconut, and cashews of course.
• Trio of nut scallop pasta. This dish had crushed cashews, almonds, and pecans in a light butter sauce. I also added tomatoes and basil for color however they ended up taking the spotlight where the trio of nuts should have shined. This dish was yummy, however I could have made it better without the tomato and basil.
• Cashew Caramel Creme parfaits. When Erik tasted this dish he gave me a look. The look said "you're going to win". This dish was so awesome. I mixed cream cheese, butter, cinnamon and powdered sugar and layered it with cashews, caramel, and crushed snickerdoodles. It was absolutely heavenly.
• Cashew buckeyes. For this dish I combined peanut butter, cashews, butter and powdered sugar (the usual buckeye ingredients) and dipped it in semi-sweet chocolate. Then I sprinkled some cashews on top. Amanda made little graham cracker cashew smores to balance out the plate. This was heavenly to me but after 7 heavy cashew dishes, this one was almost too much.

The score was very close. Out of a total of 40 points (since both Amanda and Missy were scoring us) I earned 32.25and Erik earned 31. I couldn't believe I was victorious! Erik was a tough competitor. This was so much fun and even Missy and Amanda enjoyed themselves.

While Missy and Amanda were here, Missy tapped with Jenna and Sarah (see picture). Missy takes tap dancing so they were able to all tap together. It was so cute.
In other exciting news, we bought a new 7' long dining room table and now we actually have a dining room instead of two playrooms. This table is so massive it takes up the whole dining room. It should be great when we have family over and for our Tuesday night Bible studies. Tomorrow I'm making sun dried tomato chicken pasta. Yum!

Today I did terrible at Quiddler 68 points and lost the z and j. Who likes those letters anyway?

Iron Chef: Pecorino Romano

You would think I would do really well with the secret ingredient of pecorino romano. It is a delicious, salty, rich cheese. But I think I dropped the ball on this one. I was overly ambitious - trying to make a pavlova but it ended up not working.

For iron chef pecorino romano, I made:

• Greek style couscous with a twist. Couscous + 20 month old daughter = disaster. Sarah got into the couscous and it was everywhere. EVERYWHERE. However the dish I made had pecorino romano cheese, tomatoes, and green olives. Which is a twist on the greek olives and feta cheese. At least that was what it was meant to be ;).


• Three cheese pizza. So this was fabulous! I shredded pecorino romano, fresh mozarella, and fresh provolone cheese on top of fresh basil, diced tomatoes, pepperoni and spices. YUM!


• Pecorino romano stuffed chicken. I put chicken in breading and then stuffed it with the cheese. I thought this would be amazing and it was good but not amazing.


• Roasted pear pavlova. So this was a flop. I made a cheese filling and roasted the pears. Then I made a meringue base for the pavlova. The ingredients separately were good but together they really didn't mesh all that well.

Erik and I both rated my iron chef as 14.25 a rather low rating considering the awesomeness of the secret ingredient.

In much more exciting news, Erik got a new job. He won't start the new job for a few weeks but he got a nice raise and will be working from home all the time. Boo-yah! This will result in much less laundry for me to do and I'll be able to see Erik more (which is actually better than doing less laundry). Since I also got a promotion and a fancy raise (I'm a senior professor now!) Erik thinks we will be able to pay the house off much faster. Even though I'd rather keep the same rate and give and spend more!

I just finished reading the Black Unicorn by Terry Brooks and it was fantastic. I'm really liking this series.

Our Bible study season has started again with the church. We will be discussing Twisting the Truth by Andy Stanley. It is a video series. This year for Bible study I've also decided to make dinner every week. I actually really enjoy it and it alleviates the stress of trying to feed families and get to our house in time. So I'm setting up a menu. This is something I enjoy.

68 on Quiddler today and I got to make the word bidden.

"Playing" Bible study

Today I babysat Nicholas for a few hours while Jenny took her other two kids to the Doctor's office. I was playing with Sarah and Jenna and Nicholas were playing Bible study. Ummm.... how many 4 and 5 year olds play Bible study :). It was so awesome to hear them playing Bible study and talking about all the things God made. Jenna and Nicholas were the leaders and me and Sarah were learning about God. It was a very educational study.





Since I got the Starbucks cards to hand out at the clinic I was sure I'd have tons of women coming to me and lots of "saves". No. Every week I come home sad that no women turn around or want to save their baby. It is disheartening but I will keep pressing on. There must be some reason God has me here.

In other news:

1. At night before bed, Erik and I started reading The Reason for God by Tim Keller. It is more of an "intellectual" book (I like putting random words in "quotes") as the author makes logical claims against some of the big skeptical issues with God (eg. what about other religions, why is there pain and suffering, etc). It's a great read!
2. I've also started reading Startide Rising by David Brin. So I can finish my list of combined Hugo and Nebula award winners. It's pretty interesting but when I have a choice, I go back to the Black Unicorn by Terry Brooks. That's a more interesting book and I'm almost finished with it.
3. I've also started reading the Host by Stephenie Meyer the author of the Twilight Series. I've heard mixed reviews on this book but I hope it will be good.
4. Erik and I are planning on doing Iron chef and playing racquetball this weekend - I have the best husband in the world!
5. 83 points on quiddler today and got to make the word "goat". Not really sure if that's news.

Iron Chef Erik: Lemons

On Monday Erik was the Iron Chef with lemons as the secret ingredient. Erik wowed me with his ideas as they were completely different than what I would have done with lemons. Erik made:

• Sweet lemon scallops. Erik cooked the scallops in olive oil and lemon juice and served them in lemon rinds with a sauce made of lemon juice and sugar. I love scallops so this was a big hit for me.


• Fruit salad with lemon. Yum!! Lemon is a fruit but is much more tart than traditional summer fruits. However Erik had the right balance of tartness and sweetness in the fruit salad. He also served the fruit salad in a scooped out watermelon.


• Lemon and sweet pepper sushi. Sushi? Erik? Huh? Yes, Erik bought sushi wrappers when he went to the store which made me curious. He even used jasmine rice that was flavored with lemon and a little sugar. Then put cut lemon rinds with peppers in the middle. Erik had never made sushi before, and this sushi was wonderful. Creative, fun, and delicious!


• Raspberry lemon tart. This tart consisted of phyllo dough baked and layered with lemons, mandarin oranges, and rapsberry jam. Yum! We couldn't get enough of it.
  

Erik rated himself a 16.125 and I rated him a 15.25. Overall it was a fabulous iron chef competition!

I was looking at the family picture we took in Florida and thought something was missing. Yes - a third baby. No I'm not pregnant, but I wanted to see what our family would be like with a third baby. I think our family looks awesome! What? Me? Photoshop? You can't tell can you?

Now that we are members of lifetime again, I met with a personal trainer who calculated my body fat percentage. It was approximately 90%. So she wanted to put me in this class for $500 that meets three times a week at 6am so I can get fit. No thank you. I'll stick with the 90% body fat.

In even more exciting news, my EQ2 character has dueled Erik's several times and he has never beat me! It's like the opposite of when we play squash :). I never thought my paladin would do so well against his awesome wizard.

76 points on quiddler today. yor is not a word. who knew?

09-09-09

Today is 09-09-09 and I feel to the nines today. Today was Jenna's first day of her pre-ballet/tap class. She has never done tap dancing before so I wasn't sure if she'd like it. She loved tap dancing! The shoes make noise - what's not to love? It was also her first day of preschool. Today we moved Jenna to a pre-k class. This class meets 4 times a week M-R in the afternoons. Apparently the class has more academic rigor (as much as preschool can have).

On Saturday, the girls and I drove up to Canton for Amanda's surprise graduation party. She got her Bachelor's degree from Walsh University - Yea! I snapped a picture as she walked in - she was SO surprised! The party was awesome too with chicken parmesan and lasagna - yum. Megan made a delicious cake and we got to see the Canton Vineyard up close.

On Monday a salesman came to our door to sell us Clean and Simple cleaner. Now this salesman was a high pressure salesman and I have trouble saying no to people even when they are very pushy. Not sure what my problem is. Anyway he tried to sell me this product for $224. Umm...no. The product did seem to clean everything well. Finally I gave in and bought one gallon for $75 (the guy would NOT leave!). After he left I told Erik that apparently this stuff is supposed to save us money, at which point Erik told me we usually buy a gallon of 409 at Sams for $10. So I decided to test Clean and Simple on my horrible carpet. As you can see, it did clean the carpet - but $75 worth?? I'm not so sure.

Right now, I'm coordinating the seating for the Pregnancy Decision Health Center banquet in October. It's been quite a task as they are expecting around 800 people. Alan Keyes is the keynote speaker so it should be an interesting event. What I've noticed as I've been registering people for the event is that of all the cities around Columbus, Powell is the most represented (not even counting me since I have to teach that night!). I find this very interesting and happy that my city is pro-life :).

Today I thought I was doing well on Quiddler until I got to this combination of letters (that apparently can make a word): C, R, B, CL, S, X, R, T

What can you make with that?

Shapes!

As Jenna and I were talking about shapes, I realized I hadn't made a list of my favorite shapes. What a huge error on my part! I left you hanging as to if I like a parallelogram or isoceles triangle more! Well the wait is up - here is my list of top 10 favorite shapes.

1. Right triangle. This made the top of my list because of the Pythagorean theorem. a^2+b^2=c^2. That's good stuff. Even better is when you have nice round numbers like 3, 4, and 5 as the lengths of the sides.
2. Circle. The circle is such a perfect shape and provides lots of jokes such as pi r square, no pi are round.
3. Figure 8 (infinity symbol). This has sentimental value to me. At the beginning of our relationship when Erik and I would drive somewhere separately, we would always sign the infinity symbol in the rearview mirror. The infinity symbol to us meant everlasting love.
4. Annulus. This is a circle within a circle and is thus a donut shape. The area for this is equal to pi*(R^2-r^2). I just like donuts.
5. Square. I always felt in life that "it's hip to be square". And have always loved the Heuy Lewis Song - it's pretty much the story of my life.
6. Isosceles trapezoid. This shape has two equal length sides and has a nice line of symmetry down the middle. Also, who doesn't like the name trapezoid.
7. Octagon. A stop sign is in the shape of an octagon so this is a shape we see all the time. It's bright and red and in your face.
8. Ellipse. This is a circle that has been stepped on. Another name for an ellipse is an oval and I think it is a perfectly good name for an ellipse. When Jenna identified an ellipse as an oval in preschool, her teacher marked her wrong (ellipse = oval in the mind of a 4 year old).
9. Isosceles triangle. This triangle has two equal sides. While not nearly as cool as the right triangle, it has a line of symmetry like the isosceles trapezoid, so it's pretty cool in my book.
10. Triquetra. What is this shape you might wonder? The triquetra is a shape that can be best described as a glorified triangle. Check out the link. It was used as an early Christian symbol to represent the Trinity. It is also used in Celtic art quite a bit. I think it is pretty.

Well here is my list of favorite shapes. You can now rest easy that you know this.

In other news:

• I have started a new semester in which I'll be teaching Mon, Thurs, Fri. Who wants to take classes on a Friday night?
• In an attempt to be completely confusing, we've decided to join Lifetime again. I really miss playing squash with Erik. So what if it's a hundred dollars a month (ouch!)
• I'm reading a new book by David Baldacci called The Winner. My Mom reads his novels and I'm enjoying it quite a bit.
• We are planning an Iron Chef competition soon so you can be on the edge of your seat waiting for it.
• Got 77 on Quiddler today. Not a very good score. I really think "denny" is a word.

A Tropical Oasis!

A tropical oasis is the best way to describe the house we stayed at last week in Orlando, Florida. It is a house provided by Missy's company: Hyland Software as a perk to the managers. What an awesome perk!! The house had 5 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, a Wii, pool table, air hockey, and an outdoor paradise! The pool was connected to a hot tub and the whole thing was enclosed in a screen to keep the massive Florida bugs out. My Mom and Dad, Missy, Me, Erik and the girls all went on this trip.

Erik and I relived our childhoods in the pool with our numerous challenges. We were shocked that the rest of the family did not want to participate! Here is a list of our challenges in the pool:

1. Waterfall challenge - this challenge involved swimming behind the waterfall in the deep end (6') without touching the wall or waterfall. It was actually quite difficult. Erik achieved 96-4 (96 successful attempts and 4 touches) and I went 97-3 so I was the victor.
2. Breath holding challenge - in this challenge, we had to see how many times we could swim the width of the pool before taking a breath. Erik went 6 laps and I only managed 5. So he was the victor.
3. Ball catching challenge - now it is getting exciting! This challenge involves jumping off of the wall and catching a beach ball mid jump and surfacing still holding the ball. This challenge we tied with 10 attempts apiece. We were just too good at that one :).
   
   So we had a blast in the pool. Besides the goofy challenges we went to Sea World ($75 per person! Yikes!) and downtown Disney. At downtown Disney we spent just as much money as Sea World on toys. Even so, Jenna absolutely loves her My Little Pony Build-a-Pony. Here we could stuff as much My Little Pony paraphenalia (crap) as we could into a little box for $18. It was a great deal and I've had more fun playing with it than Jenna has :).

57 on Quiddler today. Apparently myd is not a word??