Michigan awaits...

Jenna and Lidoli (Nicholas) love to read. I've uploaded a picture of me reading a story to Jenna, Nicholas and Scruff. They all seem very interested in it :). Jenna has been less interested in reading lately and more interested in playing and pushing things around the house (the push toy, her shopping cart, mommy and cat). See the video here.

The Buckeyes are on their way to becoming National Champions again! Yea! Go Bucks!! Jenna gets in the spirit too. Every Saturday she wears her Buckeye cheerleader outfit and so does Rachel. Jenna and Rachel are in the same class at church. I took a picture of the two last year in their cheerleader outfits as well. I can't wait for the Michigan game. It should be exciting and somewhat scary. I plan on making buckeyes and I don't think we'll go to church that Saturday night. Church may in fact, be cancelled *smile*.

My sister's birthday is the 11th and we plan on going to visit her and have lunch. We will wine and dine her. Well maybe not wine, and I guess not dine either as dining implies some sort of fancy restaurant. She isn't 30 yet....










In other news:

1. Tonight is Trick or Treat!!! I'll be sure to upload pictures of Jenna with her bucket of goodies. It's raining :(. But nothing is going to stop us!!
2. We are so excited since we sold our other house! Yea!! It had been rented the past 4 years and it is nice to have it sold now. Now we only have 1 mortgage :).
3. I am a glutton for punishment and am taking VB.NET through Keller. Yes - I know I haven't finished my PhD yet....
4. Guys gaming night is Friday. Erik is going to have his friends over to shoot each other in a virtual environment. I'll be teaching or they would get shot by me!
5. Today I got 83 points on Quiddler. There were about 30 N's though. NU apparently counts as a word :).

select * from class where mood = fun

My students - I love them! In BIS240 this session, one group decided to make t-shirts with SQL sayings on them.

Here is a picture of me (and my SQL shirt) with them. Don't we look great in our geeky shirts? We had a fun class!!

This is finals week for me and I'm swamped with work. Not only grading finals from this week (and projects and assignments) but getting ready for next semester which starts on Monday! And my online course!

Halloween is Tuesday and we are looking forward to taking bug trick or treating. We took her to Boo at the Zoo last Friday and had a good time. We went with the Jen and Jeff Wahl who have a daughter close to bug's age named Rachel. Rachel is dressed as a duck and Jenna is dressed as snow white. Here are some pictures:

Boo at the Zoo was fun even though the candy was lame (tootsie rolls, gum, etc). Hopefully she'll get better candy on Tuesday when we take her out trick or treating. It should be a fun time :).

Today was a profitable quiddler day. 62 points and I got to make the word "sty". Who doesn't like the word sty?

Pizzie

Yesterday for dinner we ate pizza from Donatos. Erik surprised me by bringing home the new Donatos Ciabatta pizza. It was good. The funnier thing was Jenna's response. She loves pizzie. Watch the video here. Pizzie was num num.

Erik bought another computer. This brings the number of computers in our house up to 8. Seems like a reasonable number of computers! Now Jenna can watch slideshow pictures of herself on any computer.

On Saturday the three of us went to Kael's birthday party. He turned three and although the birthday party was during the OSU game, Erik tagged along. The party was at a jungle gym so the kids were running all around and bouncing on trampolines. I have uploaded some pictures of Jenna enjoying the trampoline and some of the other jungle gym toys.

Saturday morning Erik went to Chainsaws and Chili at the church. He did manly things like chop down trees while eating chili. Sounds scary to me. He was chopping down trees for a retreat center they plan on using in the future on currently undeveloped land. Jenna and I stayed home and baked bread. Much less scary. We have been passing around Amish bread at work and it is delicious when you put tons of chocolate chips in :).

The buckeyes are doing well this year. We are excited that they might win the National Championship. I'll have to get more pictures of Jenna in her OSU gear. She knows the word "buckeyes"! A true Ohioan :).

Today I got a pitiful score on Quiddler: 49 but who knew that feu was a word??

Gotcha and Tuck

Jenna has created games that she plays with both Erik and me. With Erik she plays "tuck". It's a game she made up where she leans over the couch, he tucks her head under then she somersaults off of the couch. With me, she has a game she coined "gotcha". She stands on a chair or the couch and jumps into my arms. The first time she did this I said "I gotcha!". So now, she says "gotcha" when she wants to play that game. And she'll play both for a LONG time!

Today Jenna finally let me put pigtails in her hair. She took them out after about half an hour but I quickly took a picture just to prove that she did let me put pigtails in her hair. This is a good shot of those dimples too!

I finally finished Wizard and Glass - the 4th book in SK's Dark Tower Series. I can't wait to read the next one. Now I know why he is such a popular author! What great character development and imagery - he is a master storyteller!

At Devry some of the faculty and staff have been passing around Amish bread starters. I made my first batch of Amish friendship bread and put chocolate chips in it. Yum!! However since it is cinnamon sugar chocolate chip, I dont' think it counts as bread. It probably counts more as dessert. So next time I will add raisins. That is somewhat healthy.

My friend Joy asked if I had compiled a list of favorite cheeses. I realized I had not. So here is my preliminary list of favorite cheeses:

1. Baby swiss
2. Parmesan and romano
3. Stilton with candied lemon peel
4. Smoked gouda
5. Guyere (I like the name too!)

This is a very preliminary list. Joy has prompted me to try different cheeses and rate them. Maybe after I do this, I can come up with a more complete list.

I also only got 70 points on Quiddler and made me realize I don't like C's. Not many words use them!

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.

1. 

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!!

Erik doesn't look too happy that I've snapped a picture of him and Jenna eating potato chips. In New York we had a picnic and the only thing Jenna ate was potato chips. She loves them! She even likes salt and vinegar potato chips. Yuck!

Besides knowing and saying many words, Jenna also says animal sounds. She says bock bock for Chicken, baa baa for Sheep, NeeNee for horse, and woof woof for Dog. So very cute.

My mom is here now watching Jenna since I will be gone Tuesday and Wednesday and Erik is going to Indianapolis on Wed. She said we could go on a date tonight. I'm trying to decide whether to go to a movie or to go out for coffee. If we go to a movie then we'd get to see a movie :). However that would be several hours and it is finals week for me so I"m busy. We will see what we decide.

My mom also brought the scrapbook she is working on for Jenna. It is incredible. I'm so glad she is making this beautiful scrapbook - I would never be able to do something so nice.

On Friday Erik's paternal grandmother died. She lived in Maine and had lived there her whole life in a small town with railroad tracks running through her property (explains why Erik's dad loves trains!). Erik didn't go to the funeral as it was Saturday and was difficult to get a flight on such short notice.

Well I must be off as I need to put Jenna down for her nap. I got 78 today on Quiddler - no bonuses!

Jenna....not a jock

I was asked to compile a list of words that Jenna says. I thought about it for half an hour and came up with 50 words! After which she said 2 or 3 that I didn't have in the list. This was a good exercise as when I took her to the doctor for her 18 month checkup yesterday and he asked if she said at least 6 words, I could say 6 *10 words at least (not including signs!!). He said he knew she would be off the charts. Of course when we were talking about her physical development and he asked if she ran, jumped or skipped I said no. So she's smart but not good at sports? That's odd...her parents are nothing like that *smile*.
Some words Jenna says:
dress, poop, blanket, box (bok), ball, black, stroller (lolo), broccoli (bokee), trash (tratsch), cup, bib, bubbles (baba), Jenna, bread, cheese, light, bath, chip, elmo, dark, pink, pig, sweep (speep), pop, this, steps, door (doda), dirt, wheel, sock, mama, dada, nana, up, truck, cook, baby, black, bow, eyebrow (ibow), no, cake, beep, juice, duck, boink, fish, book, booboo, yogurt (ogurt)

Today I got 57 on Quiddler with no bonuses :(

New York and Lobsters

Erik, Jenna and I took a trip to New York to see Erik's parents and grandparents. We had a really good time there and Jenna was able to meet her great grandparents. She is still going through separation anxiety so she never wants to leave mommy and daddy's arms to be held by a grandparent, which is too bad as I'm sure they would have liked to hold her. She did very well on the plane and during the entire trip. She had a great time (as did we all!). Here is a picture of all the guys on the trip including Jenna (not a guy). I"ll post another one later of the ladies and maybe I'll include Erik in that one (not a lady).

In other news, I was reading about interesting animals and came across this picture on the web. It is a blue lobster. How neat is that? I love lobster and I love blue - really you can't go wrong with blue sea creatures right?

Erik said he wanted me to explain my reasoning for my favorite letters. So here goes:
1. G - the first letter of my name!
2. A - my blood type and my favorite grade!
3. C - for Cooper and chocolate and church - love them all!
4. K - the letter that makes my husband unique!
5. M - Monter - my maiden name!
6. J - Everyone who's name begins with a J is someone I like a lot!
7. Y - It's only sometimes a vowel. It's the most misunderstood letter of the alphabet. So I feel kind of sorry for it.

Today my pitiful quiddler score was 6!!! I lost 42 points since I ran out of vowels and lost the last 5 letters - ouch!

Eragon

Tonight the girls and I watched Pride and Prejudice and ate scones, devonshire cream, tea, and popcorn balls. It was so fun! The defonshire cream wasn't sweet and I thought it wouldn't be good, but on the scones it was fabulous! I'm definitely going to make it again. The scones were not sweet either but together everything was delicious!
Christine made popcorn balls and they were yummy as well. I've never made popcorn balls but I should sometime - they are yummy.

A series I'm reading (more for young adult) is coming out as a movie in December. I'm so excited :). The book is titled Eragon and the author is Christopher Paolini (a 16 year old!!). I've included a picture so you can see. It's about a boy who finds a magic egg. The egg turns out to be the last dragon who hatches for him. It's a pretty neat book and there is a second one called Eldest. Fun reading :).

I've also grown to love a new website called Refdesk. Here is the link: http://www.refdesk.com/
I like the content and layout. I've included it as one of my 15 home pages - I love firefox!!
I got a miserable 52 on Quiddler today. Erik beat me by 20 points!

Crayons

When I came home from teaching Wednesday night, I saw this blue crayon on our kitchen wall. Erik said he didn't put it there and I've never seen Scruffles draw with crayons so it must have been bug. I have uploaded this picture as evidence. While looking around, we also saw blue crayon drawn on the refrigerator and pantry doors. Her first art :).

Sunday night I'm having my girlfriends over to drink tea, eat scones with devonshire cream, and watch Pride and Prejudice. It should be a jolly good time! Here is my recipe for devonshire cream:
3 oz cream cheese
1 tablespoon sugar
pinch salt
1 cup heavy cream.
Mix all together until stiff peaks form. This is relatively fattening, however I'm making cooking light's version of scones which is low fat. So it all cancels out :).

I created a myspace page just to be extra cool. It is located at www.myspace.com/trillianstales
(stealing the same name!). I have 4 friends on it - Yea! This means I am cool.

Time for bed! Jenna and I are making chocolate cookies tomorrow!
I got 80 on Quiddler today and Erik got 88 - much better than me - but I still got the 8 letter word last time :)

Rejection :(

I submitted a paper to IEEE Transactions on Education and was rejected. I suppose that is not surprising since getting into a journal of that prestige is so difficult (1 in 1000), but I was hoping nonetheless. I'm hoping it will be a conference worthy publication. We will have to see.

I created a myspace page. It seems fitting that I attempt to become cool with a myspace page. Here is my address: http://www.myspace.com/trillianstales
I used the same name just to be extra cool.

This morning was a whirlwind. The terror plot that was uncovered in Britain was scary. It amazes me that such crazies live to kill innocent people. In fact that is their goal. Why would anyone have such a goal? I would die for my faith but as a suicide bomber? That is crazy.

On a happier note, last week we discussed our life purposes in Bible study. From prayer and contemplation, I came up with 4 adjectives that describe the person I want to become and put them to my name:
Godcentered
Innocent
Nice
Appreciative

I want to be a thankful, godly, pure, blameless, and kind woman so I made this little acrostic to help me remember.

Today I got 97 on Quiddler with a max of 77. I made the word cornered which is a 20 point bonus for 8 letter word. Rock on!!

Home improvement with Daddy

Jenna bakes with mommy and helps daddy with home improvement projects. Erik changed the locks on our front door and Jenna helped. She carried around a screwdriver all day and pointed it everywhere. She had fun helping Daddy put new locks on our front door. Here is a picture of her helping Daddy with the lock.

I also got her a shopping cart from WalMart (sorry mom it was only $9). She LOVES the shopping cart. She tears all through the house with it and pretty much leaves skid marks in her wake.

Yesterday at church we sat in the cry room the entire time. Jenna didn't really want to go to the nursery and kept screaming at the top of her lungs. So we stayed in the cry room together as a family. After church we played games with Tim and Jen. yea! We played a new game called Tigris and Euphrates. It was created by one of our favorite game authors Reiner Knizia. He creates such fun games!
Erik and I are talking about buying some new games. Here is a list that we will buy, however we want to wait until next month since Tim and Jen got 4 new games recently:

1. Princes of Florence
2. Caylus
3. Through the Desert
4. Kill Dr. Lucky

Games are great! Speaking of games. I got 87 on Quiddler and made the word shying. That was a good word!

Daddy's Girl

Jenna is such a daddy's girl. She loves to crawl and jump on daddy. He also does Jenna push ups and it's quite a work out. Jenna went to a public pool for the first time on Thursday. She liked it at first but lost her footing and her face went underwater. After that, mommy had to hold her the whole time. It's been so hot - I was hoping she would like the water.

We also went to Der Dutchman in Plain City on Monday. That was fun! It was a buffet and although there was plenty of food to eat, Jenna had more fun watching the people than eating. We got there just in time to have both the breakfast and lunch buffets :).

On a more somber note, the war in the mideast has been on my mind quite a bit lately. I'm hoping America will strongly support Israel and that we can unite in Judeo-Christian values. An end to terrorism (while unlikely) would usher in a time of peace and that is what I am hoping for. Although I can imagine a superhero type person who would unify the middle east and bring a one world order as someone who might also be a Nicolae Carpathia type!
I'll keep praying for Israel.

In a lighter note, I got 69 on Quiddler today which was pitiful.

Salmonella and other musings

Salmonella certainly doesn't count as a musing. Jenna contracted salmonella last week and has been sick until yesterday. She had a fever of 104 and was completely listless. I was worried about her but I knew she would be okay. God has her in his hands. She is such a gift! The most likely cause of the salmonella is mommy. I gave her some raw cookie dough (for the first time!) last Monday. Jenna and I make cookies together all the time (probably once a week) and she loves it. I had not ever given her cookie dough because I was worried about giving her raw eggs. Apparently I wasn't worried in vain.

She had her 18 month birthday on the 20th. Here is a picture of her with her white bear. I thought I'd get an action thought this time since she is moving a lot!

Today Mom, Missy, Panda, Bug and I all went to Molly's tea house. I've included a picture of a table there. Wow I loved it! It was so girly that I told Erik it was the equivalent of drinking Guiness while watching the buckeyes and eating a sub and cheezits. He understood. I think I'm going to bump this place up to #3 in the restaurant list. Current top 5 now is:

1. Cheesecake factory
2. J. Alexanders
3. Miss Mollys Tea house
4. Panera
5. Applebees

I've also bumped Applebees up as well. Sometime I'll update my web page with my new favorites. When I told Erik about my decision to put the movie Pride and Prejudice so high in my movie list, he wasn't sure I was a worthy wife anymore.

I got 95 points today on Quiddler even though it wouldn't let me use uzi. I thought that was a word!!

Contentment

Our Calm My Anxious Heart Bible study has kicked off and wow is it awesome! It truly is a journey to contentment. I think I'm content with my life until I examine my thoughts. I want this or that - I should really listen to Paul and learn the secret of contentment in all circumstances. Jesus Christ!!

Jenna has found contentment playing with bubbles in the sink. This is her new favorite activity introduced by Nana. Today we played in the sink for an hour. I had to pry her pruny hands from the sink to get her to stop playing in the water. Even so, we all had a good time.

I'm working on modifying my list of favorite movies. Certainly the Chronicles of Narnia is going in there as well as Pride and prejudice. I just need to organize my favorites. We watched King Kong last night which was pretty good, but it was 3 hours long. Of course, I'll sit through LOTR for 3 hours at a time.

We got a new projector as our old one had broken. We bought a Panasonic PT-AE900U projector. To test it we watched the balrog scene from the Fellowship of the Ring. When Jenna saw the balrog she started barking. She thought it was a dog!!! That was hilarious. She wasn't even scared of it. Well...maybe we'll go with Star Wars next. What will she think of Darth Vader? A horse? A cow??

I didn't do very well in Quiddler today. Only 65 because there was a Q but I had already used my A. Erik got 84 since he used his Q. Maybe next time I'll beat him!

Ode to Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today was the first day we let Jenna eat chocolate chip cookie dough. We've made cookies many times but I haven't let her eat the dough because of the raw eggs. We think she's probably old enough now. (we hope!).

I've attached a picture of us baking. Jenna helps quite a bit by playing with all the measuring spoons and eating brown sugar. It's quite helpful.

The weather here has been so beautiful. Erik and I have been taking walks around the neighborhood. Jenna loves it too!

Joel has inspired me to compose some prose! He wrote a short story on his blog so I've created a poem. It is called Ode to Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ode to Chocolate Chip Cookies:
Butter and sugar and chocolate so sweet
Flour and eggs, put in the mixer then beat
Keep eating the dough
Until your belly says no
Chocolate chip cookies what a wonderful treat!

Today I got 92 on Quiddler even though the max was 90. The past couple of days Erik and I have been tying on Quiddler. This is going to have to stop so I can win sometime!

31

Now I'm definitely past 30. I'm "in my 30s". The next big age is 40 for me. Wow - that just sounds really old. Of course, I still feel like a kid. This week has been really fun. For my birthday we went to Applebees and Jenna got mac and cheese and broccoli. It was good (better than normal mac and cheese) and she ate almost all of it. Then we went to Graeters. Graeters has wonderful ice cream. Even so, I'd still rate Handels above Graeters. Nevertheless, we went to Graeters for my birthday and I got a buckeye blitz sundae. I'm thinking it might have had a little less than 20000000 calories in it, but only slightly. It was yummy. Then I played Sim City all night. Erik bought me Sim City for my birthday and I'm an addict.
Speaking of addict, I went to the doctor about my constant nose stuffiness. He said I am addicted to zicam. Just because I use it every night and shake when I can't. That doesn't sound like an addict does it???
Jen, Nicole, Heather and I got all our kids together on Thursday for a playdate. Here is a picture of Jenna, Kael, Emma, and Avery in Jen's sandbox. Jenna loved it even though she isn't paying attention to the sand in the picture :). She liked it better when the other kids weren't "sharing" her sand.

In other news:

1. Jenna got a free book from the library by "reading" 6 hours. When she reads another 6 hours she gets an activity set
2. I've read a whole lot more than 6 hours and never got a free book for it
   
3. Or an activity set
4. School starts Wed for me and my online classes start tomorrow
5. I got 92 on Quiddler today - 7 above the max!
6. Jen got me the Quiddler card game for my birthday - Yea!
7. Raspberry mocha frappucino from Starbucks is ambrosia from heaven