Worried

Been thinking a lot about the people in Jamaica today. Looks like they got hit hard by Gustav on the southern coast of Jamaica which is where Whitehouse is. The country is already so poor and the homes so weak - makes me wonder how people survive this type of stuff year after year.

I am officially starting my 4 day weekend! Only have a three day work week next week and then another three days off! Very nice to see some time to relax in with how busy work is. Things are about to get awful at work for the next four months. I have no idea how we are going to make it, but I know we will.

Tonight begins College football season. Yes, I am quite excited about it. Go Beavers!!! I am optimistic that we should have a pretty good season this year - time will tell!

Peter finishes at the mill tomorrow. CPA exam #2 is only two days away so pray for him :) He is also going on his first business trip on the same day he starts work - crazy on the job training if you ask me. He will be going to a client outside of Seattle for all of next week and who knows where he will end up after that.

That's my short little update for today. Mainly hoping my friends in Jamaica are safe tonight.

Good News!!!

First things first - Peter passed!!! We are so excited and I am so proud of my husband!!! 1 test down 3 to go. I have been checking the mail this past week to see if he got the letter from the OSCPA because he really did not want to find out he failed the test a week before his next one. So if he did not pass then I was supposed to hide it from him and tell him that he did not get it yet. I was so very happy that I did not have to lie to him and was so excited to share the news with him!!! Peter can relax a little now and be very happy for what he has already accomplished. So reward #1 - A trip to Benihana's!!!!

In other very big news - KPMG called and asked Peter to begin employment on MONDAY!!! That was a little too short of notice for him with a CPA exam next week and also needing to give his work decent notice. So he will be starting the following week. Tuesday September 2nd - a full month early!!! He is a little sad to be leaving SP so soon and knowing he will be leaving them with a lot of work because they have not hired his replacement yet. What do you do though, when opportunity knocks??? He has to make the best move for his career and it will be better for us financially too!

Lots of exciting news for Peter - I am so proud of him!!! He is one amazing man :)

7 already!!!

Jezzie - the little girl who made me the happiest aunt in the world - I cannot believe that you are already 7 years old! Hard to believe how quickly you have grown and hard to believe that in another 7 years you will be a teenager. Your birthday brings back so many happy memories of being your aunt. I will never forget the night that I found out that I would be blessed with a precious little niece or nephew to love!! I was ecstatic and so excited to meet you and hold you and it was such a long wait from that night in November of 2000 to your arrival in August of 2001! I saved up all of my babysitting money (I was only 14) for a couple of days after my birthday in March when we were to find out if you were a little boy or a little girl so that I could go shopping crazy on you! Shopping for little girl things was so much more fun the shopping for little boy clothes ;)

Then the very long summer before your arrival. Finally the day came - your due date and none of us expected you to arrive on that day and yet you knew - right on time!!! I remember being woken up at 1:30 in the morning to the phone ringing saying that your mom and dad were on the way to the hospital and were bringing Bentley over for us to take care of!!! I was so excited and had such a difficult time going back to sleep - I was about to meet you!!! As morning came and we made our way to the hospital - just in time for the doctors to tell your mom to go back home - disappointed - no Jezzie yet. But later that night you made your arrival via emergency c-section. We were all very nervous for you and your mom and fortunately with some extra care you were both okay. I will never forget watching my big brother walk down the hall carrying this precious package that we were all so excited to meet! You were the most precious beautiful baby!!!

I have had so much fun with you over the years and I feel very lucky to have been able to spend as much time with you while you were little as I was able too. I have memories of the sponge bob phase, the care bears phase, and most recently your obsession of the Texas Longhorns! Time has gone very fast with you (and now with your little sister too).

Happy 7th Birthday Jezzie!!!

Other randoms: The gorgeous sunset the other night

Juno's sad eyes!

The busy, stressful, tiring life

The title pretty much sums up all of our emotions right now. What can we say - as everyone knows life is not always fun. We are making the most of the way our lives are right now knowing that things are not going to get any easier anytime soon.

Poor Peter is less then two weeks away from his next CPA exam and he is really feeling the pressure with this one. He has a lot of material to cover and only a very short amount of time to complete it in. There really isn't an option to postpone the exam because the testing window closes September 1st and he has to wait a whole other month if he doesn't take it now and then he is cutting into his study time for the next exam and would be taking a test right when he is transitioning into his new job. He is just going to cram cram cram as much as possible to get it done.

We are still awaiting the results of his first exam. He is very nervous to get them back and we should receive them at anytime. He feels like he did well on the first one but also knows it will be very close as to whether or not he passed.

He is beginning the end of his time at the mill and I know he is full of lots of emotions - a little sad to leave his friends there, excited at the new oppurtunities, nervous about the new expectations. I know he will do a great job at KPMG but convincing him of that is not so easy. I know it has to be very difficult for him to have to enter into a new role at a new job while constantly studying for a very difficult exam at the same time - he amazes me!!!

I am still very busy at work. No matter how hard we work or how many days a week we work we cannot keep up with orders. I have no idea how we are going to handle the workload going into the end of the year. We are all already falling apart - none of us may be standing by the time January comes around. My heart issues are not resolved yet. All of my tests have shown that there is nothing to be too concerned about (I think) but the meds they have me on make me physically exhausted. I called and tried to tell them that I can't function on these things, but they told me that was normal (uh, okay) and to keep taking them. Luckily work has been very cooperative with me and allowed me to take time off as I need it. I go back to the doctor this weekend and will hopefully get some answers and (crossing my fingers) get taken off these stupid pills!!!

Juno is doing very well. She is getting lots and lots of hair. We took her in for her puppy shots and she now weights 28 lbs. She is definitely the spoiled little baby around our house - we try to be tough with her but her puppy eyes get us everytime! Cesar (the dog whisperer) would be so disapointed. I swear she knows how special she is. There is not a single person that she meets that does not fall under a puppy spell when they meet her. She is definitely a charmer.

I guess I shouldn't leave our other babies out either. The chins are doing very well - just as fuzzy as ever. Having Juno has brought out a completely different side of them. They love attention now where as before they preferred to be left to themselves. Kahlua and Juno are best buddies and always are nose to nose between the bars. They tolerate us holding and petting them a lot better now - it is very strange (I told you Juno has some sort of puppy spell that everyone falls for).

Still no luck with our condo. We are just trusting that in God's timing everything will work out. We have a few houses that we are interested in and we just trust that if any of them are meant to be then it will all work out when it is supposed to work out. Waiting can be really hard sometimes...........


That is all for now. Hopefully better news to come soon - good news!!!

Disneyland

It is way overdue time for an update. I am sure that everyone is dying to hear how Disneyland was. Disneyland was just as amazing as usual - the place that never gets old.

With us only having the financial resources to go for three days it was a very hustled trip but still very fun!!!

We left town very early Sunday morning and were in LA before 9:00 Sunday morning. That gave us almost a full day to spend in Disneyland. Peter and I are now pros's forging through the park and it was fun to get to share our expertise with family. This was of course Edik's first trip to Disneyland and I don't think he had any idea what he was in store for. By 11:00 we were in California Adventure (we thought that would be the least crowded place to start). It was game time. As we made our way through the park I sent Peter off as "the runner" for the trip and he ran over to Disneyland to get us our first fast passes of vacation. Within 15 minutes he had gotten us 3 sets of fast passes to return later and "cut" in line for the rides.

We started with an easy ride to get Edik and Andy warmed up. They had no problem with it so we headed off to the big roller coaster "California Screamin!!!" Edik was ready to ride, but Andy and Beth were not (we did succeed in our attempts later in the trip and they loved it!). We spend several hours in California Adventure taking in as many different attractions as we all could in the amount of time we had. We eventually walked over to Disneyland and spend the rest of the night there until after midnight - it was a 20 hour fun filled day.

The photo spot in Space Mountain was blinding.

My favorite memories of the night had to be riding splash mountain twice at around 10:30. The first time we put Peter in the very front and he got really wet, but the second time we put Andy in the front and he got soaked (so did Peter and Edik).

Monday we went to Knotts Berry Farm for a day of roller coasters. Knotts is a totally different feel then Disneyland and I have to say it was not the same park that we usually enjoy. There were no wait times for any of the coasters which was very nice and we walked on almost every ride (except Big Foot Rapids - everyone wanted to get cooled off). The coasters are always fun though and no trip is complete without being terrified on The Xcelerator - 0 to 80 in under 3 seconds. Edik liked every ride we did with the exception of The Tower of Terror and the Xcelerator - he said it was too fast.

Tuesday, July 29th 2008 - Disneyland!

Tuesday was our 2nd wedding anniversary. We had an early entry into the park this morning which meant we had to be there at 7:00. We did several rides in that first hour and several more within the next hour. We made it through quite a bit of Disneyland in that short amount of time - we did some of the classic favorites like The Jungle Cruise and The Tiki Room.

We also had a character breakfast this morning where we saw Minnie, Pooh, Tigger, and Chip and Dale. Three of the characters came to our table at one time and starting playing around with each other which was pretty entertaining. After lunch we decided to go to California Adventure, by noon Peter had a wallet full of fast passes to use later that night (little did we know how badly we would need them). We did a couple of things in California Adventure and were just about to get on California Screamin for the second time of the day when the earthquake hit. I was very glad we were not on the roller coaster when it hit because all the rides have earthquake sensors and they all stopped wherever they were. There were several people stuck on rides until they got them down which would not have been an enjoyable experience for me.

Pictures of the sleeping park while they tried to fix all the rides:
We waited around the dead park for over three hours. When I say dead, I mean the rides were dead - there were people everywhere in the place. After three hours and the rides showing no sign of starting back up we decided to go back to the motel for awhile and get some rest and return later. We returned later to find that some of the rides had barely reopened before we came back so we were very glad we didn't waste our time and energy. We did a ton of rides that evening with all the fast passes we had. Peter and I went to our favorite magical place to eat - The Blue Bayou. The restaurant is inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and it is just an awesome place to be! It is very expensive but I highly recommend it for special occasions spent in Disneyland :)

After dinner we went and got our picture taken in the engagement spot. The park is going to change soon and it makes me a little sad only because the park I go to now brings back such wonderful memories of our engagement and honeymoon. We spend the rest of the night enjoying as much of Disneyland as we had time for before midnight rolled around and it was time to call it a night. Another very long, but very fun day.

Wednesday we spent the morning in Disneyland doing some relaxing and shopping in the park and soaking in what little time we had left in our happy place :) I really wanted to try mickey beignets and by the time we got to the restaurant we found out they had closed for two hours to prepare for lunch so we waited around and I finally got to taste them and they were wonderful.

I could leave happy - knowing that in 14 long months I will return to my happy place :)