Around here...

Around here, we are playing Baby Signing Time a lot. Like, to the point that when I'm at school, the lines running through my head are "These are the pets I love, bird, bird, bird, bird, tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet," "I'm in a car... here I go!" and "Mom has a mom and she's my grandma, she's another mother who loves me." Dang those songs are catchy.

Around here, Chris is editing engagement shoots and newborn shoots, while simultaneously keeping Lincoln entertained all day. Link doesn't nap during the day that much, unless one of us lays down with him. Then that kid will sleep for hours. It's cute in a way, that he just loves being right up next to us, but it's definitely hard when we're trying to get anything done during the day. I keep telling Chris to just embrace naptime when I'm at school, but so far he's been anti-nap. Until today.

Around here, we're pretty tired. Lincoln's regressed in his sleep habits a bit since I went back to work. For the first couple of weeks I was back, he was waking up again 2-3 times a night, and it was hard to get him back down. He was getting better, than two nights ago, he woke up around midnight and refused to sleep if we weren't holding him. As in, we would get him asleep, really, truly asleep, and as soon as we would put him down he would wake up screaming. That was a hard day at work for me after that night. Fortunately, last night he was so much better. I pulled out all the stops: looooong bath time, thin cotton pjs, lavender essential oil diffusing in his room, and an extra top off bottle. He only woke up once, around 2 am, and just long enough for Chris to feed him a bottle before he was out again. Thank you, Jesus.

Around here, I spend my days with 7th graders. And we're just about at the time of year when the Drama starts. I don't know how many times I had to say today, "I don't want to hear about your drama," "Why are we still talking about this?" "Just ignore them," or "If this conversation doesn't end there will be CONSEQUENCES." Seriously, one track minds, those kids. And that track ain't math.

Around here, the monkey is 4 months old! He now is seriously into his toys, enjoys his tummy time and baths, no longer gets swaddled at bedtime, has graduated to 6 month clothes (in Carter's), tries to hold his own bottle during feedings, and has wiggled his way off the bed for the first time. (He was fine.) He still loves being outside the house and seeing people, but he's enjoying his play mat and even being in his crib much more lately.

That's it for now. It's almost 10pm on a Thursday night, so I'm torn as usual between going to bed to get a good amount of sleep hours in or staying awake long enough to finish Lincoln's 4 month scrapbook page. Oh, decisions, decisions.

Around here

Eating Cookie Crisp cereal. Every single day. I have never been a huge cereal person, and now I am making trips to the store to load up on three boxes of Cookie Crisp each week.

Visiting the doctor! Everything's looking good so far!

Attending a Knot wedding function at a new venue in Liberty Station. 

His and her drinks at the Knot party. It was not the same without the vodka.

Rearranging the house to make room for baby. We're trying to get as much done as possible in the early weeks of summer so we can really settle it by the end of it when I go back to work. The biggest step is moving the office from its current room (which will be the nursery) to the dining room. Chris found a desk he loved and we set it up this weekend. Now we're ready to slowly migrate all the tech and supplies into the space.

Receiving the cutest gifts! This package of adorableness came from Chris' cousin Emily, and I can't wait to get everything out of the nursery closet so I can start hanging things up!

Cuddling the cats while working on the laptop. Jack desperately wants to sit on my stomach, but he weighs like 18 pounds, so no. He finally gave up that quest and just rested a paw on it.

Not pictured:

Sewing up a storm! Since Chris is taking over the dining room, we had to move the dining table into the middle of the living room until it gets sold. Enter my new sewing table! About a month ago I bought a ton of flannel at Joanns while it was on sale for $2.30 a yard (score!) and I've been busy perfecting my cloth diaper making skills. And by perfecting, I do mean that they will be perfect for our baby to pee on. ;)

This & That #1

1. I have been trying to catch up on NCIS lately. Finally made it to the part of last season where Ziva’s replacement shows up. I really, really wanted to hate her, but darn it if they didn’t come up with the most ridiculously awesome and entertaining character to take the sting out of Ziva’s loss. Emily Wickersham, you’ve made me a fan.

2. Man, gift wrapping is becoming more and more complicated.

3. I really want to make these coasters. That means I have to re-learn how to crochet. And how to read crochet directions. And how to crochet properly.

4. That first link from #3 is on Green Wedding Shoes. Also on Green Wedding Shoes? Next to Me Studios! That’s us! Chris got Jon + Laura’s wedding featured on GWS on Thursday, 12/4. Woot!

5) In between my NCIS binges, I’ve been rocking it out musical style to Rent. (The live Broadway version, not the silly movie.) My laptop recently stopped playing DVDs, which was a bummer for my Rent disc, but luckily for me the whole dang thing is up on Youtube.

Ten on Tuesday

1. Where in the world does all my time go? I just want time to sit and do nothing! (End of rant; if I let myself continue, it’ll take up the other 9 items.)

2. What we’re learning in class: In Math 8 (8th grade math), we’re in the middle of our statistics unit. We just learned about strong vs weak correlation, and we’ve moved from that right into estimating the correlation coefficient. Is it on the Common Core standard for 8th grade math? Not really… (though the CC standards are so vague it probably can’t hurt)… but it’s in our Connected Math books, and so we do it. My kids are doing wonderfully on it any rate. I’ve been baby stepping them toward the idea of guessing the strength of a scatter plot’s correlation with a sliding scale (as strong as possible, very strong, pretty strong, not very strong, etc.), so the jump to using numbers to describe the strength wasn’t too much of a stretch, thankfully.

3. What we’re learning in class: In Algebra, we’re finishing up our Properties of Real Numbers unit. It’s been a relief for my kiddos, who started out the year with a full blown unit on functions (including function transformations, sequences, recursive and explicit formulas, and all kinds of other crazy stuff that was never in Algebra 1 before Common Core). Today was gloriously beautiful, so we agreed if they could handle it, we’d go up to the lunch tables to work on the practice test. It was a wonderfully peaceful fifth module, and my kids found some random places to hunker down with their work (one girl balanced–for the whole module, mind you– on the metal handrail that leads down the stairs to the 6th grade classrooms. Wish I could post that picture, but the girls around her are facing the camera and recognizable, so here’s a farther away photo of the kids at the tables.

4. In business news, we have been ridiculously busy this month. October ended up being out craziest month of 2014, with I think 5 weddings total. We’ve still got 2 more to do before the month is out, so relaxing weekends (ha!) are definitely not happening around here. We’re looking forward to having most of December off, save a couple family shoots really early in the month.

5. Two weekends ago, we had a double header weekend, where we had a wedding on Friday, followed by a wedding on Saturday. This was the first ever time I’ve asked for time off at my school, and I’m still shocked I got the go ahead. Normally I don’t ask for time off for Friday weddings–Chris will just hire a second on those occasions–but this wedding was in Palm Springs, so it would have required us to pay a second shooter for a hotel night and travel costs. Way too much. So I was able to leave my lovely kiddos in the hands of a substitute, and Chris and I left Thursday night, stayed the night with his parents, shot a gorgeous wedding at the magnificent ACE hotel, crashed at his parent’s house again, and took off Saturday morning back to San Diego, going straight to the hotel where Bride #2 was getting ready. It was a whirlwind for sure.

6. And before I forget, we had the Amigo Booth for both of those weddings, and you know I love photo booths. ;) I’ve already posted a few from the ACE hotel wedding, but here’s one from the Karl Strauss venue from Saturday. I was feeling sassy that night.

7. This picture. I die. That cat loves Chris way too much, to an annoying amount most of the time, where he has to be put out of the office so Chris can get work done (or play video games). On this night, Jack curled right up against Chris’ chest and just contentedly watched his human play.

8. I am really looking forward to fall break next week. Just two more days to go! I’ve got big plans to work ahead on my next few units, so let’s cross our fingers this actually occurs, yes? Breaks have a way of making you think you’ve got all the time in the world, then the Sunday-before-the-Monday-you-go-back comes out of nowhere and slaps you in the face.

9. Oh, yeah! Speaking of fall, we’re gearing up for our Fall Mini-Shoots soon. (Because we aren’t doing enough shooting already, right?) These are fun because they’re short and sweet and they bring out all our fave clients who want Christmas card pics. Win for everyone!

10. We did my sister’s engagement shoot on Saturday. The night before, I literally had a dream that she was only four-years-old. But look at her, all old and marriable! Just a few more months till the #davisidos!

A September Day in the life

7am: Wake up!

7:40am: Arrive at school. On this particular day I was all set to prep some stuff, but a parent came in to chat and I just barely got the warmups passed out before my kids showed up at the door. (Oops, I was supposed to get them before they gave up hope that I was coming for them.)

8:10am: First module, which is my 14 kid module. This year those 14 kids are pretty quiet, which is vastly different from last year’s 14. But I also have some low kids in that class, so it’s nice to be able to give more individual attention then. Today we learned functions.

9:25am: Second module, where I do the same lesson again, but with 28 kids who are much more enthusiastic about it. They LOVE functions! They especially love that I teach them to recognize them by the x values that are “cheating” on their y boyfriends/girlfriends. And they are just as outraged that the y values are “allowed” to cheat on their x boyfriends/girlfriends. Sometimes math isn’t fair. In this class, Stinson and his sixth graders filtered in to get Chrome books (I am keeper of the quad Chrome book carts this year, huzzah!), and Stinson decided to steal one of my kiddos’ lunch. Said kiddo chased him out the door and ended up on an errand for the principal after that.

10:40am: Third module, where I do the same lesson again with a different 28 kids, who are equally enthusiastic about functions. My “intern” stopped by to observe today (a future math teacher who’s putting in observation hours), and I put him to work helping me throw awesomesauce cards around the room when someone correctly explained to me that the table we were looking at was not a function, before I’d even explained it. (My kids are geniuses!)

11:55am: Lunch. I went to Subway today and got my usual turkey sandwich toasted. I mention this now because this is totally out of the ordinary for me. The toasted part, not the going to Subway part, that is a regular part of my life.

12:25pm: Prep period. A parent volunteer came in today to make copies for us, so I spent the module going through next week’s lessons and gathering the papers I need copies of. She made ALL my copies for next week for me, what a great day! :)

1:45pm: It was my day to run snack shack. No one really bought anything, probably because water’s gone up to fifty cents and non one wanted to leave the shade of the lunch tables. So I spent the twenty minutes talking with Mikayla and Sarah about In n Out (Sarah’s never been!), Chipotle, and slurpees.

2:05pm: Fifth module, which is my Algebra module. We surprised Christina, who turned 13 today, by playing Dora the Explorer’s Happy Birthday song when she came in to class late. We talked about and graded the practice problems from yesterday… finding the domain and range of graphs, not an easy topic, but they seem okay with it so far. Then we had fun making an extensive foldable about relations, domain, range, and functions. This class is actually my loudest class, which is funny since they’re also my most advanced class. Last year’s equivalent class was so quiet while dutifully doing their work; these kiddos are SO loud while dutifully doing their work. Oh, and Mr. Keough came in to pass out licorice to all my kids; I requested him to go around the room a second time so they’d be chewing and I could explain our next activity. (Like I said, they’re loud kids.)

3:15pm: Pickup in the hot, hot sun. Put 8th graders into cars, chatted with some parents, chatted with Keough about how funny it is that my Algebra kids are so loud.

3:45pm: Back to the classroom to clean up and set things up for tomorrow.

4:00pm: McDonald’s drive through for a blessed coke.

4:15pm: Home! While I was gone, we had our house cleaned top to bottom, and boy does it look and smell nice right now! Gave Chris a good bear hug and told him about my day, while he told me about his.

4:30pm: Checking emails, sending out reminders to parents, updating the class blog, etc.

5:30pm: Made some canned chili for dinner; Chris went to meet some old co-workers for drinks.

6:00pm onward: And now I’m here working away at future lessons, with Jack fast asleep on the desk beside me. Well, technically I’m breaking to blog, but in about thirty seconds, I’ll be back at the planning.

Around Here

Just to show a few things going on currently….

Hand cutting classroom decor

Seeing Once in a giant group, including Daniel and Jackie.

A new baby Holz! Seen at the beginning of year school barbecue.

Chris getting to sleep in with our own adorable babies.

Finally, they are getting used to just coming in the office to hang out, instead of reek havoc.

Be still my heart; baby Cowen is insanely cute. And on the blog!

Also on a blog, this time RusticWeddingChic, you can find Marc and Allison’s wedding from last summer! Hurray for being published!

First day of school friends dinner, because the Cowen’s happened to be down here. We went to Miguel’s for dinner and drinks Monday, then watched the kids play in the fountain while we hung out.

Late night work, with a side of ice cream.

Everyone who knows Chris and me knows we stay up way too late at night. We are the epitome of what it means to be a night owl. All our best work happens at night. When it’s summer time, I’ll be up till 4am a lot of the time. I just love getting things done at night. So does Chris. Though he is much more likely to stay up that late and still get up at  reasonable hour the next morning. (I cannot say the same of myself.)

Last night Chris swiveled away from his side of the desk and suggested an ice cream break. At 10pm. Heck, yes. So off to Albertsons we went, me in my pajamas, and poured over the Dreyers options until finally realizing the Breyers was, for the one time in the existence of ice cream, cheaper than the Dreyers.

Best part of this story is when I came home from work today and opened the fridge to find the two tubs of ice cream melting all over the shelf. That silly guy was a little distracted by his ice cream prospects, I suppose.

It's Friday, Friday, gettin' down on Fri-iday

Friday nights are my absolute favorite time of the week these days.

As soon as I get home from school on Friday, I feel like the world is limitless. It's such a nice relief to come home and not stress about making sure I have everything ready for tomorrow, revamping my planned lesson based on the feedback I got from the kids that day, creating videos to supplement for the kids that need an extra boost, answering emails from parents and students about the next day, and all those other wonderful mid-week things that come along with teaching 8th grade.

But Friday. Oh, how I love Friday.

Friday means Saturday comes next. And though Chris and I have had shoots every Saturday and Sunday for as long as I can think back right now, at least I don't have to plan anything. Friday means I can come home and organize all the stuff that I've let fall into disarray during the week. Tonight I came home and did the dishes, and gosh did it feel good. When Chris came home we laid down and talked about our days while the cats sat on our backs. For the last hour I've been looking up crafty things I want to do so I have stuff to add to my Christmas list, because Chris' mom just called him and told him I didn't have enough stuff on my list. (#firstworldproblems)

I'm catching up on NCIS. I did our finances for the beginning of December. I paid a huge chunk off my student loans (woot!). I did laundry and took out the trash. I bought our first real Christmas stockings off of Etsy and then surfed for things Chris would like (sneakily, since he's right here next to me).

Tomorrow I can lesson plan, and grade, and make videos. Right now, it's still Friday night, and I'm going to eat pumpkin pie and buy Christmas presents.

Photo courtesy of indoor lighting and the not-so-great camera flip feature of my iphone.

Television Shows of our Youth: Discuss

Our kids at school have to watch the 1968 version of Romeo and Juliet as part of their literature lessons. Everytime I pass the TV while this particular movie is playing, I stop. Because the guy who plays Romeo looks Exactly. Like. Zac. Efron.

I mean, exactly.

The first time I walked by the TV while the movie was playing, I thought it was him. Had to be. I would've bet Chris' hard-earned money on it. But then I found out it was the 1968 version, so I conceded that it (most likely) was not him after all.

The movie was playing today while we were in the kitchen area for lunch. I mentioned my Zac Efron theory to the table, and everyone all strained to see the TV, before Katie confirmed that, holy cow, yes, that did indeed look just like Zac Efron. She is now a believer that the actor must be Zac Efron's long lost father. Long lost, because IMDB shows no connection between Leonard Whiting (our 1968 star crossed lover) and ZE. So surely, Zac Efron must have been stolen at birth and is really Leonard Whiting's kid. Or Zac Efron's a lot older than he plays on Disney movies.

To see for yourself, go to this youtube video. It's the 1968 actors doing a little Q&A about the movie. You'll become a believer in the Leonard Whiting/Zac Efron theory, I'm sure of it.

Well, not everyone believed it, because not everyone has seen High School Musical. Apparently it's just the 26 and under crowd that knows who Zac Efron is. But that discussion led to other Disney movies we all recalled seeing over the years. And that led to TV shows of the past. And then nostalgia settled over the lunch table. Good old nostalgia.

We discussed Care Bears and Smurfs and Gummi Bears and Snorks. Salute Your Shorts, Hey Dude, and Pete & Pete. The Stick Stickly summer afternoon programming on Nickelodeon. Pretty much everything pre-2000. Oh, and Saved by the Bell. Oh, how we all love Mark-Paul Gosselaar.

(Time out. (Ha.) Have you seen Mark-Paul Gosselaar's appearance on Jimmy Fallon? Go watch and be amazed at the awesomeness of Zack Morris.)

Time in. (Ha.)

So what do you all remember watching faithfully as a kid?

A Wedding Favorite

The Ch(K)rises representing at the photo booth.

In my attempt to find a normal life schedule between work, homework, fun, and being married, I've made myself a small, flexible schedule for my evenings. 7-9 pm is devoted to homework. Before and after that I get to do whatever I want. I've spent the last hour editing pictures. In about five minutes I'm going to make peanut butter cookies. I'm definitely enjoying my little schedule (at least until 7p.m. hits). 

Today I wanted to look through some of the wedding pictures our friends took for us, and the photos from Chris' camera that was set up for the photo booth. This is clearly one of my favorites. Those guys rock. Blessed that my Chris grew up with amazing friends, and now he gets to share them with me!

Love when this happens.

So a couple of days ago, I posted about cjane's post about us girls and our sometimes-feeling of unworthiness.

Today in my devotions I read this:

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God's sight."
1 Peter 3:3-4

Isn't it great when the Bible gives you exactly what you need? I've read these verses probably hundreds of times, but it wasn't until now that the last phrase, and the word worth, was the important part. Thank you, God, that you find us worthy.


I hope everyone's having a great pre-Thanksgiving Day! I was planning on spending it alone, getting ahead with homework, and maybe some photo editing, but Chris just texted me that he's coming home early! I guess the internet's out over at his workplace, so he's coming home to work from his laptop. Perfect! We can snuggle up with blankets and socks and uggs and our laptops for a wonderful rainy day.


And in case anyone's wondering how those pumpkin chocolate chip cookies worked out... I'd say they're okay, but not amazing. You can't really taste the pumpkin so much. And Chris and the roommates didn't seem too enthralled with them, so I saran wrapped the plate to take to Chris' parent's house tomorrow. But when I went downstairs this morning, the saran wrap was peeled off and about a third of the cookies were gone! Either Santa was here early, or one of my roommates liked them more than they said. ;)

This one's for the girls

Today I was going through the blogs on my Google Reader, and I found an interesting one from c jane enjoy it. What I like about her blog is how very extremely real she is on it. She says things the rest of us might be self-conscious saying.

For instance, today she talked about her seasonal depression. And how it was really affecting her. Badly. And how she felt she was just completely unworthy of anything. That she wasn't worth anything.

Haven't all of us girls felt exactly like this? I remember reading Captivating for the first time. And the biggest thing I got out of it was that all of us (us girls anyway) deal with feeling like this. We are not worthy. We are too much. We are too little. Reading that book was the first time anyone had so succinctly written exactly how I felt. And it was a relief to know that everyone else feels the same way at some time or another.

Before we got married, I told Chris that this is how girls think sometimes. I don't know if he just thought I was being silly or not. I don't know if guys go through stuff like that. But I wanted him to know that sometimes I'll be in a mood... because I feel like I'm not being enough. And sometimes I'll be in a mood... because I feel like I'm too much to deal with. It's just the way we think. 

So to all the girls out there who feel that way now, or for when you feel it again, remember- it passes. And we really do all feel like that sometimes. And thanks to Courtney for being real about it for the rest of us to read.

Some going-ons

Took the CSET on Saturday, as you know. It was pretty awful. I definitely feel the first time around I got really lucky on a lot of the questions asked, especially the Constructed Response at the end. KICKING myself for being SO CLOSE to passing the first time around. This second time, while I was obviously more prepared for the content, the questions seemed way more difficult. I breezed through the first ten or so, feeling pretty good about life, until I got to number eleven and had no idea what they were talking about. That was followed by about fifteen more questions that got left with question marks for the second time through. And don't even get me started on those Constructed Response questions. I stared at one, in which I had to prove to lines were parallel (seemingly easy, right? Except they gave me NO information that I could use to prove it), for so long that I memorized it, copied it down for our math guru Domingo at the school, gave it to him on Monday, and he still hasn't solved it. (Though he says he's close- the last step just hasn't come to him yet.) So.... no idea if I passed or not. I was able to go back to all the multiple choice questions and figure them out to the point I got an answer that was one of the choices, but that test's so evil they might have figured out I'd get that answer and threw it in there to screw with me. Je-erks.

It's Veteran's Day today, and I am seriously enjoying my day off. Chris is stuck at work, however. Poor guy. After I finish this much needed post, I'm going to go get me some lunch and come back to lesson plan and start on a research paper for my class. My lesson plan is on theme, and I'm using our English curriculum at school, as well as some of my tenth graders, to write a whole lesson plan and then film me giving part of the lesson. It's a good thing I work at a school and have tenth graders at my disposal every day.

We're in escrow again! Yup, yup, we've snagged another condo. And this time we're doing the appraisal first. But we both feel pretty confident with this one, and it's super cute! Trying hard not to think about color schemes and decorating while I'm falling sleep at night... just in case. If all goes well, we'll be able to move in during Christmas break.

Chris won't eat frozen vegetables. This is a dilemma, because as we all know frozen vegetables are easy, cheap, always available, and have the same nutritional value as fresh veggies. Did I mention they are easy? And making dinners using only fresh vegetables does not work for me. Fresh vegetables spoil way too fast!  And he made me promise I would never sneak frozen veggies into his meal. My culinary skills are being squelched.

We've been watching Netflix a lot lately. We have our Wii hooked up to Chris' computer monitor, so all the Watch Instantly movies are available to us all the time. We've especially been on a documentary kick lately. Documentaries you need to see: I.O.U.S.A. (Wow. I can't believe people aren't aware of this or trying to stop it, it's so crazy) and No Impact Man (this guy decides for a year he will make no negative impact on the environment- really fun filming and story line).

I got cute boots yesterday. At Ross. I love Ross. They just opened a new one near our house and I took a tour yesterday. I ONLY went in for boots, so even though I was walking around with a cute boots, cute belt, and cute sweater combo for the majority of the time, I sacrificially put back the belt and sweater. I didn't need them. (And yes, I needed the boots.) Even if they were cheap, as everything at Ross is and that's why I love it so.

Friday night.

Well, the husband just went to have some fun with the guys. Only not his guys, my guys. Yes, I have guys. They are the guys I grew up with, went to school with, spent many formative years with, played basketball with, played video games with, made home movies until 3 a.m. with, etc. They're my buds.

And now they're Chris' buds too, so I guess they are our guys now. Anyway, they all rock.

They're having a guys' night poker and beer thingamajig to celebrate Justin, Jesse, and Justin's cousin Brandon's birthday, no girls allowed.

S'okay. I'm studying Statistics and Data Analysis, which I picked up at the library today and am hoping will demystify the last part of CSET Subtest II for me. Which is tomorrow. Thank goodness it's almost over. I'm ready for life again!

November.

It's here again, people. That month that heralds all the upcoming vacations from work. That month where static electricity runs through your down blankets, hair, and car doors to give you a nice shock. That month where Daylight Savings Time ends and we're plunged into darkness before we can even escape our work desks. 

I'm still crazy busy again this week- work, school, and CSET studying are killing me. Thankfully, this is the last week before my second go at the CSET, so at least that won't be looming over me come Saturday night. Will I pass, though? It's iffy, I think. I'm really struggling with the statistics part, mostly because I have never in my life had to take any form of statistics. Not so easy trying to comprehend a whole course in one week.

Chris and I have been doing a lot of photo shoots lately. One was last weekend with Chris and Shay Moses and their almost-here baby boy in downtown Redlands. Another was yesterday with Chris and Melody Holz and one-year-old Bennett, in downtown San Diego. Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE that my husband is so much into photography with me? Love, love, LOVE it. It's so much fun being a team and creating beautiful photos together.

I'm going to go back to studying about language immersion programs now. I leave you with a scrapbook page I made exactly 3 years ago, on November 1, 2007. (Oh, to scrapbook again. To attempt to write books again. To have free time again!)

Scrapbook page has been brought down for maintenance. Will be back up soon.

Home.

We are home.

It's fabulous.

We've got soooo many pictures to go through.

Had a blast in Hawaii, but San Diego was calling our names, and when we flew over downtown late Saturday night, we were both very happy campers. And now we're chilling on the couch (catching up on Glee, How I Met Your Mother, and the Big Bang Theory - yes, we are awesome like that), enjoying our last couple hours of freedom before real life starts again. Sigh.

It's okay, I guess. I've got a hot husband to get through it all with.

I tried.

Sorry, Moms. I tried uploading some videos of our days here, but our internet connection seems to be way too slow to properly handle something as complex as a video upload. I'll try again tomorrow, after we get back from kayaking and snorkeling!

Internet! Blessed Internet!

My beloved husband tells me I am addicted to the internet. This is because for the past four days we've been in Hawaii, it has not been readily available, and one might say it's made me a bit moody.

What's moody about insisting to check my email on his Blackberry the second we sit down for any meal?

What's moody about being perturbed the Blackberry is being used for GPS purposes on long car rides, and not for me to update my Facebook status?

What's moody about just wanting THE WORLD to know what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and when and where and why?

It was quite a culture shock coming from our first night stay at the Hard Rock Hotel, where we had free wireless in the room, to the beautiful little Hilton Hawaiian Village in Honolulu where they charge you $16 a night to be hooked up to a foot long cable in the corner.

Seriously, Hilton Hawaiian Village? I know what you charge. You're really telling me wireless is too much to ask for?

Today we flew from Oahu to the Big Island (actual Hawaii), and checked in to our awesome little timeshare resort. After crazy hopping downtown Honolulu, this little beach town of Kona is so cute and quaint... and has free wireless in all the main lobbies.

Thank you, Jesus, for internet.

And while Chris and I should be sitting down here in the outdoor lobby looking up adventurous things to do in Hawaii, he's actually commenting on Studio Castillero's Jordan & Chris Glimpse shots and I'm checking in on all of my usual haunts: yahoo, facebook, google reader.... Probably won't get anything done tonight, but that's okay. We're on vacation, and we did just fly in after all. I won't even talk about how spectacularly amazingly fantastic our trip is, except for the amazing steamed zucchini I had at lunch earlier.

It was so good, it made me sad for Chris. He doesn't like zucchini. What a tragic world he lives in.