2000 Alex was born. I graduated.
2001 We bought our house. I got a new job.
2002 Kevin and I visit New Orleans.
2003 Kevin and I visit NYC. We take Alex to San Diego.
2004 Ana was born. I graduated again.
2005 Kevin graduated. We both got new jobs. We visited London.
2006 We started a major home addition project. We take Alex and Ana to San Francisco.
2007 We finished the home addition. Kevin got a new job. We take Alex and Ana to San Diego.
2008 Angie was born. We got a dog.
2009 I got Lasik surgery. Kevin and I both went back to school.

Categories: home improvement, kids and parenting, pets, pregnancy, school, travel
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My to-do list is a mile long, but I can’t cross anything off it. Whenever Angie isn’t crying for my attention, she’s doing something else to make me regret turning my back, even for a second. Today she drew all over her arms and legs with dry-erase markers. Then she spilled a bottle of milk on the kitchen floor and sat down in the middle of the giant puddle. ARGH!!!

At least she didn’t spill the bottle on the nice new flooring in the living room that Kevin spent the past week installing. No more awful, allergy-inducing, 30+year-old carpet, finally! I’ll leave the details for Kevin to blog about.

Last week Kevin and I went to the final show of 311’s summer tour. I had a great time. Once in a while, when I’m inhaling second-hand pot smoke and surrounded by sweaty, half-dressed bodies, I wonder if I’m getting too old for this, but the thought is always promptly pushed out of my mind by the sight of fellow concert-goers who are my parents’ age, rocking out and having a great time. Life is much too short to worry about appearing dignified.

Last week I also finally underwent Lasik surgery. This is something I’ve been planning for years. I have nothing to complain about; it all went very smoothly. But for the morbidly curious, here are the few bumps along the way:

• I was given a Xanax to help calm me down during the surgery. I was also given numbing drops in my eyes. Neither worked as well as I would have liked. While the procedure did not hurt, I did feel the instruments touching my eyeballs. UGH!!!!! The only reason I didn’t panic was because over the past couple of decades I’ve developed some excellent coping skills for dealing with crazy anxiety-inducing situations just like this one, and they worked perfectly.
• Afterwards it felt as if there was something in my eyes that I couldn’t flush out. This continued for 24 hours. The various medicinal eyedrops I was prescribed helped eased the discomfort a little, but the only thing that really helped was sleep, which I got plenty of when the Xanax finally kicked in after the surgery was all over
• The surgery is really, really expensive. The place I chose charged me a month’s salary. Add to that the cost of all the different eyedrops, and I feel positively poor.

But was it all worth it? Oh heck yeah! I can see! I CAN SEE!!! XD

Another highly anticipated event in my little life was the new film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince that opened July 15. Last Friday, Kevin and I took Alex to see it in the theater. We had a great time!

If all goes well with the construction of the Harry Potter theme park in Florida, that’s where we’ll be going for our next family vacation. According to the latest news, it’s going to have some cool rides and at least one awesome eatery. I can’t wait!

While cleaning the kids’ room I found a little black rubber ball under one of their beds. Alex said it reminded him of what the Earth would look like if we continued to misuse our natural resources. I promptly promised to start composting the next day. So far I haven’t lived up to my promise, mainly because Angie keeps doing things like pouring entire bottles of milk on the kitchen floor.

Speaking of weird environmental things, did you hear the news about the big mysterious blob floating in the ocean off the coast of Alaska? Watch the video here!

Categories: allergies, angie, environment, harry potter, home improvement, music
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So far this summer, I have done the following:

• Invited friends over for a High School Musical movie marathon!
• Invited friends over to gab and watch our kids play together
• Attended a retirement reception for an ex-coworker.
• Cleaned the house. This is the best it’s looked in MONTHS.
• Packed up most of the stuff in the living room in preparation for flooring installation. Can’t wait to be done with this!
• Conducted science experiments with the kids using a Harry Potter potions kit. Major Mom Win.
• Re-read about half of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so far in anticipation of watching the movie next week.
• Gone to the beach for the first time in YEARS.
• Eaten a lot of oatmeal. I’m strangely proud of myself about this.
• Wrote a big progress report for a committee I’m chairing. Our work doesn’t halt over the summer, unfortunately.
• Wrote various other reports for work. Still have a few more to write. Blah.
• Made the decision to go back to school. Nervous but SO EXCITED.
• Turned one year older. And wiser.

Categories: food, harry potter, home improvement, kids and parenting, movies, work-life balance
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Yesterday I worked from 9am to 6pm, came home, had a quick dinner, then worked from 7pm until midnight. Yes, I’m tired. No, I still don’t have this work-life balance thing figured out.

These bell peppers are the sole survivors of our gardening experiment this summer. They tasted good enough that we might try again next year.

The kitchen remodel is going well. All that’s left are 5 more cabinets, the vent hood, and the drawer and door knobs. Installing the vanity panels and the flooring and buying accessories for the cabinets will be icing.

This was Angie’s Halloween costume. I think she looks great in orange.

Here’s Angie with her friend Payge who is 4 and a half months older. Payge is small for her age and Angie is big for her age, so they end up looking the same size.

In other news, there’s something screwy with our internet service. Our access has been spotty on a minute by minute basis, and we haven’t been able to get it resolved because every time Kevin calls customer service he gets cut off about 20 minutes into the conversation.

The strangest part is that for about 3 days Google kept redirecting us to their United Kingdom page. Tonight it redirected us to their German page.

Anyway, that’s why I didn’t post a Nablopomo entry yesterday. Apparently I was in Germany.

Categories: angie, gardening, home improvement, memes, work-life balance
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