Jack ‘n Tracie

Tomorrow at this time we’ll be boarding a plane to Los Angeles airport and DISNEYLAND!

We took it a little easy last night, because we know tonight it going to be a flurry of activity. We’ve got 3 of our 6 suitcases located, but I have a hunch the others are in the attic, so when the kids wake up we’ll send them up there.

I have to work today, but Tracie has the day off for some laundry fun and hopefully a little relaxation. We get so stressed right before a big trip like this. (I love you honey!)

See you soon Kaykay!

Yesterday morning Tracie looked outside and saw that our happy pool had sprung a leak along the bottom seam. It was slowly leaking all day long, so after her workday was done she went out and started draining it into the backyard. I helped with the draining and demolishing/cleanup work when I got home.

We were both amazed at how fast our thirsty back yard absorbed over 1000 gallons of water! That grass had better turn green now…

On an ironic side note Melissa was watering the front yard the night before and forgot to turn off the hose and watered the driveway/bushes all night long…

It was over 100 degrees yesterday (Think it hit a record 101) and was so hot that the kids didn’t even want to go outside to play in the pool! (Although they did at one point for a short while. Cody and I played in the pool in the evening when it wasn’t quit so crazy hot.)

We have more hot weather ahead of us through the weekend. Thank god for air conditioning! What did we ever do before we had one… oh yeah, sat in front of a fan with a spray bottle.

We’ve got some modest chores to do, but for the most part I hope to rest up this weekend and just relax. It’s been a very taxing few weeks around here and we could use a break before our big trip.

6 Days Kaykay!

Disneyland Here We Come!

The kids can’t stop thinking about Disneyland at this point though, so this is going to be a long weekend!

Well, we got paid to clean out our garage. That’s an awesome feeling, even if it did technically burn up an entire weekend and a half. We’ve still got some more to do cleaning-wise, but you can walk around freely in there.

I took the last 2 days off to spend with the kids and had a blast. We wasted a bunch of time playing games, I got some serious house laundry done too. Last night we went out to dinner at Rocky’s Pizza and saw Disney’s Wall-E. What a simply adorable story and the cutest little robot ever!

Speaking of Disney… 1 week tomorrow and we’ll be at Disneyland with my Kay-Kay!

2 Weekends to go until DISNEYLAND! Which means we have a lot of work to do to get ready.

Saturday we spent half the day reorganizing the garage and preparing for a big garage sale next weekend. We also purged a lot of old junk! (I’m a horrible pack rat, but I’ll be down to 2 computers in the garage when it’s done! 1 old Amiga and 1 computer for studying server stuff for work.) After the long day of cleaning neither of us wanted to cook so we treated the family to a nice dinner out at our favorite pizza place Rocky’s.

Sunday we woke up and relaxed our tired muscles for a few hours then went to the Firstenberg Community Center and went swimming for a few hours. Cody’s gotten so brave in the water now that he’s gotten over his fear of getting his head under water!

We also managed to slip in a few movies on the couch this weekend, which is always nice relaxation. We watched The Eye (Jessica Alba) Scared the heck out of us almost the whole way through! We also watched Alient Versus Predator 2: Requiem. Pretty cheesy, but some alien on alien battle action at least. Finally we watched Open Season. Very cute cartoon.

This week it’s laundry and getting ready for the garage sale!

Hey KayKay! Hugs!

…That’s what Kayla said to me today after I called her to see how she was doing after experiencing her first, and hopefully her last, California Earthquake. I think the scariest part for her was the fact that cell phone signals were jammed so bad she couldn’t call anyone, and even her roommate couldn’t call to check on her. Her roommate ended up coming home from work to check on Kayla since she knew it’d be her first earthquake in California and she couldn’t get through on the phone.. isn’t that sweet? I tell ya it makes me feel good to know Kayla’s got someone down there looking after her.

Less than a month to go and we’ll get to see her!!!

Well, we all are actually. It practically took an act of the gods, and a lot of juggling of the finances, and some hard work, research, calling 3 dozen airlines (ok maybe only a dozen) but we’re going to Disneyland next month. All of us! We’ll be staying at a nice hotel and going to get a week to visit Kayla while she shows us around the Happiest Place on Earth. I can’t wait!

Amazingly, for all 8 of us to go, it’s cheaper to fly down than to drive. The only passenger van we could find to rent wanted an insane amount of money and a limit of 150 miles a day (.30 cents per mile after that). At that rate, it would take us six days to drive the close to 1000 miles. Forget that! Plus if we fly, we get two extra days down there so it’s win-win. The kids are almost as excited to fly on a plane for the first time as they are to spend a week in Disneyland!

Now if I could only speed up time. The incessant daily question from Cody, “Can we just go tomorrow?” is not driving me insane. Nope. It’s not. No really. I swear.

Went to the Tanasbourn Market today in Beaverton where CBS was having an open casting call for Survivor 18 tryouts. We got there around 10:30am and they started filming 2 minute blurbs from people at 12:00 Noon. It was freakin HOT! The whole thing was outside and we met some interesting people.

This will be my third time applying for Survivor, so hopefully 3rd time’s a charm!

As one guy said, everybody in the line looked like they could easily have been contestants.

Of course, when it came my time to stand in front of the camera and say something intelligent about myself I was a total idiot. I hate cameras.

I’m glad it’s not my job to pick the contestants, but wish me LUCK!

Ok, so Kayla sends me a text message saying that I suck at updating our page, so here’s some stuff!

Life is going well for all. Summer is moving along nicely, although somewhat quietly. It’s been a very odd mixture of 40 degrees followed by 90 degrees.

The 4th of July party was very successful. We had my Dad and Step Mom, and Tracie’s Mom, Sam and Fiona, Dominic and little Spencer, Uncle Mick, Cathy and Brian and many many friends from work. We had an amazing crew helping with the fireworks, with 4-6 people helping light stuff at any given moment. This made it take half the time that it did last year. The most excellent part was all the cleanup help we had at the end! We got the road and sidewalks cleaned in record time, with minimal effort.

The trash from the fireworks filled the entire bed of my truck, tomorrow I’ll be taking the truck to work so I can drop off the trash and make room for all the lawn debris we created when we installed the pool.

Kevin started driver’s Ed class this week with Jessica. I haven’t seen it, but I heard his learners permit picture has MAJOR hat head. (He apparently failed to listen to his Mom and Jessica both when they said not to wear a hat all day before his picture.) Live and learn lol.

It’s another 85-90 degree week this week, so I’m looking forward to rushing home and jumping into the pool again today. (After I stop and pick up a bigger cleaning net… that little goldfish net takes forever to pickup grass bits!)

Anyway, more later.. Hey Kayla! Love you!
~Dad

P.S.
The funny for today is John Caparulo (You Tube this comedian, funnier than heck!)