Yearly Archives: 2009

/2009

Brittany Concert, Zachary Boo Boo

Today was quite the interesting day!  Brittany had a concert tonight featuring all the honors music groups.  She sang with the Honors Chorus and played her violin with the Chamber Orchestra.  She is doing quite well!  She just got a brand new violin ($1400 ouch!) but it sounds soooo much better than her old rented one.  She loves to sing and play!  Just like with Kirstyn, last Thursday, it is amazing to see how much progress these kids are making!

Brittany-Still-Concert-1

Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the concert, and Angela only got to see a little bit of it.  While I was taking Brittany and one of her friends over to the concert, Zach fell after getting out of the tub and cut his forehead open!  🙁  When I got home, they were stopping the bleeding and Kirstyn felt horrible (she was in charge of making sure he got out and dressed).  😐  We took him over to the emergency room at the hospital and got him taken care of.  He was very worried that it would hurt like crazy when they stitched him up!  We helped calm him and he was VERY brave.

Zach-Head-Split-1

While the doctor was deciding whether to glue or stitch, Zachary said:  “I don’t want sew, I want glue!”  It was pretty funny and we had to laugh!  🙂  The doctor decided to glue which was a big relief for Zach and he didn’t even flinch during the process!  He was quite happy after that.  He got a popcicle for being so brave (Ben got one too which he thoroughly enjoyed)!

After leaving the hospital, Zach, Ben, and I dropped Angela off at the school for the rest of the concert and we came back home.  We all felt very bad that we couldn’t support Brittany!  She was very sweet and brought Zach back a bunch of cookies from the reception after the concert.  🙂

By |2009-12-14T09:32:06-07:00December 7th, 2009|Home Life, School|0 Comments

Date and Movie Day/Night

Today was a fun day for all of us!  This morning, Brittany went out on a date with Mom and met Tracy and Carrie Raketic at Ikea for breakfast.  They wandered around afterward and looked at all the fun stuff to buy!  🙂 This afternoon, Angela and I met 3 other couples (Collingwood, Smith, and Thompson) for a date night.  We went to Domo 77 and had a wonderful Japanese dinner, cooked right in front of us.  The chef was very entertaining!

DateNight20091205

We then stopped by the store, loaded up on cheap candy, and then went to see the new movie “The Blind Side” and absolutely loved it.  We weren’t sure at first, but we heard the movie was good and were not disappointed.  The movie is about the true story of Michael Oher, an homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first round NFL draft pick with the help of a caring woman and her family.

What a nice day!  It was a great break from the many past days of lots to do and not enough time to do it!  🙂

By |2009-12-08T04:13:48-07:00December 5th, 2009|Home Life|0 Comments

Kirstyn 1st Band Concert

Kirstyn-1st-Band-2Tonight Kirstyn had her very first band concert!  It was held over at Waubonsie Valley High School in the auditorium and her school was combined with 4 other elementary schools in the district.  It was great to hear them play for the first time together.  They showed examples of what was good and what was bad which was very funny for us and fun for them to show.  They then played 6 or so songs, splitting up the different parts so we could hear what the melody, harmony, baseline, etc. sounded like, and then they played altogether.  It’s amazing to hear what these kids have done in 4 short months!  We are very lucky to be in a district that has one of the best music programs in the nation.  They really emphasize excellence and hard work.  All three girls have great band and orchestra teachers that are very committed to the students and that makes us very happy!

Great job, Kirstyn!  Keep up the wonderful work!

Kirstyn-1st-Band-1

By |2009-12-14T09:32:27-07:00December 3rd, 2009|School|0 Comments

BYU Wins!

In a nail-biter final game of the year, BYU beat Utah in overtime 26-23!  It was such a sweet win!  They ended the season 10-2!  Max Hall redeemed himself from a year ago, when Utah intercepted him five times in a 48-24 blowout in Salt Lake City.  Max made some pretty seering remarks about Utah’s program and their fans.  He said the following:  “I think the whole university and their fans and the organization is classles.  They threw beer on my family and stuff last year and did a whole bunch of nasty things. I don’t respect them and they deserved to lose.”  This got him a reprimand from the conference, but he didn’t care.  🙂  I got this graphic from a buddy of mine and thought it was absolutely hilarious:

2009-byu-utah

This victory over Utah gave BYU 10 wins per season for the 4th straight year.  We are excited to see who they get to play in a bowl game this year.  It is projected that they will play in the Poinsettia Bowl against Arizona.  Go Cougars!

By |2009-12-01T07:37:53-07:00November 28th, 2009|Home Life|0 Comments

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving09-2We hope you all had a very happy Thanksgiving!  We sure did!  The day started off with Angela and Brittany running the 2009 Naperville Turkey Trot 5K.  They had a great time and although it was a little chilly, it could have been much colder!

We all then cleaned up the house, started cooking the turkey, got some relish trays together and waited for our guests to come celebrate with us.  We had 2 families come over so there were about 16 people here.  It was great to sit around and visit, play games, and have some WONDERFUL FOOD!  We ended up having 2 turkeys, 1 of which was cajun injected and deep fried which was fabulous!  We also had stuffing, potatoes, rolls, all kinds of appetizers, 7-layer Jell-o, and much more!

For dessert, we ended up having about 7 or 8 pies for the 16 of us!  We had double-layer pumpkin, apple, blueberry, regular pumpkin, french silk, pumpkin roll, and a couple of others!  Talk about full!

Thanksgiving09-1For an activity, we drew a featherless turkey and had everyone write what they were thankful for on paper feathers and tape them on the turkey.  Kirstyn was in charge of that and she had a great time collecting the feathers.  It was fun to read what everyone was thankful for!

At this time of year, we are very thankful for all the blessings we have.  We consider ourselves very lucky (and blessed) to be in the situation we are when there are so many out there who are out of work or otherwise struggling.  We are working hard as a family to always remember to be greatful for all our blessings!

By |2009-11-30T09:27:36-07:00November 26th, 2009|Home Life|0 Comments

We Finally have HD!

comcast-logoToday, the Comcast cable installer came and hooked us up with new internet access (cable with up to 20 Mb download), new internet phone, and a huge cable package of over 300 channels (HD included), and an HD DVR!  We are very excited!  We were on Dish Network, AT&T DSL, and standard phone service and were paying about $30 more per month.  The only thing we’re missing is the BYU channel!  The phone is working wonderfully well, despite my concerns of being internet-based.  We’ll see how this goes!

By |2009-11-30T09:15:10-07:00November 25th, 2009|Home Life|0 Comments

Sing, Brittany, Sing!

Tonight  Brittany had a “Sing and Share” at Waubonsie Valley High School.  They put on this program every year and invite the honors choruses from the middle schools that feed into Waubonsie to sing with them.  It was a short program, but it showcased some of the talent at the high school.  The honors choruses then came on stage and sang beautifully.  There sure is a LOT of talent in our district.  No wonder the high schools keep getting Grammy Gold status every year!  🙂

Brittany-WVHS-Sing-1

Brittany-WVHS-Sing-2

By |2009-11-18T06:15:33-07:00November 17th, 2009|School|0 Comments

Busy and Fun Saturday!

Today we went to a memorial to veterans in downtown Naperville.  At the park by the carillon tower, they had over 2000 flags set up, honoring those who had fought for the freedoms of our country.  This was in conjunction with Veterans Day last week.  It was cool to see all the flags set up and to read some of the tags associated with the flags.  Benjamin loved it and was quite excited to see all that color!

Naperville-VetransFlags

Family-Flags

After working on getting the house clean after a long week, Sarah got picked up for a babysitting job, Brittany babysat Kirstyn, Ben, and Zach, and Angela and I went to the Raketic family’s home for Eric’s 40th birthday party.  We had a good time.  It was a beautiful night and the actual party was outside around their fire pit.  They kept things nice and toasty warm and we ate lots of food and had some wonderful conversation!

By |2009-11-18T06:09:42-07:00November 14th, 2009|Home Life|0 Comments

Young Women in Excellence

YWIE-1Tonight Sarah and Brittany had their Young Women in  Excellence program.  What a wonderful program!   The cultural hall at the church was decorated to the hilt and on the walls, each girl had a side-view of their silhouette.  We all had to go around and match these to their names.  It was very interesting and fun!  🙂  They hold this every year and the young women in our ward look forward it.  They seem to always outdo themselves from one year to the next.

YWIE-2

Sarah and Brittany both had parts on the program describing one of the young women values.  They also brought displays to show things they have been working on to demonstrate the young women values.  Sarah’s display outlined her participation and in the Metea Marching Band and her leadership role.  Brittany’s display outlined her participation in the Aurora Leadership Institute last summer and some of the things she learned along the way.  Unfortunately, I forgot the camera, so the pictures we took had to be taken without flash from my phone.  Sorry for the grainy, yucky pictures!  The lights in the room were turned down very low for ambiance I guess.

YWIE-5

We went home full of a great experience and cheesecake for dessert!  🙂

By |2009-11-13T07:00:33-07:00November 12th, 2009|Church|0 Comments

Back Home with the Family!

After a short night, I got up at 3am, got ready, and met a couple of the group in the lobby of the hotel at 4am for our trip to the airport.  My flight left at 6am (not sure what I was thinking when I booked the flight)!  😐  After sleeping most of the way home and having a very smooth, uneventful flight, drove home and met the family at Sweet Tomatoes for lunch.  The kids were off school today and it was GREAT to see everyone again!  🙂  The kids jumped out of the van and smothered me with hugs!  I guess I’m not such a mean and cruel dad after all!  🙂  Benjamin gave me a huge hug, put his head on my shoulder, and didn’t want to move.  It was so sweet and so I just stood there soaking it in.  🙂

After stuffing ourselves with salad, pizza, mac and cheese, bread, muffins, soup, ice cream, and all sorts of other things, we drove home and relaxed.  I fell immediately asleep and got about an hour before waking back up and enjoying the family!

By |2009-11-13T06:34:39-07:00November 11th, 2009|Home Life, Work-Related|0 Comments

SIMposium – Day 3

Day 3 of SIMposium was great too!  We had some more great workshops and learned much.  The best part of the day was in the evening when a bunch of us got together and hung out.  We started by going to a local recommended wine bar where everyone tasted of the local wine (I was the designated walker and filled up on soda :-)) and we played Apples to Apples there in the place.  It was very quaint and had a great atmosphere for relaxing.

SIMposium-Day3-1

After spending a couple hours there, we went to the famous Pike’s Place Pub and Brewery and had dinner.  The food was great and we had a blast chatting, laughing, and having a great time!  It was kind of sad to think that this would be our last night together as a group.  All of us would be going home the next day and our leadership program would be over.

One thing we decided to do is to get together once a quarter as a group, pick a book to read, find a speaker to come and speak to us, and discuss leadership topics.  Most of our meetings will alternate between Chicago and Milwaukee since most of us are in these two areas.  We will try to meet once a year in Cleveland since we have a group there as well.  Hopefully we can keep in touch!

By |2009-11-13T06:29:30-07:00November 10th, 2009|Work-Related|0 Comments

SIMposium – Day 2

SIMposium-Day2-1We had a great second day of SIMposium in Seattle!  It was full of great keynote presentations, breakout sessions, and good food!  I learned a lot of great things not only about Information Technology but about leadership in general.   There were a lot of CIOs from around the country that we were able to talk to and participate in sessions with.

After the sessions were over, they had a networking event at the Seattle “Experience Music Project” and Science Fiction Museum.  Experience Music Project (EMP) is dedicated to the exploration of creativity and innovation in popular music. By blending interpretative, interactive exhibitions with cutting-edge technology, EMP captures and reflects the essence of rock ‘n’ roll, its roots in jazz, soul, gospel, country and the blues, as well as rock’s influence on hip-hop, punk and other recent genres.  SIMposium-Day2-2When we arrived, they had a cocktail hour to loosen every one up.  🙂  Then they had a great buffet of food to eat.  After eating (and more drinking for some), we went into the museum and looked around for the rest of the time.  We saw all kinds of things from Michael Jackson’s jacket and silver glove, to Jimmi Hendrix’s guitars and memorabilia, to Eddie Van Halen’s red and white striped guitar, and much more.  In the atrium, they had a “guitar tree that spanned all the way up to the roof (shown to the right).

Upstairs, they had an array of instruments you could play, and some sound rooms that you could “jam out” and practice in.  There are a lot of members of our RLF group who are pretty musically talented and I sat and watched three of them jam out on drums, base, and lead guitars.  It was pretty cool.

SIMposium-Day2-3After listening to them, there were a bunch of the group who got together and decided to go into the mock concert stage (sound room) and make a recording together.  In honor of the bead necklace concept and nuts (long story, I won’t elaborate here), the group named itself “Rusty Nutt” and performed.  Here is a link to the video:  Click Here.  Important note:  This does NOT show the talent of anyone in the group (except the drummer and possibly 1 guitar player).  🙂

I came home and crashed (although I didn’t sleep too well) while others stayed out and didn’t get back in until about 1 in the morning!  🙂

By |2009-11-13T06:16:07-07:00November 9th, 2009|Work-Related|0 Comments
Info