Clarification and More

In case anyone was wondering about the previous post. . .

The law school degree is a J.D. aka Juris Doctorate; like a M.S. is a Masters of Science. And the character on Scrubs is names J.D. There is an episode, which we can't find, where an old man who looks like the Janitor has deep discussions with the Janitor. They talk about their struggles to catch their J.D. The Janitor is always pulling pranks on J.D. the person, while the old guy is talking about getting a law degree.

Anyway, here are some recent pictures of Charles:

Great-grandpa, Dad and Charles

Charles vs. the popsicle

My favorite. I don't know what happened to his shorts, but that is the best part.

You can't have him, he's mine.

He finally caught his J.D.

Chad graduated from Law School this past weekend. And he did it in style with Charles in-tow as he acrossed the stage. I am so proud of him. You can't imagine the volume of articles he has had to read and edit over the past three years. Even though Charles and I did our best to distract him, Chad finished strong by making the honor roll his last year. We celebrated with a BBQ Saturday night and then a quiet Sunday. Monday Chad began his bar review "class" that acts like a full time job with homework. Although he still has to take the bar exam at the end of July (3 day exam!!), we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Where that light will take us, we probably won't know until the end of the summer.

Prior to the graduation.

A quick shot before they walked across the stage.

Look in the middle. . .it looks like a floating Hooch.

What is a celebration without a large Costco cake?

Start your Engines

On Saturday all the girls in my family (Mom, Andi, Katie, Jill, Marianne, Samantha and Megan)and I participated in Race for the Cure. It is a 5K walk/run to benefit Breast Cancer research. The first year (three years ago) we walked the race due to the fact that 3 of us were pregnant. One was very pregnant (Katie) and another also had her son on her back (Andi). We enjoyed the walk so much that we decided to walk again. Who needs to run? Walking allows us to dance to the music being played and catch up on what everyone is doing with their lives, although I think the runners take all the good "after race" food. We still lucked out and got some free Campbell's soup cans. We are also so lucky that no one in our family (that I know of) has had to fight Breast Cancer. We hope that participating in this race will be good Karma and that they find a cure soon. So we will be doing it next year if anyone wants to jump on the good Karma band-wagon. Below is a picture I stole from one of my sister's blogs.

Easter- The Hunt

This is second half the Easter festivities. The first thing we did Easter morning was empty out Charles' basket and try to keep him from eating all the candy. Charles loves candy but we were able to distract him with an egg hunt (Chad hid the eggs we colored). Charles got a new Easter outfit for church (a family tradition from my family). After church we did another egg hunt at my sister Andi's house with all of my family. The egg hunt didn't go as well as the morning one because Charles discovered with the first egg that there was candy inside and wanted to eat the candy before moving onto the next egg. With a little pulling and pushing from mom he picked up some more eggs before the hunt was over. Afterward we left to have dinner with Chad's parents; always good eats.

The basket: Charles loves books.

Charles and me first thing in the morning. He was already asking me to read him his new book.

Pictures before church. Chad and Charles clean up nicely.

The last three are from Andi's house. We had a great Easter. Now we are looking forward to our Memorial Day camping trip!

Easter the Pregame Show

This is part one of the Easter posts. We have too many pictures for one post and it would take me too long to orangize it all. So before Easter Charles and I dyed some eggs. Chad helped cook them and then became our photographer. Charles loved it and was quite sad when all the eggs were finished. Sorry about any red eye, I just didn't bother to check. Here we go.

First we drew on the eggs with the special clear crayon.

Then of course the we dropped the eggs in the dye.

Then we waited and while we waited we showed all our teeth for the camera.

The finished product. We like to name our eggs. You can see mom's egg and Hooch's egg. It the back right corner is Jesus' egg but all you can see is the "sus." Don't worry Da-do had an egg too.

Tribute to Towel Animals

On cruises and other all-inclusive resorts, the person in charge of your room creates a different towel animal every evening.

Here is a bunny, which because of a certain Easter candy is Hooch's favorite word to say.

A monkey. When we ask Hooch to say monkey, he says "Ooh, Ooh, Aah, Aah"


Elephant. Hooch does not say elephant, but does use his arm as his trunk and makes an elephant noise.

Here is a bat. Hooch does not know anything about bats.

I am not sure what this animal is. I think Tracy thought it was a dog. If it is a dog, Hooch would say "doggy" or bark at you. If you don't think it is a dog, let us know what your guess is.

For those of you who follow this blog for the pictures of Hooch and not so much to hear about our vacations and love of towel animals, there are Easter pictures that might find their way to the blog sometime soon.

Spring Break '09 - Caribbean Cruise

It's a LONG One.

As a graduation present (no I haven't graduated yet) my parents took Tracy and I on a cruise. I feel like I should preface this post by saying that there will be no pictures of Hooch. So, if he is the reason you frequent this blog, there will be little to no mention of him in this post because he was not with us.

Anyway, I will attempt to cover the trip in one post.

Day 1: We flew to Houston early Saturday morning and spent the day at a very large mall in Downtown Houston.

Day 2: We took a bus to Galveston (about 1 hour), which was where the boat was docked. We left Galveston around 5:00 pm.

This is the boat (Voyager of the Seas). Although this picture is not in Galveston, I thought it would be nice to start with a picture of the boat.

Day 3: We spent all day at sea, making our way to Cozumel, Mexico. I don't remember specifically anything we did, but we probably played shuffle board and miniature golf, and I consumed a few soft-serve ice cream cones.

Here is the sunset as seen from our balcony.

Day 4: We woke up and we were in Cozumel. We went to Passion Island, which is a little island about 45 minutes by boat from Cozumel. It was nice and relaxing.

Here is a picture of some type of structure in Cozumel. I can't remember if this is just a monument or if it is a lighthouse, it is hard to tell in this picture.

Day 5: We arrived in Roatan, Honduras and were off to our zipline tour. We waited on the busy street for about an hour while the rest of our group showed up. Though it didn't start great, the actual zipline tour was a lot of fun.

Here is Tracy. She makes the yellow helmet look good.

This is a picture from the boat looking at the little town. The water is so clear.

This is a secluded beach in Honduras as seen from one of the roads we took to get to the zipline area.

Day 6: Thursday we arrived in Costa Maya, which is in Mexico yet very close to Belize. We visited the Chacchoben Mayan ruins. We also got a Mayan history lesson. After we visited the ruins we went and had lunch with a Mayan family. The food was great.

Here we are sitting on the steps of one of the temples.

Here we are in front of another temple.

Tracy opted to scale the side of the temple in lieu of using the stairs.

Day 7 & 8: On our way back to Galveston we spent two days at sea. The first sea day was nice and sunny, the next was overcast and windy. We spent our time playing more shuffle board, mini golf, and reading. My dad and I played golf in the golf simulator. And I ate some more soft serve ice cream.

Tracy decided she would use her temple scaling skills on the rock wall (yes, the boat has a rock wall). I did not attempt to climb the rock wall, I would have failed miserably.


Tracy then decided to go ice skating (yes, the boat also has an ice skating rink). Again, I was not confident in my ability to stay on my feet on ice skates. I designated myself the all-time picture taker.


Here is Tracy on our balcony.

Day 9: We arrived back in Galveston on Sunday morning. We took the bus back to Houston and then toured the Space Center Houston/Johnson Space Center while we waited for our flight later that night.

Here is a model of a space shuttle.


Here is Tracy working in the kid version of Mission Control.


This is an area where they plant an oak tree for those who have died in accidents.


Tracy with the crew of Apollo 8.


Here she is again with the crew from Apollo 13.


Here I am ready to go home.