Shout out!

Apparently from what I hear my blog is getting national attention! So, I just want to give a shout out to my newest readers in North Carolina (Hi Cheneys). Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my blog. Also, here are some pictures of playing settlers with my cousins the other night, they are crazy but really fun. Lately Bentley keeps beating me everytime I play with them. Either I'm gonna have to come up with a new strategy or start cheating or just stop playing with her, she's too smart now.

SPRING BREAK!!!!

I've been waiting for spring break since January. It's means that I'm half way through this dreaded semester and so much closer to a time when I don't have to take so many tests all the time! So far it's been a great time. I spent pretty much all weekend in Boston for birthday parties and chillin and church and good meals. It was a great time. I've worked a few long days too at the good old CVS. It hasn't felt like I've had a lot of down time so far but it has been great. Yesterday I had the day off from everything, so I went into Boston and asked/told Trisha to run 6 miles with me. I've always wanted to run along the Charles river and it was such a nice day for it. Now i can cross that off my list of things I want to do in Massachusetts. We started running in Cambridge (near Harvard) and ran along the river as it wound to the city. It's such a pretty place and it made the run much more pleasant. The picture above is of Boston from the other side of the river where we ran, so this is what we looked at as we ran. I was a little bit mean and told her it was only 6 miles when in actual fact it was an eight mile run!!! Good for us! We didn't even stop and we made great time. We're almost ready for a half-marathon. Bring it on... Then we drove down to Newport, Rhode Island to see the mansions and walk around a bit. It is incredible to think that one family (the Vanderbuilts) had over 200 million dollars in the 1890's, more than the US treasury. They lived in pure elegance and it is slightly sickening but really great to look at. The picture below is simply the "Summer Cottage" of the Vanderbuilt family called The Breakers. It was such a nice day! Don't worry, today we had some freakish snow storm while I was at work. When is it gonna be summer?! Tomorrow I get another whole day off and I have so much homework to do but it will be nice to sit around all day at home. I'm gonna make manicotti for my family and play games with the kids that I have been promising for weeks and never had time. I can't complain lately, my life is just really great.

What a difference...

What a difference a day can make! For example, Sunday February 24, 2008 was a terrible day. I had a test the next day and absolutely no motivation to study for it. I would rather spend my time doing other great and important things. I was bothered by something and it added to the frustrations. I spent much of the day in the library with a headache. Now, contrast that to Monday February 25, 2008 which was an incredible day! I gave up studying early, so I had lots of sleep and I was feeling good. I love that everytime I take a test I just feel great afterwards. Whether I did poorly or well, it is the best feeling to be done with it and not have to look back. I bought a space heater which is genius, I ate a great meal, had a fun FHE in boston, pondered the craziness of life and opened my soul just a little in the presence of awesome company. Moral of the story: All bad days are followed by great ones! Side note to everyone: When you have a great day like this, try to go to bed early cause I am wicked tired and I am paying a heavy price right now as I can barely open my eyes and I have to go to work for 5 hours...

The wedding

It was my brother's wedding this weekend and I got to go to Utah for all the festivities. It was not all fun, it came with a cost. I missed a test that I have to make up at the end of the semester and I didn't have much time to study for a test that I had this morning. I am a little upset at my performance on today's test and I have been trying to study, but I don't feel like it. So instead, I will post pictures of the wedding. It was a great wedding. I flew in on friday afternoon just in time to pick up my tux and go to the wedding dinner. Saturday was the wedding and the reception and then chillin with the family and playing some wii with my cousins. Then I was back to boston on sunday morning. Probably the shortest cross-country trip of my life, but it was worth it. I am so happy for Tania and CJ. I think they will have a lifetime of great experiences because they are extraordinary people.

CJ and Tania come out of the temple
CJ and Tania pose as a married couple
The boys jump around mad crazy
My niece is pretty cute
Tania and CJ on a bench
At the reception
She is the cutest
another shot of the cutest niece ever
The cake
My family is growing
My siblings
My grandma's and grandpa with CJ and Tania
All of their nieces and nephews
Getting ready to cut the cake
My sister and her family, its nearly impossible to get them all to look the same direction
Tania poses
My brothers and sister and I chillin
My nephew covers his mouth when he laughs
The decorating begins
Clearly decorating the car is the best part
More decorating
Even more of the car (like I said it's the best part)
The finished product
As they are looking into the car filled with baloons and other things that blow up as well as cereal. Maybe they are a little disgusted?! That just makes it even more fun for us...
CJ and Tania drive off to their honeymoon

Is it the weekend again yet?

I have so much homework to do right now and instead I just keep thinking about how much fun I had this weekend. Can it just be the weekend all the time? I went candle pin bowling for my first time ever and it was so fun! For those of you who are not familiar with it, I hear it's a new england thing. You roll a small ball down the lane and you get 3 chances on each frame because it is substantially harder than regular bowling because the pins are skinny (hense the name). That is why I only scored like 50 points and still managed to beat some people:) Don't get mad T, you can beat me at other things. It's so much fun!
Then I played guitar hero on the wii for several hours (I love that game). Then I drove home a little too fast and got pulled over, but alas it was a great weekend and I didn't get a ticket, yahoo!! Sunday I was invited to dinner, which was homemade cafe rio and it was delicious! I made homemade salsa which was also amazing. Then I just chilled with some really great people from my two favorite houses in Brighton, MA. I watched the super bowl and I was voting for the pats, but I guess they didn't really wanna win. It's a good thing I don't really care about sports much so that didn't affect my great weekend. I had trifle (sp?) can't forget about that and I watched 'House' after the super bowl. Just in case you couldn't tell by now, it was an awesome weekend!

Mon ami Andre

Andre VanHauvermat
Il y a 5 ans que je m'etais probablement assis au tour de la table de la familly VanHauvermat en train de manger la bonne nourriture que Georgette avais prepare. Andre m'avais beaucoup appris au tour de sa table. Je m'en souviens qu'il m'a toujours dit, "on rompt la pain" et il a souvent essaye de me corriger quand j'ai mal dit une phrase. C'est dans cette maniere que j'ai appris le francais bien parler. J'ai passe beaucoup de temps avec Andre dans les quelques annees que je lui avais connu. Chaque fois que j'ai visite, je devais passer chez eux pour jouer aux cartes! Mes memoires les plus speciales d'Andre serront toujours les moments quand on a joue aux cartes ensembles. Il etait toujours poli et humble meme quand Georgette, Pascal et moi faisaient les betises autour de lui. Alors, j'ai recu la nouvelle aujourd'hui qu'il est mort de la cancer. Ca fait quelques mois qu'il a battit pour sa vie et quelques annees qu'il a habite avec la maladie. Je me demande si c'est mieux pour lui a rester sur terre ou si c'est mieux de passer a l'autre vie? C'est une grande question. Je ne doute pas qu'il est maintenant dans la paix mais je sais aussi qu'il nous manque. A ce moment, il y a des coeur qui sont brise a cause de sa mort. On pleur du fait qu'il nous a quitte pour l'instant. Personnellement, je suis triste que la prochaine fois que j'ai l'occasion de voyager a France, je ne vais pas pouvoir parler avec Andre ni jouer aux cartes ni lui aider dans son jardin. Un jour je le verrai encore et ce jour serai un jour joyeux et heureux pour moi. Je vous aime Andre et vous me manquerai!

Tutoring

I have been tutoring with the Bruce Wells Upperbound Program for over a year now and sometimes I wonder if it is worth my time and effort and more importantly the time that I lose that I should be studying for school. It's been on my mind a lot lately but I can never reach any conclusion. On one hand, it can be very annoying and useless when I go and sit around for two hours because the students don't have any questions on their homework. Last week I went and all the students were in the computer lab. Obviously a bad place to be if you want to get any homework accomplished (believe me I know from personal experience). Most of the kids were occupied with their myspace accounts and the other students had no homework. I sat their for 2 hours wishing I was home doing my own homework. On the other hand, it can be extremely rewarding when I help the students understand concepts that they will use over and over again in the years to come. Today was one of those days. Luckily we had a class room to work in today and the moment I walked through the doors a student came up to me and asked me for help. I helped the kid with his algebra for nearly the whole two hours. I also got to help some other kids on the side. The best part about it all is that moment when you can tell that the student understands the concept and will be able to do the problem again on their own. I love that! So, I guess maybe for now I will stick with it:)