Master Stephen

Stephen graduated from ASU with his Master's Degree!  We are so proud of him and of all the hard work he has put into this.

 Replicating his favorite pose from when he got his bachelor's degree.

 Our cutie-patootie.

 Stephen's mom and step-dad were able to come down and visit and we had such a great time with them.

 I made this totally awesome sign that even Stephen approved of.  

 And our son even helped me to create it.

We are so proud of Stephen!  Now on to the next stage in our lives!

Best Buds

It's fun having a little boy who is so interested in his daddy.  My husband was cleaning the cobwebs from our vaulted ceilings and little guy had to get involved as well.

And here's the whole picture of what was going on.

What a great way to scare the Momma.  Stephen had no idea what was going on below and IV got up to the second step before I caught him!  Yikes!

Stephen then came down and took the little guy up with him.  IV was FREAKING out!  He did NOT like going up the ladder.  We thought it was hilarious so I got out the camcorder and the second time going up he LOVED it.  Not as cute to record.

Our son takes after his dad sooo much.  They both LOVE to be outside.  IV would just sit and play on the door step sitting next to his dad.  Cute.

   

Children's Books

Stephen went to New Orleans for a school trip just a few months ago.  Yes I was bummed that I didn't get to go, so I told him he had to bring me back a present.  And then I said I was just kidding.  But a souvenir would still be nice.  But he didn't have to.  And then I reminded him that when he had gone to this same event (in Las Vegas that time) two years ago he had brought me back some gorgeous jewelry .  So he knew it had to be something good.  

He searched high and low and finally found something good:

    

Let me tell you how much I LOVE this book.  I love that it's written in rhyme and with a cajun accent.  What could be better?  Instantly I knew that we'd have to add this book to our collection:

And on our past trip to Utah we found an AUTOGRAPHED copy of this book at one of the scenic stops we took!  I am beyond thrilled!  I read them out loud even though my son doesn't care for them.  He likes less words and more babies in his stories, the silly guy.  But I can't wait to get more books like these!

P.S. yes I will update with info from the Utah trip, but I somehow forgot my camera and I still don't know where it is, so I'll have to be stealing the pictures from somewhere else.  Bummer.

Odd Situations

I am very lucky to have Stephen in my life.  He knows more in certain subjects than I do and he is much more level-headed when handling tricky situations.  Sometimes I wonder if weird things happen when he is present simply because he'll know what to do.

Case in Point #1: When we were living in Tempe, we went to Cracker Barrel for dinner one time.  I believe we were waiting to pay (in the store area) when all of a sudden this girl collapses, and grabs my arm in the process.  I had no clue what to do.  Stephen immediately helps get her up and sitting and then coordinates to someone to not only get her some water, but to call 911 as well.  As for me...I just stood there...awkwardly.

Case in Point #2: We were driving back from Pinetop around the curves of this mountain and suddenly we hit a rock in the road that we didn't see.  Stephen was so prepared that he was able to pull the car off the road, pull out his roadside kit (which includes a neon jacket and some other cool things like that) and he carefully clears off the road.  I sat in the car.

Case in Point #3:  Just before the start of school this past year we were at ASU waiting to get Stephen's light pass.  This boy walks slowly right past the line and right into the wall.  He backs-up and hits the wall again.  It was like he was in this daze.  And then he collapsed.  I again had no idea how to help.  And again it was taken care of by others around us.

Case in Point #4:  We were driving around in our truck when the truck in front of us lost two of the chairs they were hauling.  Again Stephen knows what to do and is able to maneuver through traffic; block the way so others don't run into them, load up the chairs and drop them off in a safe spot.  Again I just sat in the vehicle.

I know that there have been other instances where he knows just what to do and for that I am always so thankful that I wasn't by myself so that the issue was able to be handled.  And I am learning so much about how to better handle these situations.  Maybe one day I won't be so helpless after all!  

Singing Praises about my Husband

So my husband is a pretty awesome guy. He is going to school right now full time and helping at home also full time (he just painted the trim on my parent's house all by himself!). Anyway, at school he is doing sooo much to be involved. I'm just amazed by him!

Stephen is pretty vocal about things he knows work on campus and he will surely tell if he sees something that can be improved upon.

Recently he was asked by the dean to be on a board that figures out the curriculum for his Master's Program. He is the only student on this board primarily composed of tenured professors and the college administration. I am so impressed that they value his opinion so much as to invite him to be on this board!

Yesterday he came home from a meeting and was just grinning because he had made a big suggestion and now it's part of the curriculum!

I'm so amazed, especially to see all this coming from a guy who thought that he could never even go to college. To see him succeed this well is very encouraging.

Portland

We went to Oregon to visit Stephen's dad's family and while we were there they agreed to watch our son for the afternoon so we could go visit Portland.
The day we were there just happened to be the annual Chinese Dragon Boat Races and we accidentally managed to watch it in action!
Here's some of the coast of Portland. I wouldn't mind living here.

And of course here's proof that we were there.

I couldn't choose just one picture of us to post so because I'm so vain I decided to post them both.

Some random road we were walking over that I thought was just gorgeous.

Right across from the ballet (that's where Stephen took me on this surprise outing) was this water exhibit that apparently is talked about often among planners.

Date Night

While in UT, Stephen's mom treated us to a date night! We left IV with her (along with Daniel and Crystal's two) and headed off to Liberty Park with Daniel, Crystal and Matt. It would have been a triple date but unfortunately Matt's wife was unable to join us.
Luckily for us Crystal had two grocery bags full of bread that was too stale to eat, so we fed it to the hungry ducks instead. The ducks were not afraid of us at all and came right up to us which really scared me at first.

I wish we had more parks like this in AZ!

We managed to find a bench right on the water although the water was so stinky you really didn't want to be that close.

This is Limpy.

When we first showed up the ducks were scattered across the lake, but as soon as we started throwing our copious amounts of bread into the water the ducks flocked right to us. There were so many ducks in such a small space that sometimes they had to fight it out to get the pieces of food. Limpy was the result of such commotion. After the fight he limped the rest of the night and I resorted to hand-delivering him my pieces of bread. Such an epic tale for so meager a creature.

These guys were the crowd-pleasers. Who doesn't love a baby duck?

The ducks were super friendly (I almost typed frisky!) and would eat right out of our hands.

Matt was the adventurous one and tried feeding the duck right out of his mouth. Can you say GROSS?!I certainly wasn't brave enough to try that!

We all had so much fun. This probably lasted over an hour until we realized we were stealing all the ducks away from the little kids who came with their parents. We gave the rest of our bread to them so they could enjoy in the fun.

Trike Race

We received some pictures from the trike race where Stephen took third place! Yay bronze medal!!
He's trying so hard!! After seeing how much work it was to ride the trike I decided it is best left up to the city employees.
Yep, he had a crash...but was still able to make third, unbelievable!

Trike Race

Stephen's work is having a Trike race today. Last night he was working on fixing up the tricycle that his department had so that he could race it today. He was having fun racing it around the house to test it out. I think he looks cute riding it.

Apparently it's harder than it looks.

Thank heavens for an image stabilizer

So right around the 20th of November Stephen for some reason woke up at around two or three in the morning. When he wakes up it pretty much wakes me up too but I was dead tired and tried to fall back asleep. After a little bit Stephen started feeling some heat coming from our bedroom window, so he turned to look at the window and saw that a house was on fire!

He immediately jumped up threw on some clothes (shorts and a short-sleeved shirt with no jacket) and ran outside to help.

I groggily put on some shoes and a jacket and grabbed some essentials; the house keys, my cell-phone, and of course my camera. Apparently it wasn't a house that was on fire but it was a backyard shed. I've drawn a diagram to help illustrate where it was. (Yes I used Paint, I'm on my laptop and that's all I've got) So the bold line at the top and the one running down the middle are the roads we live on, the rectangle buildings are houses, with our house and the back apartment labeled, our bedroom window is in red, and the area where the fire was at is in yellow. Our next door neighbors have an apartment in the back as well. Which is pretty common here. I stayed on our block to stay out of the way of the firemen (who showed up after us).
So here's the fire from my position on the other side of the road (I'm where the blue line is in the diagram).

The first thing that I noticed when I ran outside was that the fire was blowing southwards and the embers were getting all over the roof of this one house. As I rounded the corner this is what I saw. Do you see it too?

No? Then I'll do a close-up.

The picture isn't that clear but there's my husband already armed with a hose spraying the house roof to make sure that it doesn't catch on fire as well. And he did a mighty darn good job because the roof never caught on fire. Oh, so that my diagram may help you out, he's standing where the purple line is. Well, the diagram certainly helps me ;) Alright so next we have a picture of the road where all the cars and emergency vehicles are.

I finally got brave enough to cross the street and take a picture by where Stephen was. At this point I think the fire was mostly under control, there was a small shed that the firefighters were working on and a huge tree kept lighting up, but nothing else caught on fire. Stephen is to the left.

It was interesting that really no one else was outside helping out (minus the family whose house was on fire and the family whose roof Stephen was hosing down). Being around 3:30 in the morning, it was FREEZING cold outside. I was bundled up and was shivering so hard! I thought that I was going to drop the camera because of how much I was shaking. I'm so thankful for the image stabilizer on my camera that enabled me to take these pictures, I know they're not the greatest, but literally I couldn't even look through the view finder with how hard I was shaking, I was just pointing the camera and pressing the button hoping that I would have a somewhat decent picture. It sure was a crazy morning.

Stephen's Birthday recap

For Stephen's birthday we drove down to Dallas which is about two hours away. We got down there and made sure we hit a Panda Express first thing. And I don't have a picture to prove it. There is no Panda Express any closer to us and Stephen misses it like no other. He really wants to try and get a Panda Express in town.
After Panda we saw a Target in the same area and so we went to buy his birthday present.

He is always waking up in the morning from headaches from our pillows and I knew I could never pick out one that would suit him so I let him choose one for himself. After looking at all the normal pillows and deciding they were too flat, Stephen went with a non-traditional arm-chair pillow. It was funny watching him try them all out and the above picture is of the winner.

Coming out of Target we happened to see this semi truck with a container full of flowers. It's sorta hard to see and for some reason was hilarious to us.

The real reason for the trip to Dallas was for Stephen to buy a new graphics card for his computer. (Actually I'm not really sure what we got but that sounds about right.) There aren't many electronics stores in town and Dallas not only has the closest Panda Express but they also have the closest Fry's Electronics. Apparently Fry's Electronics does not like it when people take pictures in store and so I don't have any documentation of the HOURS that were spent here. You know, I always have felt pretty computer savvy until I walk into a place like that and hear all the different pricey gadgets and gizmos that you can (and should) spend to place into your computer. I like things extremely user-friendly. Stephen at one point was asking for my opinion and while I am interested, I have no idea what he and the sales clerk were talking about. It sounded like alphabet soup to me and so I went with the prettier box. I'm sure that was a ton of help.

When we got home there was a package waiting for Stephen. It looked kinda funny because the address had been blacked out so many times, but I'm glad it arrived safely ;)

What could it be but a microwaveable single serving of cake! How marvelous. Thank you Pollyanna (and mom too who happened to send one earlier in her package).

We had half of a cake already from something else and so I decided to make the microwaveable one for Stephen.
I wasn't really thinking and put the candles into the cake right when it came out of the microwave and when we pulled them out they looked like this.
They did not look like this when they went in! The cake actually melted the wax and so Stephen had to be careful and only eat where the wax wasn't. Oops.