November news

November was a blur. I started my seasonal job at Williams-Sonoma. I enjoy the work but the schedule can be rough. I work a few nights a week and most Sundays. Nick will get home at about 5:30pm and I will leave at 5:35pm. We just pass the kids off and wave goodbye. I'm home by 11ish and then am up at 6 or 7 the next morning with the kids because why would they sleep any later? On top of this I'm applying for full time jobs with the federal government which means extensive applications. College applications are less in depth. Basically it's easier to get into an ivy league school than get a job as a elementary school cafeteria lady! (by the way I am not applying for a cafeteria job, just an example).


This is us out celebrating my 30th birthday with friends. Good times.

The girls are doing well. They are keeping busy with modeling jobs this time of year.
Olivia is growing like a weed, is teething now, and as you can see below, is very photogenic. Isabella is Isabella... she is learning the fine art of pedaling and steering her tricycle at the same time. She is talking a lot and we can understand her more and more every day. Nick's work is up and down. This time of the year is historically slow and the economy is also a factor. Yet he somehow continues to find things to do. When he isn't working he still tries to get out on his bike and exercise.

So we know it's bad, but we have come to love our artificial Christmas tree. It goes up kinda like an umbrella and is pre-lit. It never needs water and looks great. Real trees can be bought but they don't hold up very long here in the heat, and after having done many Christmas with a fresh cut tree it's just not the same buying one at the grocery store. We thought this was a cute shot of Olivia checking out our tree...



We had Thanksgiving with Nick's extended family again and had a good time. Isabella was happy playing with the other kids and the food turned out great. I made the mashed potatoes this year, so we didn't have to suffer through boxed mashed potatoes like last year. The weather has been nice and on the cooler side for Miami so it's been a good break from the humidity. Stay tuned for what I'm sure will be cute holiday photos of the girls...

Halloween fun

Well, we are seriously behind in our postings, so I'm making an effort to do a few in one shot. Here's the scoop on our Halloween...

Isabella was supposed to be a princess. My mom sewed her a beautiful dress and hat and sent it out to us. Unfortunately Isabella flatly refused to even try the dress on. It was rather big for her, but still, I have never seen her refuse to try on clothes. Sigh! Maybe next year...

So, I was off to the uniform store to buy scrubs for Nick and I. Isabella had some cute scrubs that my sister sent her from her med school, so we figured we'd just be a family of doctors. Besides, Nick hates costumes, and scrubs were just about the only thing I could convince him to wear. I still had a lab coat left over from my lab days, and we had a stray stethoscope around the house from Nick's mom's nursing days.

And we were off to the party at our friends the Hackers house. They have a Halloween party every year. Each family draws a picture of their house on a large piece of paper, and then all the pictures are taped to the fence in their backyard. This way all the kids get to safely trick-or-treat and the parents get the benefit of limited trick-or-treating. No diabetic comas for our kids!

The kids had a blast and ran themselves silly dancing, playing, and eating candy. Then the kids collapsed in front of a Charlie Brown movie in the backyard while the parents had a moment to relax and eat some candy of our own. All in all, it was a great night.

Track Day (guest posting by Nick)

Hi, Sorry for the long break. I must admit we have been busy. Besides flying around the racetrack (tough business I know!) we have been ramping up our activities with the coming seasons. Melissa has been looking for a full time job and has been doing so very fervently. For the short term she has landed a seasonal part-time gig at Williams-Sonoma. As she is happy to find employment, we are mostly looking forward to the discounts not so much the actual pay check. Isabella is back into the modeling world. We have hit a few castings in the last week or so. The season is started here for that. Olivia was recruited by the agency the minute Melissa walked in with both of them. They immediatly inquired as to why she wasn't signed to the agency and offered an audition. Here's a recent photo of Olivia...


We are happy to have missed any major storms or hurricanes this season. It was a fairly dry summer, however, it has been raining alot the last few weeks. I think the lack of summer rain is being made up for in a matter of several weeks! Just today we had three inches. We've also had some answers to prayer. We sold our Honda Civic, our second car. Now being close to work I'm going to get back on the bike. Also I sold my tool box so I don't have to worry about where I'm going to store that.
So onto the track day. It was a great all day event that AMG does four times a year in different location in the US. It started with catered breakfast complete with made to order omletts. We then had a brief introduction and was broken into three teams consisting of 20 people. Each team was headed by a pro driver (the likes of Tommy Kendall, Jeff Andretti, Jeff Bucknam, etc.). We then rotated through three different areas. The first was the rallycross track where we raced several C63. We started with a few practice laps and then ran two laps to get our fasted lap time. By the end of the day the fasted autocross time won a great prize. Then after a few hours of that we went to the skid pad and slid around in some SLK55 and SL63 doing drifting and figure eights to learn some car control and skid recovery. Then a few hours later, to the main event, the main race track at Homestead Intl speedway. We had to wear helmets and drove an assortment of cars ranging from the SL, CL, E, CLS, C and CLK63 cars. A pro driver would lead a group of three drivers on the road course and we drove at breakneck speeds and learned the finer art of cornering, breaking and full throttle driving. Top speeds varied from 120mph on straight aways to kinda scary corners at 75-80mph. With a catered lunch and some other small activities it was a great day. It is something availible to the public. You can sign up for this. But I must warn you it isn't exactly "free". For one day its $1300.00 for two days it moves to $1600.00. So will I try to win again next year... definately. By the way, the prize for the best autocross time was a $7500.00 Limited edition AMG watch by IWC an AMG sponser...and no, I did not win.






Here are a few photos of Melissa's recent trip to Seattle for a friend's wedding. She loved the fall colors (we definitely don't get that here at all), and being able to wear a few sweaters and coats that literally haven't been worn in a year and a half.



Also, here is a quick shot from Isabella's 2nd birthday. She definitely likes cake more now than she did a year ago, although the blowing out the candles thing hasn't happened yet. Maybe next year...

Nick is a rock star!

So I just have to take a moment and brag about Nick...

Nick received an award at work today that just proves what I already knew, he is truly great at his job. It all started a week or so ago when one of his managers told him he had won an award from Mercedes-Benz. Not many details were given, but he was told it would include a paid day at the local racetrack to drive the super fast Mercedes AMG race cars and meet professional race car drivers, etc. Pretty cool, but he never really did find out why they were giving him the award.

So, today some of the muckety-mucks from Mercedes-Benz corporate were in town to present him with the award, and to buy the whole shop lunch in his honor. It turns out that Nick is one of 16 technicians in the entire country chosen for this award, called Precision 1. The award is given to technicians who have acheived a high level of technical training, but more importantly, the award recognizes technicians who have a high percentage of fixing cars right the first time. Nick's percentage is over 95%! So, out of the more than 6,000 Mercedes technicians in the country, my husband is in the top 16. Woo hoo!

We are SO proud of him! And we'll be sure to post photos from his day at the racetrack. Track day is October 3. Happy Motoring

Four months old

Olivia had her four month checkup yesterday, and it's official... she's HUGE! Well, she's not off the charts, but she is in the 90th percentile for height (26 in.) and the 95th percentile for weight (16 lbs, 2 oz). She is still the picture of health and a very happy little girl. Seriously, she is an angel. I'm not sure if it's just because we're more experienced parents now, or because it's her natural temprament, but she is a very content and happy child. What a blessing after a very fiesty Isabella! Here are some updated pictures of the girls...

Isabella has started hiding from the camera. She thinks it's a funny game, I think it's a bit annoying...


Almost rolling over...



Seriously, she is almost always smiling.

Fake-out

Tropical Storm Fay turned out to be much less interesting than it was originally hyped. Seriously, we had maybe 3 inches of rain yesterday, which is not too out of the ordinary for south Florida in the summer. It has been a bit windy, but not so much that it kept us awake last night. Honestly, I can think of a couple of other storms that were not categorized as a "tropical storm" that gave us significantly more rain or thunderstorms. I think it was mostly just good practice for us to see how much time it takes to prepare for a storm.

I would post a picture the post-storm view of our street, but it looks almost identical to the picture from yesterday. This is not as interesting a blog topic as I had hoped for...

On a side note, this is exactly why the 24-hour news cycle is not necessary or all that beneficial in my opinion. With 24 hours of news time to fill, something like a tropical storm threatening a US state is hyped quite a bit by the media. Add to that some jumpy neighbors who lived through Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and an inexperienced family like us is left thinking that we need to prepare for several days without power, a flooded yard, and downed trees. In actuality, we could have done almost nothing to prepare and fared just as well. Lesson learned...

Storm prep

Hurricane Season 2008 has gotten into peak activity now, and we spent most of yesterday preparing for Tropical Storm Fay. It's quite a bit of work to prepare for what will probably be just a lot of rain and some mild (by Florida standards) wind. But, better safe than sorry seems to be the motto here. As of Mondy morning, we're already seeing the "outer rain bands" as they call them, and we're forecasted to get 5 or more inches of rain by the end of Tuesday. I'm going to show pre and post-storm photos of our street. Here is the pre-storm photo...



Stay tuned for post-storm updates...