The Best Four-Month Blog Lapse Excuse EVER

Hello Friends,

So I noticed on a friend's blog a list of blogs she tracks and when they've posted last. The list was something like this:
Family is the Best
3 days ago

Happy Family
2 days ago

Family Love
4 days ago

Happiness is Family
14 hours ago

Families Can be Together Forever
2 seconds ago

Steve and Emilee
4 months ago

I noticed two things that seem to be a trend: Mormon friends' families are awfully happy, and I am a failure at keeping my blog updated like they do.

Well, I offer you The Best Four-Month Blog Lapse Excuse Ever: I have been pregnant for 4 months! AND....it's a BOY! (Now I know that would have been a lot more fun to keep everyone guessing had I posted something eons earlier like, "Girl or Boy, Place your bets 3 months ahead!" and then, "Girl or Boy, Place you bets, 1.2 Months ahead!" and then, "Girl or Boy, We are at the Dr.'s Office Right NOW, so you better guess already!" But this way, you are spared all that torment and you already know. Wasn't that easier?

(The truth: Just trying to feel better about my lame procrastinating.)

And more truth: Being pregnant makes me feel pretty unmotivated--which is pretty embarrassing to admit out loud, when all my friends use words like "nesting", "nursery projects", and "compulsive cleaning!" (Yes, I've heard all three from very productive pregnant friends.) So I keep thinking that I'll hit this phase......................................nope not yet....................................................................................aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand....................how 'bout now?...............................................................................nope, still not. So, I'll let you know. Maybe. If I'm feeling motivated. You see this vicious cycle?

So while I'm here, I'll mention some fun facts about the last four months.

I felt baby boy kick me for sure the first time on October 23th, at 1:15 pm.

The very next week, we had our ultrasound where we found out he was a boy, to which we were both fairly shocked about. We had been thinking we were having the first Warne girl in the second generation of Steve's family. But, even more shocked were we, and not to mention the Doctor, to notice how obvious it was that he was a boy! ;)

When we were to go in to the ultrasound specialist, no joke: she told us she had a concert to go to that night and couldn't fit us in due to some botched scheduling. She asked, after we had told absolutely EVERYONE that we would know the gender that day, if we could reschedule for a WEEK later. Our response: Me: Almost crying. Steve: "Uhhhh...." and then altogether: "Umm, no, I think we really need to do this TODAY." Thankfully, the doctor came in and slapped her around a little so she timidly said she would go ahead with the ultrasound that day. Good thing, or patients in the waiting room may have seen a very ugly melt-down.

We have no boy names. The front runner was really a joke that I keep telling Steve will never actually happen, and that is: Don Carlos. Yes, Don Carlos Warne. You see? We got nothin'!

And if anyone is concerned about how the Fur Children (Smingers and Smokey Bones) are taking the changes, they have NO idea what's coming and how much less attention they're about to get! In another 4 months, I'll be picking up some cat Zoloft at the pharmacy.

Just think, if I don't write for 4 more months, I could be putting up baby pictures next blog! ;)

Leaf Attack!!!

Just watch this clip.

A hit has been put out on Smingers

The other day I got home early. I had just walked in the door when I heard: tweet. tweet. Tweet. Tweet. TWeet. TWEET. TWEET. TWEET TWEET TWEETTWEET!TWEET!TWEET!

And then BAM! Someone comes Busting in the cat door. An orange blur runs past me and up the stairs without missing a beat. Meanwhile, the birds are squaking and making a huge commotion outside and I knew something was going on. So upstairs I went to find Smingers, and there he was, and I knew: the stakes had been raised.



He STOLE the birds' baby!



He had it on the floor and was pawing at it, and it was helplessly tweeting. I immediately took it away from him, and he wasn't too happy to lose such a hard-earned prize, but I took it out and put it in a low branch of a tree. But as soon as those birds saw Smingers, and until this day, they zoom down and dive-bomb him until he runs for cover! He hasn't tried to fight back too much--he knows its pointless to fight when all the birds have a hit out on you.

Next time we're outside with smingers we'll try to get video of him bein attacked!

Steve and Emilee, Married Five Years: The Aftermath

Steve and I just celebrated FIVE years together! Our first "milestone"! Let me begin with the a story about the breakdown of communication between us.

Did I scare you yet? No, it's a good story, really!

So last Wednesday night, Steve went to a 'continuing education' thing at the school, (because the education never ends, apparently) and I went out to crochet night with the girls (totally stunk at the pot-holder arts, let me tell you!). Anyway, we both came home late, and I realized we had no food for lunches. I told Steve we needed to go to Walmart.
Steve: Can you just go and get what you want? Oh, well, actually the Bishop just called and I have to go do some clerk stuff right now, it can't wait until tomorrow.
Me: Okay.
So I felt bad and I knew he really didn't want to go. So he leaves and shortly thereafter, and then I left after him to go to Walmart.

Fast forward one hour.

I come home with bags of groceries and set them on the kitchen counter to put away.

Fast forward five minutes.

Steve comes home with the same Walmart bags to put them on the counter...What?? Where did These bags come from??
Me: YOU went to Walmart? I just came back from Walmart!
Him: What do you mean? I was going to go after going to the church!
Me: What?? I was just there, I didn't see you!
Him: I was just there, I didn't see you either...
Me: What did you buy?

So here's what we bought. THE EXACT SAME STUFF.

The SAME Quaker Granola Bar Variety Pack:



The SAME 6-pack of Cheetos:



And the SAME choice of frozen dinners: Paninis.




So there you have it. Apparently Steve went in one side of Walmart and I went in the other--never even saw eachother. We may not know WHO'S getting the food, but we most certainly know what KIND it's going to be!!

So besides all that, we had a wonderful anniversary together: Steve getting me a dozen roses (my first roses from him ever! He usually picks something exotic, but it was fun that he did something spontaneous!) eating at Cheesecake factory, Steve playing basketball and me hanging out with the girls, taking the lazy kitties for a walk. Sure love that man, would've married him again in a heartbeat! Love you, Steve!

My parent's new yard

This spring Emilee and I flew to California to help install the front landscape of my parent's yard. Emilee had spent hours designing it with plants that were native to the area as well as others that would add beauty to the yard. During Christmas break we went to various nurseries and made a plant wish-list, then Emilee incorporated those plants into a design. We also went to two rock quarries to buy boulders which we placed in the flower bed.

Boards: I passed!

Wow, I found out today that I passed part 1 of my optometry boards. WooHoo! Emilee and I were very grateful and that I passed and feel we were greatly blessed. I got a score that was very competitive and should help me should I decide to do a residency. Thanks to all for your thoughts and prayers on my behalf.

Sweaty Smingers

I bet you didn't know cats can sweat--well, they can.

So, we decided that Smingers needs to be slowly acclimated to riding in a car. We're not THAT crazy, we just want to get him to be okay with idea, since he'll probably be forced to be in the car for a week when we move in a year. So, start early, we said. Drive around the block, we said. He'll get used to it, we said. Not so much.

As soon as we closed the car door, he went all tense. We started to drive, nice and slow. We were only going to drop off a letter and pick up a newspaper down the street--It was really probably only a 3 mile loop. He started to cry. It was the saddest, most pathetic "MEoooooh"'s you've ever heard. Then he started to get hot. I was holding his paws and they started getting all moist--eew, cat sweat! "Um, Steve," I said, "We probably better go home now, I think he might be sweating..." I think would both thought (in the Napoleon Dynamite voice): GROSSSS!

He finally became resigned to this horrific experience and smashed his head down in between the seat and the console of the car where the seatbelt comes out of and would NOT move. We finally got back home and opened the car door and he slunk off to sulk. Wouldn't even come around us for the rest of the day, and the following one as well.

What in the world are we going to do in a year???

Boards Update

Well I took the boards on Tuesday and Wednesday. In total there were 500 questions divided into 4 tests with 125 questions each. The test basically covered everything I've learned during the past three years of optometry school. I had 3 1/2 hours to complete each test with a 1 hour break for lunch in between tests.

The exam was important to Emilee and me for a few reasons:
1) Each state requires you pass it to in order to be granted a license to practice optometry.
2) Nova Southeastern University requires you pass it in order to graduate from the school.
3) Board scores have a big influence on a residency placement. Higher scores make you more competitive.

I feel like things went well for me. As Emilee said in the previous post, I wasn't nervous, but rather anxious to start. I arrived early and went over a few last minute things, mostly optics equations that I had learned back in 2006 and haven't used since. Classmates slowly began to trickle in and then it was time to go check in and find your assigned seat in the auditorium. At this point most people were pretty nervous and you could almost feel it in the room. We were seated in the middle of a large auditorium that was built in 1950. Imagine sitting in the middle of the basketball court in the movie Hoosiers, that's what it looked like; even the lighting looked like it was straight from the 50s.

The test was administered the same way most standardized test are, with the proctor reading from a script for 10 minutes before you can break the seal on the test. "Do not begin until instructed to do so..." and "Read the directions to yourself as I read them aloud..." By the time the fourth test was administered I had it all memorized.

I broke the seal and began to take the first test. The questions were multiple choice and weren't too difficult, It seemed to me that there was a correct answer but also a very intriguing distractor placed there to cause you to doubt the correct answer. After a while I looked up at the clock and saw that I had been taking the test for an hour. I then looked at my test and saw I was only on question #41; only 84 more questions to go. Barf.

The optometrists who wrote the test questions really try to throw you off your game. They will give you five optics questions in a row then throw a crazy pharmacology question in there just as you are in optics mode. I guess they want to see how well you can switch gears from one subject to another. Are you Jeff Gordon or Ricky Bobby (the crazy Ricky Bobby who was just released from the mental hospital)?

After I finished the first test I exited the auditorium and went outside. Naturally everyone wanted to talk about the most important test in our lives thus far. Not me. I didn't want to talk about it at all. The reason? I didn't want to hear some random classmate say that I missed a question on the test. No one wanted to talk about the easy questions that everyone got correct, they wanted to debate difficult questions that no one was even sure what the correct answer was. It drives me crazy when I turn on SportsCenter and the topic of debate is, Who would win in a seven-game series, the '96-'97 Bulls or the 07-'08 Celtics? No one really knows the answer for sure, so why debate it? Same thing applies to the boards. No one really knows for sure what some of the answers to those difficult questions are, so why worry about it?

So I politely avoided discussing the test and went to Subway for lunch. I ordered a $5 footlong Italian BMT sub and wolfed it down like it was my last meal. After lunch I made my way back to War Memorial Auditorium to take part two of the test, I started to get nervous; not because I had to resume taking the test, but because I ate an entire 12 inch Italian sandwich. What was I thinking? Did I want to get heartburn or an upset stomach? I started planning my exit strategy should the unthinkable happen and I needed to use the bathroom. But luckily, I felt fine for the duration of part two of the test. Speaking of food, I was assigned the first seat at the front of the auditorium. When the test was passed out I received the top copy which came with a greasy fingerprint of the cover. I guess proctors get hungry too.

Part two began and ended for me in about three hours. I couldn't believe how exhausted, both physically and mentally, I was after finishing. Emilee came and picked me up and took me to a really cool ice cream parlor in Dania Beach called Jaxsons. It's been rated one of the top ten ice cream parlors in the nation. They make all of their ice cream from scratch and even make and their own sodas too (the root beer was awesome). We ate a hot dog and a sundae and then headed home.

That night it rained like crazy, I mean monsoon type rain. I was worried that the power would go out and the alarm wouldn't work, so I set my cell phone alarm too just in case.

I arrived the next morning at the auditorium for day two of boards. Traffic was bad due to the rain still coming down. The parking lot (if you can call it that) is a patch of dirt and weeds adjacent to the building. I parked but realized that I was in the middle of a huge puddle; I may as well have parked in Lake Michigan. I hopped and tip-toed my way out of the water, but not before completely soaking my socks. As I entered the building you could hear my shoes squish-squashing on the tile floor. I don't know about you, but it drives me crazy to have wet socks. I would have made a poor soldier or pioneer.

The second day of testing was much like the first. One difference was the downpour of rain on the metal roof of the building made for some dull background noise. I finished the test, ate a burrito for lunch (I know, spicy food again; not a smart move), then sat down to take the fourth and final test. Midway through that test I started to get a pounding headache, but I sucked it up and finally finished.

Glaukomfleken. What a funny word. Sounds like a German curse word; like maybe something you'd hear Hitler yell in a World War II documentary on the History Channel. It was actually an answer choice for one of the questions. I had no idea what the answer was to that particular questions, but I chose glaukomfleken as the answer (because none of the other answers made sense) and I have since learned that it was indeed the correct choice. There were number of questions like that, questions for which I didn't know the answer but I was able to logically guess the answer by a process of elimination.

Anyway, when I was all said and done, I left the auditorium with my headache and went home to rest. Again, I was completely exhausted and just wanted to go home and stare at the TV. So how did I do? I don't know for sure and won't receive my score until sometime in the middle of May. However, I'm cautiously optomistic that I did well enough to pass and I thank you for all of the thoughts and prayers you said in my behalf. I'll post again once I receive my scores and let you know if I performed like Ricky Bobby or more like the Rainbow Warrior (that's a Jeff Gordon reference for those of you not familiar with NASCAR).

What Day is It?

So what is today you ask? St. Patrick's Day? Nope, that's not it...it's only the most important day of the last three years of mine and Steve's lives...The NATIONAL OPTOMETRY BOARDS. I write it in caps because that's how it sounds in my mind: THE NATIONAL OPTOMETRY BOARDS. Ooooo....may as well be Halloween...this is scary, everyone!

So I took Steve down to the War Memorial Auditorium--a fitting name for the memory of this test, I think--down in Fort Lauderdale. It was actually directly east of us, and not too far. I asked Steve if he was nervous while I was driving, and he said no; meanwhile, my stomach hurts the same way it would hurt when I would finally drag myself to the Testing Center at BYU. I'm more nervous than him! In fact, I was so focused on getting him to his test that I forgot my lunch today.

A few interesting points about taking the boards:
-You have to leave your phone at the front desk and take the battery out. Oh, and no smart phones. Some people must be desperate to cheat!
-You may not bring "good luck charms" to the test--no statues of saints, pictures of your significant other or dead grandmother, candles/incense, crosses, hearts, stars, and horseshoes, clovers and blue moons! Pots of gold and rainbows, and me red balloons! Okay, so I took some creative license to a few on those list...okay, most on that list, but yeah. No lucky charms. Well, I put a clover on Steve's shirt for good luck anyway. It IS St. Patrick's Day, after all!

Warne-Fowkes info

How common is our last name? I found a cool website, dynastree.com, that shows the distribution of any last name in the United States. Here is the distribution of Warne:

Distribution of the surname Warne

Where does your name come from?

In the US there are 956 phone book entries with the surname Warne and approximately 3,445 persons with this name.
Thus, the surname Warne the 10100th most frequent name in the US.
People with this surname live in 47 states. Most occurrences are in California: 133.
Other states with lots of occurrences are Minnesota (79), South Dakota (60), New York (59), Florida (49), Ohio (45), Pennsylvania (42), Arizona (34), Texas (32), as well as Washington (30).


Here's the map and data about the Fowkes surname:

Distribution of the surname Fowkes

Where does your name come from?

In the US there are 283 phone book entries with the surname Fowkes and approximately 1,019 persons with this name.
Thus, the surname Fowkes the 28126th most frequent name in the US.
People with this surname live in 30 states. Most occurrences are in Pennsylvania: 56.
Other states with lots of occurrences are California (32), Utah (24), Florida (22), Ohio (17), New York (16), Massachusetts (13), Virginia (9), Texas (8), as well as Maryland (8).

Christmas 2008

I know it's over a month late, but we finally posted some Christmas pictures. Emilee and I left sunny South Florida for, what now seems to us, cold California. Before we moved to Florida we used to look forward to California weather during Christmas break, but now daytime highs in the 50s are chilly to us.
We flew on the afternoon Christmas Eve and arrived in San Francisco later that night. We spend about a week with my family, which included Christmas, my parents' anniversary, and Dallin's birthday.
Emilee then made the two hour trek south to Coalinga while I stayed behind and studied for my upcoming optometry board exam. Emilee's parents had just recently visited us in Florida a few weeks prior and we had a nice time with them here. My next blog entry will be pictures of their visit.

Update: After posting this entry and looking at the pictures, I realized that there only a few photos of Christmas in Coalinga and several pictures of us in Livingston. The reason? Poor Emilee got very sick with the stomach flu the first night she was in Coalinga and was only able to snap a few of photos :(

If the pictures move too fast press stop and manually advance them

Thanksgiving 2008

Here are some pictures of Thanksgiving 2008 that we have been meaning to post for a couple of months now. In all, we had 17 total people including Emilee and Me. I baconed-up a 26 pound turkey and we all ate it along with great fixins and pies. This is the third year that we have hosted a Thanksgiving dinner and hope to keep the tradition alive for many years to come.

If the pictures move too fast press stop and manually advance them

Wow, Let's Do A Little Catching Up!

Okay, so it's been 2 very busy months since our last post, so I better fill everybody in!

First of all, my mom and dad came to visit in December and we had a great time! They stayed for about 6 days and we went all over: The Everglades was our first day (I think this was their favorite--my mom and dad are totally into traveling to see natural land formations and places that are unique to different states. Hence, I have memories of going on vacations to Carlsbad Caverns, The Badlands of South Dakota, The Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Yosemite, Yellowstone, Devil's Tower, Devil's Golf Course, Devil's Gate, Devil's Postpile....hmmm, why are there so many that were named after the DEVIL?? Haha...probably because those were the coolest formations....now it sounds like I'm saying the Devil is cool...I better stop now.) The next day was Fort Lauderdale Beach and Nova, where we met up with Steve for the Grand Optometery Tour. Then we did Vizcaya, Coral Gables and Miami Beach (I'm told Miami Beach pictures at sunset didn't turn out :( so disappointing, because that was a beautiful one!) The next day we went down to Bahia Honda Key, 30 miles north of Key West and a great beach! The highlight of the day, though, was DELICIOUS Frozen Key Lime Pie on a Stick Covered in Chocolate! It's to die for! Check it out...Largo Cargo, in Key Largo.

Anyway, it was a lot of sightseeing in a short time but it was lots of fun and my mom and dad said it was actually very relaxing--a real vacation before they are off to their mission....

Yes! They got their call! They're going toooooooo....

Recife, Brazil! A 18 month Temple Mission. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recife

Well, that's as much as I can do in one post!