Annie shoots and scores? I think yes.

Something interesting around here has been March Madness. Every time this even rolls around, we all fill out our brackets in the hope that we will win the coveted trophy. The trophy (if my camera worked I would take a picture and post it) is a decent sized trophy (think 11 inches high by 6 inches wide by 6 inches deep) with a giant eagle on top . Every year the winner gets his or her name engraved on the side. We've been doing this tourney competition for 15 years now. It didn't always have the trophy but the competition itself has existed for this long. In all of those 15 years, two people have never won. I've never won. Now, some of you may remember the year that I won the office pool at work (the year was 2000 and I won $550) and say "But, Annie, you won the office pool and in doing so beat out hundreds of other competitors. How could you have not beaten your own family??" Well, my friends, I was deemed ineligible for that year's family competition. I dropped off my sheet to the facilitator of the scores (aka Jeff) after the games had begun and was DQ'd.

The other "non-winner" of the trophy (Jeff) has felt the trophy slip from his grasp many a year. This year has been especially hard on him. He's so close yet so far away. Below is the latest e-mail our family rec'd about the standings. It appears that I've all but put the final nail in his coffin. All I need is for North Carolina to not win one of their two remaining games.

What's the funniest thing about this, you ask? The fact that I watched one basketball game this year. Just one. Aron and I went to an OSU vs. Michigan BB game a couple months ago. Neither of those teams are in the tourney this year. Hi-larious, my friends. Hi-freakin-larious.



From:
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 9:52 AM
To:
Subject: Fwd: Fantasy Mayhem Report for Family Brackets
-----Original Message-----From: Jeff and Robin>To: Sent: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 11:20 pmSubject:

Fw: Fantasy Mayhem Report for Family Brackets

This is the latest standings as of the end of the games today.

Here's the cliff notes:

1. Mom and Dad have been added to the list of Robin and Luke of those mathematically eliminated.
2. The victory today of Kansas and Memphis was big for Annie to move into first since I had Texas and Georgetown in the final 4 with Texas in the national championship.
3. North Carolina has to win the championship for Jeff to win the trophy. He has picked North Carolina in both the national semi final (+5) and the championship (+6). Additionally, Memphis has to lose the next game since Annie picked them to win it all.
4. If Memphis wins their next game, Annie will win because the additional 10 points will put her beyond what I can score to win. She has selected North Carolina and Memphis for the national championship, which will generate 10 more points.
5. I think this is the latest the trophy has been decided in several years. Usually, we have everyone eliminated by today.

Go Tarheels. Memphis sucks!

JMJ
----- Original Message -----
From: To:
Sent: Sunday, March 30, 2008 11:04 PM
Subject: Fantasy Mayhem Report for Jordan Family Brackets

Standings
1. Annie 187
2. Jeff 184
3. Ella 179
4. Aron 174
5. Kathy 170
6. Mike 162
7. Luke 109
8. Robin

Report Updated as of: 3/30/08 11:02 PM EST

What the french, toast?

Forgive me, faithful bloggers. I have been remiss in my duties as Blogmaster. Our camera has been broken since we went to St Augustine (who was the moron that took it on the beach and got sand in it??). I have no pix to entertain you with...I've tossed the idea around about doing an Ella and Luke Retrospective (translation: putting up some old pictures just for fun since I don't have any new ones).


We haven't done much lately to post about. We went and visited my friend's daughter, Natalie last week and that was fun. Other than that, it's been pretty bland at our house.

Ella-isms and Luke-isms

My friends and I were talking about this at work today. Our kids talk in their own language. They name different items different things--sometimes it's just different ways they learned how to pronounce things (think pa-sketti instead of spaghetti) and sometimes it is a completely different word. I don't remember the different things their kids say but here are some of the cute things/sayings that are heard around our house.

"Mommy, I have a 'bonky header.' Kiss it!" Translation: "Mother, I have struck my head on the table/ couch/whatever happened to be in my way at the time. Please make it better with a kiss."
"I wearing my 'big boys!' " Translation: "I'm proud that I'm wearing my Nemo/Diego/dinosaur/whatever other cool pair of underwear that happened to be in my drawer. My ego finds that pleasing."

"You stink! Poppy is a 'stinky header.' " Translation: "I claim that you stink because I think it is a term of endearment. Stinky is a positive thing to be. I love you and I use this term with great amounts of affection." This is a difficult one to explain to those not familiar with the children.

"I want 'Linny Bear!' " Translation: "My grandmother, Linda, lets me get away with murder. I would like it if she could return to our house so I may resume my reign of terror." This is typically used on Friday late afternoon/evening because Linda watches the kids while I'm working that day.

"I want 'Katiesitter' to come over." Translation: "Mother, I enjoy when our babysitter, Katie, comes over to play with us. Please, call her so you and father can go on a date. Do not return for many hours as we have much playing to do."

"You're a 'Stinko-de-Mayo.' " Translation: Uncle Jeffy came up with this funny saying. Its origin is Spanish and is a cousin to "stinky header" "Stinko-de-Myles" and "you stink." Typically, this saying is reserved only for Uncle Jeffy.

"Sharing is caring." Translation: "If you have something I want, I will proclaim that sharing is caring at which point you will be required to give me a portion of what you have no matter how much you cry/whine/throw a fit. Sharing means love--now give it up."

"I gotta 'peeps.' " Translation: No, it's not those cute little marshmallow things for Easter. It means they have to go potty.

"I hold Winkie like Daddy." Translation: I think we can all figure out what winkie is but it takes some talent to figure out that this actually means "I can go peeps standing up just like a big boy. I'm a big boy, too!"

"I need some 'girlie time' with Mom." Translation: Girls rule, boys drool. You stinky boys stay downstairs while Mommy and I go upstairs to paint our nails.

"Mommy, you're a 'good cooker.' Did you put extra 'love' in this?" Translation for good cooker: "Mother, you can rustle up some mighty tasty grub. I find it palate pleasing. Mmm, mmm, good." Translation for love: "I can taste that there is something a little extra in there. I will label it love. Little do I know that it's probably actually some sort of vegetable or extra type of nutrition that you have added to my food. I will call it love because that's what it feels like as I grow stronger."

"Vivatin." Translation: Vitamin

Aron's such a big boy!

Aron was asked to become an Associate at his work. This is a big step for him. At his company, there are 5 partners, 4 Senior Associates, and 2 Associates (including him). What excitement for my sweetie! He's very excited but he'd probably be mad if I told everyone that. Whoopsie! I just told, didn't I?

Maybe he was asked to be an Associate because Les Wexner said that his work was brilliant. True story-- After viewing Aron's work, Les said Aron was brilliant.

I like the way you move

The way he runs cracks me up. Check it out.

Who couldn't use a little hug?

Get me outta here!

Baywatch Babes

David Hasselhoff (don't hassle the hoff!) and Pam Anderson watch out! These kids are cute!

Twinsies

Every day, Ella wanted us to be twins. You can't really see it in this picture but this is the most twinsies we got...we're both wearing skirts, light shirts, and have our hair in matching braids. She was sooooooooooo excited for me to do this. Whatever floats her boat, I guess : )

Yes, I realize I'm wearing the same sweater in virtually every picture of me. It's because I only packed one sweater thinking that it would be warmer. It was cold for the first couple days and it was cold at night, thus, the multitude of sweater shots.

Random cute pix

Such a large amount of cuteness in such tiny packages!

I might have to worry about this guy some day

This kid definitely likes to run with the big dogs. He wants to try all the things that people around him are doing. This time it was trying to hold his breath under water. He practiced holding his nose a few times but when it came to the big moment he just went for it.

There was a little bit of pool time...but it was too cold to stay in too long or go in too deep

Woo! That's cold!
One tiny toe dipped in

I'm queen of the hot pool!
Come on in...the water's fine!
Heck no! I'm outta here!

It's all about maintaining a schedule

We got into quite a routine while we were in St Augustine. Each morning we woke up whenever the kids got up which was usually around 8. We would get ready to go sightseeing and try to be out of the hotel by 9. We'd walk around from then until lunchtime. After lunch, we would head back to the hotel for the kids to have a nap. After naptime, it was hot tub time. It wasn't quite warm enough for us to swim in the hotel pool so it was super nice to get in the hot tub. The only other vacationers at the hotel were a bunch of crusty, old people (I hope I don't offend the older readers) who didn't want to get in the pool/hot tub area (probably because there was no Super Senior Saver on it--haha) so we had it all to ourselves each day. After the hot tub (or as the kids liked to call it, the "hot pool"), it was time to get a quick bath. When the baths were done, we looked around a little bit more, had dinner, then got back to the hotel by 8 or so. We really tried to make sure that the kids still had their regular nap/bedtimes because crabby kids=crabby parents=crappy vacation. I'll do a couple more posts with all the hot pool pictures.

Phew! Now on to Day 2

On Day 2, we did a boat tour with the good folks from Eco Tours. We had quite a good time with Captain Ken as we went around the area. It was right before Ella and Luke's regular nap time so we thought we'd be ok but Luke fell asleep about 5 minutes into the 90 minute tour. He woke up in time to see the dolphin that was hanging out just a few yards away. He thought it was a shark that was going to eat him, though, so he didn't enjoy the sighting as much as we did.

More fort pix

The Castillo de San Marcos

For a brief history lesson, click here. The thing I remember the most about the fort is that it is made of coquina.

Gatoriffic!

A bit intimidating, yes?
See all those little things poking out of the water? Yup, thems some gators.

Alligators go "chomp!"

One of our first stops was the St Augustine alligator farm. It was a great time. I'll post some more pix but there's not much to really talk about...bunch of gators...big sets of teeth...you get the picture, right?

Beach, Sweet Beach

Welcome to Historic St Augustine! Day 1 edition

We got in really late from the airport so we basically ended up getting our rental car and going straight to the hotel to sleep. The good news is that the airport was only about 5 miles from where we were staying so there was no long drive to get there.

We got up in the morning and Aron immediately wanted to go to the beach to check it out. It was a bit cold (think 55 or so) because it was the first day of a cold front in the area. There were crazy amounts of shells on the beaches. It's been a while since I've been to the beach but I don't remember that many shells everywhere we went. The kids were very interested in all of it and we now have a very large collection of shells.

Waiting in the airport

The kids brought a little music on my i-pod with them courtesy of Granny Lanny (aka Tori's mom). It's the all new Billy Gorilly CD: "Billy Gorilly: Happy Birthday, Gertie" It's a long wait at the airport with two small kids and having a variety of things to do really helps!

Check it out--it's good stuff.

All systems go!

I'm not really feeling the excitement, Aron.
This one's excited, though! So's Baby who is sitting next to her in her own car seat.
This one looks like a seasoned traveler with a book to read.
We went to St Augustine, Florida via Skybus. For those of you who don't know of Skybus, it's a very economical way to fly out of Columbus to numerous cities. Their gimmick is that they sell you super cheap flights with none of the extras (like in-flight food, pillows, etc.). They sell the first ten seats of every flight for $10 one way then the price goes up from there. We bought our tickets really early (think July) and ended up getting our tickets for $60 for a round trip per person (a steal!!). We've had several friends that have flown Skybus so we pretty much knew what to expect. It was the first flights for the kids. I think Luke's favorite part of the trip there was riding on the shuttle van from the parking lot to the airport. He thought it was a bus and was soooooo excited to be riding on a bus. He's going to be tickled pink for his grade school years--buses all over the place! Ella had to take her new BFF (aka Baby) on the plane with us. Baby went with us to quite a few of the places in St Augustine but sometimes I enforced a strict "Baby's gotta stay at the hotel and take a nap" while the rest of us sightsee (think Annie got tired of lugging the thing around). The flight itself was fine. Nothing major happened. No meltdowns from the kids. Ella didn't really like the landing because she said the pilot was going too fast and which made it bumpy when we touched down. Who cared if it was a little bumpy 'cause
WE'RE GOING TO FLORIDA! Meanwhile, back in Ohio, they were having crazy amounts of snow.

Where do I start?

We're back! We got in at about 2 AM last night. The kids, of course, didn't care that Mommy and Daddy didn't get much sleep and were awake bright and early at 7:30. It was crazy fun and I'll do my best to get a cohesive story of our vacation into the blog with the help of our over 500 pictures that we took. The kids have crashed in front of the TV because they went through withdrawal on vacation. Aron has a fever of 104 today so I've got nothing better to do than sit here and blog (well, that and do laundry) so here we goooooooooo.....