Today we celebrated 17 years of marriage and family memories. It’s hard to believe that 17 years have past since Jackie and I were joined in marriage. Through these years we’ve grown closer together as friends, become parents, and partners in life. I love Jackie for being my other half, a super mother to our kids Atom and Marie, and the fun in my life. Here’s to another 17. Love you Jackie!
Today is Mothers Day. It’s a different kind of Mother’s Day because we’re under Covid 19 stay at home orders. The day started around 8ish a.m. I snuck down stairs while Jackie watched TV to put my chef-like skills to the test. I tried to prepared a quick breakfast for Jackie. I popped a Starbucks coffee pod in the ol’ Kurieg magic machine. I reached over for two slices of bread and dropped them into the toaster and set it for a slight toast. The slices of toast were transformed into a delightful morning treat topped with the right amount of layers of peanut butter and Nutella. I cleaned the plate of crumbs because presentation goes a long way as many years of watching cooking TV competitions has taught me. Once the coffee brew completed its last phase, I poured in the creamer to create a balanced flavored coffee blend. By this time, the combined aroma of coffee and toasted treat was filling the kitchen. I quickly grabbed a Mothers Day balloon and rushed upstairs to wake up Atom and Marie to help with the breakfast-in bed mother’s Day surprise presentation to Jackie. Yes, and that was just the morning 🙂
For lunch we treated Jackie to Grublove gourmet burgers with a Margarita. Like always the burgers did not disappoint. The sweet potato fries added a little surprise for Jackie.
After lunch, Jackie was surprised with the edible arrangements delivery of a set of chocolate covered strawberries and a balloon bundle.
We ended the day with dinner with some flavorful tacos from Bizarra Capital. We all enjoyed our tacos choices.
Another awesome Mothers Day celebration in the books. Despite the current Covid 19 pandemic and stay at home restrictions with managed to spend some quality family time. Happy Mothers Day to all mothers out there especially my mom and Jackie’s mom.
Today we celebrated Marie’s 15th birthday under Covid 19 stay at home rules. We tried to stay within the guidelines but it’s hard when friends you haven’t seen in a while stop by. Anyhow, it was a good turn out, lots of cars, friends, and honks. Thank you to everyone that stopped by. 
We pulled off a covid-19 Drive by birthday celebration for Atom. Thanks for all those that drove by, honked, and showed some love. It was hard to keep to the 6 feet separation rule but we kept it brief if we got too close. Thanks to Marie and Jackie for making this happen!!
We all slept In until the late morning. We made it to a late lunch plus desert to Cheesecake Factory, sat down at 2:29pm. Like always, Cheesecake Factory didn’t disappoint.
We headed to Barnes and Nobles for two reasons, first for the Atom to spend some time on his Human Geography AP studying and Marie to complete her Math homework. The second reason was of course to not waste a vacation outing without visiting a Barnes and Nobles bookstore.
More to come.,.
We snatched our tickets for the JPL Open House 2019 event. Woohoo! Although we achieved our goal of getting these tickets, the process was a highly intense few minutes. Jackie woke us up at 7:30 a.m. and we all headed downstairs to man our stations. We all logged into our assigned stations, Atom took his Windows system, Jackie took the iMac, Marie took the MacBook Pro, and I took the HP laptop. We started our browsers to the explore.jpl.nasa.gov site. Around 7:55 a.m., we started the refresh cycle to try to be the first to reserve our tickets to the JPL Open house event. Around 8 a.m., we all got into the reservation process screens but the forms weren’t activated, we kept hitting refresh without any luck. The desperation started creeping into the room, voices quickly raising about what to do. Waiting any longer and our chances of getting tickets was slowly diminishing. Starting from scratch would put us back in the virtual waiting line. So Jackie tried the reservation from her iPhone and it worked. She got in and reserved our tickets.
It was a crazy, intense, and nerve racking process but we survived. Thanks to Jackie we are keeping with the JPL tradition.
Congrats Jackie for receiving Teacher of the Year for the Los Nietos School District!! You earned it.
Celebrating my birthday with the kiddos at Bring Your Child to Work Day 2018!
