Happy birthday to you, you belong in the...pool?!

We finally celebrated the July 9th birthdays yesterday and had a blast doing it!! Jackson requested a robot party, meaning robot cake, robot decorations, robot hats, and pin-the-antenna-on-the-robot. We also had Ryan's favorite marzipan birthday cake. Two cakes? I'm not complaining!

A while ago it kind of became a tradition to throw the birthday person in the pool, fully clothed. This year did not disappoint. Anyone. Not even the non-birthday people!!

Pin-the-antenna-on-the-robot:

Ha! I love this picture with Ryan sporting the robot party hat and his new water belt thingy for running. Making a fashion statement for sure!

Just testing out his new water belt running thingy (that's definitely the technical term for it):

The cakes. Michelle made the robot one and I slaved for hours over the marzipan one (or at least for a few minutes to put in the order at Granite Bakery).

Marc was leaving for Spain the next day so he joined in the party from California via skype, hence the computer Mark is holding.

The birthday boys blowing out their candles (what should have been a combined total of 58 candles-woah!):

This is where the real craziness began. Jackson was "trying" to push Craig in, when out of nowhere Jonathan sacrificed his dry self to get two of the three birthday boys in the pool:

At this point, anyone standing this close to the pool is guaranteed to be wet in less than 60 seconds...

Before we knew it, one-by-one everyone else ended up in the pool. This was one of the best reactions:

I thought I was safe since I was holding our camera, but that ended up not being the case. We all ended up in the pool by the end. Too bad many of us had no extra clothes or underwear with us!

It was a lot of fun and after we all dried up and the kiddos went to bed, we finished up the party by watching the Bachelorette, of course. The best part was that Craig was the one who requested that (don't deny it, Craig!) and the guys were all just as into it as the girls. Makes for some really intelligent, high-quality conversation. American T.V. at its finest. :)

The Big 3-0!!

Even though we are on a little vacation, I wanted to make a quick birthday shout out to Ry-guy who is 30 today, July 9th... a.k.a. "the best day of the year". I can't believe he has been alive for thirty whole years now (and that I've only known him for 2.5 of those years)! He's such a great, funny, kind, patient person and I am very lucky to have him in my life!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RYAN!

Per his request, the day will probably include a little sourdough bread, Ghirardelli sundaes, and a ride on the cable cars at this place...

Oh, I mean MORE Ghirardelli sundaes. :)

HR Professionals!

Well, it's official! We are professionals!

Today I took the PHR (Professional in Human Resources) exam, and Ryan took the SPHR (Senior Professional in Human Resources-- slightly cooler than the PHR) and we passed!

I love that we are both in the same profession because we were able to study together for the last few months and were able to help each other understand all things HR... not to mention we both had an excuse to be lame and stay inside to study every spare minute.

We did not do very well at all on the practice tests and only 54% of people pass their first time, so we were not feeling too great about it the night before, but let me tell you... it was such a relief to be done (after 3.5 hours-boo!) and see "pass" instead of "fail."

As the day has gone on, it has slowly been sinking in that we are done. Completely. No more school, no more tests... nothing! WAHOO!!!!!!!!

Here's Ryan proudly showing his results!

I realize I look completely nasty in this picture, but who am I trying to impress here on this blog?

And these, my friends, are the books that cost an arm and a leg (well, cost our companies an arm a leg, thank goodness. $1500 each for the materials and test!) that we have had our noses buried in for far too long...

The End. In so many (good) ways!

Congratulations, Ryan!!!

Let it be known that on Saturday, June 19th, 2010 at 11:30 a.m., Ryan officially completed his MBA!!!

For the last two years, Ryan has devoted almost every Friday night from 6-10pm and Saturday morning from 8-noon to school. Not only did he spend those hours in class, but he worked full-time, spent hours after work every night studying, got excellent grades, and still devoted time to his calling, family, and me. I really appreciate him and his dedication to everything he does. Whenever he faces a challenge, he doesn't give up, but rather he works even harder to figure things out... which is definitely a quality that I admire about him!

Anyway, it still doesn't seem real to either of us that we now have our weeknights and especially our weekends back! To be quite honest, I think I am just as excited (or maybe even more excited) as Ryan about this. But we thought we would try to make it real by having a fun Saturday. We started off by going straight to his parent's house for some afternoon swimming, followed by a yummy dinner at P.F. Changs. It was great to just relax and not worry about what assignment he already needs to be starting!

Congrats, Ry!!

Ryan and Craig made some serious waves with the boogie boards:

This picture doesn't even do it justice... but it looked like a wave pool!

Hopefully Amy wasn't planning on keeping her hair dry!

Ryan walked the plank with Tyler on his shoulders:

Whatever gets his attention...

This morning I sent not one, but two emails to Ryan. Just random things that I remembered and needed to tell him. Usually I get a response of some sort- at least a little something to acknowledge it was received, if nothing else. Today though... nothing. All day long. So, at 3:06 p.m. Ryan received the following one-line email in his inbox:

"Holy cow!!! Did you see the update on Cougarboard?!?!?!?!?"

Exactly two minutes later I got an email. And 20 more seconds after that... a call.

Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, right? The way to this man's heart is not through his stomach!

PB & what?!?

I love peanut butter and like any normal person I eat it by the spoonful (that's normal, right?). So, for a mid-afternoon snack, I grabbed a spoon and scooped up some PB. As I was putting the jar away, I noticed one of those allergy warnings on the label and was a little surprised at what it said:

"ALLERGY WARNING: CONTAINS PEANUTS. MAY CONTAIN TRACES OF MILK, EGGS, ANCHOVIES, WHEAT AND SOY."

Peanuts? Obviously. Milk? Understandable. Eggs, wheat, and soy? Normal. ANCHOVIES?!?!? Not obvious. Not understandable. Not normal. And I would like to know what the heck they mean by "traces" of anchovies. Just the head? Just the organs? Please specify. On second thought, don't specify.

Anything and everything about anchovies makes me want to hurl and now I never want to eat peanut butter again (that may sound dramatic, but it's true... at least for the next few days until I forget). Now if only Oreos could contain anchovies so I wouldn't want to eat those either...

Jonathan & Rachael's Wedding

Yesterday Ryan's younger sister changed her last name from Martin to Stephens for eternity. It was a little chilly and a lot rainy, but it was such a blast to see family and friends, Rachael made one of the most beautiful brides I have ever seen, we got an awesome new brother-in-law, and the dinner/reception was so classy and elegant. Can't beat all of that!

Luckily we swung by my parent's at the last minute and grabbed all of the big umbrellas that they had last year for our wedding because we sure needed all of them... and more!

I pretty much have the best sister-in-law's anyone could ask for:

And their kids sure are cute too (even if one of them is in an awkward smile stage... but at least this one didn't have a dress being pulled up! :) I don't know if you can see Suzy's headband in this picture, but Amy made it and it was the cutest thing ever... I was so impressed (but not surprised) with her skills. I should have gotten a pic of the cute outfit she made for baby Amyah, too... but alas, I didn't.

The newest happy couple:

The not-quite-as-new happy couple:

Rach had the cutest, sparkliest wedding shoes ever. This picture hardly does them justice, but I kind of really want a pair for myself.

We have a ton more pictures and videos, but that's all I'm posting for now. I need to figure out how to get the video on here so I can show the cute kids slow-dancing together. For now, just trust me... it was adorable.