Comprehensive Exams

Most of you know that our lives have revolved the past few years around Darren working on his Ed.D. He has been studying in PA for the past 3+ summers. This has meant time away as a family and him spending his summer time studying instead of relaxing.

This fall was a culmination of his work when Darren finished taking classes and had to take his "comprehensive exam". This is a one time sit down test. It was somewhat hard for me to fully understand Darren's anxiety because I was confident that he would pass...however Darren knew that last year 1/4 of the students taking this exam did not pass and had to wait and entire year to re-take it. Even Sara got into the studying with Daddy's notecards.


Anyways, huge CONGRATULATIONS are due to Darren, who passed his comprehensive exams, and did "a superb job" as quoted by one of his professors! All his hard work has paid off. Darren now has to complete a take home portion of the comps and then off to conquer the dissertation! No small feat in an of itself.

Kacy's Artwork

I'm not huge into podcasting. Actually, I have listened to them but I have never made one myself before today. However, being the dork that I am, I decided it was time to venture into this realm after some new found knowledge of this skill. I recently learned how to use Garageband so I thought I would give it a shot. It was a weekend project while Sara was napping. On Saturday, we drew the pictures and photographed them. Sunday was the audio portion of the project.

Kacy was a little hesitant until she got in front of the computer but she immediately got into it. It was quite fun. She did a great job. So here you have it--our 4 year old's first podcast with some artwork to boot.

In the midst of exploring the world of podcasting, I did find that these video files don't work and play as well with others as I had hoped. So I can't embed it here right now and you'll have to download the file. Please enjoy...

Kacy's Artwork Podcast

We also worked playdough figures into a nursery rhyme. Check it out here.

Some other pictures and media from our weekend...

Sara's Real Birthday

Sara celebrated her real birthday today. She had a small gluten-free cupcake party in the ELC with her friends. Ms. Kim made her a rice cake (which was really tasty & good!). She wrote Sara-2nd Birthday in Korean in raisins on it.

Sunday Afternoon Fun

We had a fun Sunday. We celebrated Sara's birthday a few days early and both Sara & Kacy enjoyed the new toys today. Sara is a lot of fun and it is hard to believe only a year ago she was in the hospital in pretty rough shape.


This afternoon, we did lots of fun stuff...

...and finally honored Sara's request to go "outside" to the "playground"...

Sara loves to swing. She is pretty good at holding on now and absolutely loves it.

Pumpkins & Lions

We went over to a friends apartment to have a potluck and carve pumpkins last night. Sara loves the pumpkin. She still goes and looks at it on the kitchen table and says "my pumpkin" or "Sara's pumpkin." We had a good time...



As predicted, scooping out seeds and the insides was short-lived for Kacy but Sara thought it was a lot of fun.







Daddy worked hard at carving out Kacy's artwork.


And the final products...



For whatever reason, Sara was quite animated last night...at bedtime. Here is some video footage.

Good Medicine

Life is full of fun and adventures. I really don't know what has happened over the past little while to keep us from posting. I could list numerous things, but in general I would just say life is busy with two little kids, both parents working full-time and trying to do their best at it, a husband preparing to take his comprehensive exam for his Ed.D on Saturday (pray for him), and just other things that come with life. Alas, here we are with really no time to post tonight either, but I'm doing it anyway.

This afternoon I was trying to finish up grades (which were due at 5:00) and so Darren was playing with the girls at the playground outside my room. We snapped a few pictures...Sara was SO excited to be at the playground. On the swing she kept saying, higher daddy, push Sara higher. Then she would say, "Faster Daddy Faster!" When she got on the Sea Saw she was just laughing hysterically. It is certainly good medicine, no matter how busy you are to play with your kids.

An Update...about time

Sadly, we have been remiss in updating our blog lately. It's not for lack of desire but life has been full of things to do and the blog just hasn't happened. Over the weekend, we made a tent in our living room and the girls had a great time with it.



Sara got to have a sick day...well, actually 2 of them. Monday was fun day with Mommy and Tuesday was a sick day with Daddy. In reality, she wasn't sick other than some really gross diapers but in case it wasn't a dietary thing, we didn't want to spread it just in case.

All are healthy on back on track now. More later.