GRE, St. George, and the County Fair

Things have settled down a little bit around here and I am really behind with blogging about our recent activities!  Downloading pictures from my camera made me realize that it is time to blog.

In July, Tony took his GRE exam.  He was pretty stressed about studying and finding time to do so.  He did the best he could with the time he had (at least I think so!) and let's face it, Tony's pretty smart, so I was confident he would do well.  The Friday before his test Audrey and I decided to make Tony a "Good Luck" present.  We hit up the Target Dollar Spot and got creative in the kitchen.  This is what we came up with:

Cookies say "Good Luck We <3 You"

Never mind that the writing on those cookies could qualify them for an entry on Cake Wrecks.  They were chocolate chocolate chip cookies, something Tony really loves.  We also got him some pens, pencils, and snacks for his test.  Unfortunately, he couldn't take ANY of those things in to the testing room.  They gave him pencils, and no food was allowed.  Rats.  Oh well, he enjoyed them anyway!

Audrey REALLY loved helping me bake cookies. I let her dump all of the dry ingredients in and she thought it was the best.  She's just the cutest little baker!

Tony did really well on the Verbal portion of his GRE (surprise, surprise) and above average on his Math portion.  He got 96th percentile for verbal!  He did well enough to get into the program he is interested in, so that's all that matters!  Speaking of that, I should mention that Tony is no longer going to get his Master's from Utah State.  Out of curiosity one night I started looking at schools that were ranked high for M.S. degrees for computer science.  We found out that Colorado State University is ranked pretty high up there.  I looked at their website and found that they offer a distance education program for the C.S. master's program.  It is the same exact curriculum and diploma that on-campus students receive.  It's a little more expensive, but it's also a little more flexible and a better program.

The week after Tony's test I decided it would be fun and relaxing to take a mini family vacation to St. George.  Tony's parents have a wonderful little house there that they so graciously let us use.  We were both pretty excited to have a weekend away.  Little did we realize that Audrey was not going to be okay with a new place to sleep.  We got there and put her in the pack n' play and she got super scared.  She was shaking she was so scared!  She was really nervous about this new place, probably because it was nearly midnight and she didn't know where she was.  So, she and I slept on the couch until about 4am, when I finally got brave enough to put her in her room.  She stayed asleep until 7am.  We were all tired, to say the least.  BUT we were determined to have fun.

We went swimming, hiking, ate at Chuck-A-Rama (gross) and went to a Wild Life Museum.  Audrey loved all of it but the sleeping part.  It was a fun trip, just a very tired one.  Certainly not as relaxing as we had envisioned.  Here are some pictures from that trip:

Those are Otters behind her :)

FINALLY....

This past Thursday (we always seem to do family night on Thursday for some reason) we headed to the Utah County Fair.  It was really fun, but that county fair couldn't hold a candle to the Johnson County Fair where I grew up.  It was more "carnival" sized with only 6 or 7 rides, two games, and one barn of animals.  Granted, I grew up in a very agricultural state so that could account for the difference in enthusiasm for the county fair.

Audrey didn't know the difference and she had a blast seeing the animals.  She got to hear what a real cow, sheep, and goat sound like.  I think she was shocked at how big and loud all of the animals were and she ended up "baa"-ing for the rest of the night.  We bought some carnival ride tickets thinking Audrey could go on a few of the rides with us but that ended up being a total waste.  The carousel was broken, so that left one ride Audrey could go on.  The "Berry Go Round".  You know those big strawberries with the wheel inside that you can spin?  Yeah, that one.  We all got in and it was all great until Tony started spinning us.  I got really sick and scared really quickly and it made me feel so old that I couldn't handle the Berry Go Round.  Audrey started yelling "ohhhh no!" and her head starting going around in circles, and Tony finally admitted that he was pretty dizzy from it all as well.  After that, we were stuck with several tickets and we could not figure out how to use them.  Tony had a turn on the Gravitron, and I tried to go solo on the Ferris Wheel but they wouldn't let just one person go on in a seat.  So, we've got several extra tickets.  Lesson learned.

This was a big moment for Audrey.  She got to pet a real life Lovey Bunny.

 

Wow, this ended up being a monster post!  Sorry about that.  Cookies for you if you made it to the end.  I'll be sure to keep more up-to-date on our activities so I don't have to do these super long posts!