Happy Birthday Eric Seitz! While Eric was celebrating his 28th birthday, his new baby girl, Claire,  was celebrating her week 3! She has the most adorable outfits! I especially loved her Super Bowl outfit with the tiny cheesehead. Go Packers!

We have all been busy with school and work. Allison decided to come home this past weekend on Friday to make sure she filled out all the proper information online with Tom to accept her job offer from Northrop Grumman. Everything is done online nowadays. She finished up with her classes M-W, and then attended ultimate frisbee practice on Thursday. I was happy she came home on Friday.  I had her join me at our friend's house Friday night to attend a memorial service. Our friend Beth lost her mom a few weeks ago-she would have been 97 yrs old on Friday. Tom was going to attend with me, but he was home most of the week with a cold and fever and he did not want to share. So Allison graciously offered to come with me. First I had her help pick up a gift. I wanted to order a silver engraveable picture frame from  the Things Remembered store. I thought it would be nice for Beth to put in a photo of her mom/family and have her birth/death date enscribed. I found a beautiful hinged silver frame online, however, they only had the item in stock in the mall in Salisbury. Not to worry. I ordered it and Allison picked it up the same day before heading home. I also added some white tulips. And even Cookie was invited to the memorial service at their house, but we decided to get her cleaned up a bit before heading over. Allison and I dropped Cookie off at the groomers for a quick trim and bath(turns out not so quick). Boy she has a lot of fur and gets very fluffy when she is all brushed out! Barry, Beth's husband could not get over how poofy her ears and head were after the bath and brush out. They have Ripley, also a cavachon and she has never been that fluffy. The two dogs enjoyed each other's company while we ate dinner and sat and chatted with family members, as well as watching a photo video slide program of Beth's mom and family members. We missed the opening ceremony since we were waiting for Cookie to get groomed. Basically Beth had put together a Biography of her mom and read it out loud at the gathering along with the video. Her mom donated her body for research, so they won't receive the ashes for several years from now! Beth's father, who passed away many years ago,  was in the coast guard, flying helicopters, so the family moved around alot. I don't think they ever had a place that they really called home. We felt very special to be invited to the service.

On Saturday we decided to go out to dinner with my Mom to celebrate Allison's new job as well as to get a jump on celebrating Valentine's Day. I figured we would all be busy during the week so we might as well take advantage of everyone being home on the weekend. We had dinner at the same restaurant where we ate at for my birthday. Tom, Mom and I really enjoyed our meals, but the kids were not too impressed. Allison thinks Scott does a better job grilling!  Tough crowd. I try not to take my mom to any place too overwhelming(she gets flustered when she sees the food prices!)She is much more comfortable with Burger King(and then only gets a burger and wants to share the fries). Very thrifty!  Tom and I stopped into her apt to pick her up Saturday afternoon. I wanted to drop off an early Valentine gift. I had a wedding photo blown up and mounted on a canvas from the JCPenny Portrait studio. They had an incredible sale, and I thought it was time for Mom to have a wedding photo of her own on the wall. She and Dad always had a large photo of Gma and Gpa Bozyk's wedding photo hanging in their bedroom, so I thought she needed one of her own. I thought it turned out great considering it was a scanned, black and white photo. Tom also brought Mom a box of Hershey chocolates, and hooked up a tv antenna so you can at least pick up a few channels when we are visiting. We cancelled her cable since she was not watching the tv in her room anymore to save some money. But it is nice to have access to the tv if she gets stuck in there again with a flu/virus outbreak. She just needs someone to turn the tv on with the remote! Lastly I picked up a few new, long sleeved shirts. As the ground hog predicted, the winter is supposed to hang around for another month.

However,  Sunday it rained all day and was very foggy. I talked Allison into staying home one more day and heading back to school on Monday morning. Tom, Scott and Allison went off to the mall to shop for school rings for Allison. We were looking online for a college ring and really have not found anything we like. We actually loved the high school rings, but not as much to choose from for college. She stopped into a jewelry store to check her ring size and actually look at rings to get an idea of size and style, although they only sell high school rings. Then they headed off to the Harris Teeter grocery store for Allison to finish some research for her marketing class on Coleman meats(never heard of them). They have an organic/gluten free line. We tried the hot dogs. Tom says he will stick with the Koegel Viennas. We all agree. Meanwhile, I stayed home and made some sausage and shrimp jambalaya in advance of  Mardis Gras. I also put in an old film for Allison(I have been catching her up on some classics that I enjoy). I had her watch the football movie, Rudy. The Blue collar Indiana boy who wanted to attend Notre Dame University as well as play on their football team and did it. Also Erin Brochovich(I just love that movie!)-the Julia Roberts movie in which she portrays real life Erin B, a single mom of 3 who with no formal college training, but a gift with a photographic memory. She takes on the PGE company in California through a small law firm when they discover the plant has been poisoning the water in the area for decades and trying to cover it up. I never get tired of that movie!

And we have also started watching the Olympics. Although I missed the opening ceremony since Allison and I were at the Memorial service and Tom was not interested enough to record it. I did catch the tail ending and was amazed at the use of the drones for lit figures of athletes in the sky. Also surprised to hear John Lennon's Imagine song sung in english by Korean performers. 

I spent one evening after work at a Howard County Board meeting supporting a vote with fellow neighbors for limited growth in our county. However, after 2 hours of listening to voting for other bills, I gave up and went home for dinner(at 9pm). The Board meeting was actually running late since they started out honoring a 99 yo woman from our area who spent quite a bit of her life volunteering and working with our govt. officials and police department. Naturally there were lots of photo opps and speeches, but she was especially amazing to listen to speak since she was very well spoken and wishing everyone could just take a little time out of their day to just do something nice or give something, no matter how small, to help others out. It was all very special

, but it did push the meeting back 1 hr, and then I had to sit through a debate on how many minutes a person should be allowed to speak in front of the board vs how many minutes a group rep. should be allowed to speak in front of the board(3 vs 5 mins) and after 20 mins or so of that debate, the board could not come up with a decision and decided to table the vote for more discussion. However, they could not decide if they were tabling just that part of the bill, or the rest of the amendments and by then I had given up. Now I know why I could never stand to work in politics. So I will just have to read in the paper how they decided to vote for the limited growth discussion(if at all!).