Happy Anniversary...

Happy Anniversary to Mom and Dad Dobo (Mark and Dianne)!! It must be a bummer to only celebrate your anniversary every fourth year. (Or I guess it means you could celebrate both February 28 and March 1 on the other years.) Thanks to sis in law Jody, I even have a picture to share from their wedding day 32 years ago (or 8, if you only count leap years). This concept led to a comment by Gavin this AM: "So I am almost as old as Grandma and Grandpa have been married?" Depending on your calculations, he is correct!!

Then:

Now with all the Grandsons:

Gavin's turn to post...

Gavin saw that Garek got to post, so now it is his turn!! He wanted to share a limerick he did in school this week (notice the Complete Saga (StarWars) reference, as related to my addiction to X Box 360 blog).

There once was an old Darth Vader from space,

Who liked to race on a suitcase.

He would race in race cars,

And flew out to Mars,

They crashed into some dark place.

The original copy of his work!! (Maybe he will be famous)

And of course- Darth Vader

Garek's Turn to Post...

Since this is a family blog, I asked Garek what he would like to share with our friends and family. This is his input: He wants to share about his pets. We have three parakeets (we had four until December, unfortunately Keet passed away) So he took some pictures of the birds for you to see (pretty good for being through the bird cage bars):

This is Indy (full name Indigo) and Snowy

This is BB (short for: Baby Bird, Blue Bird, or Budgie Bird)

In addition to the birds, Garek would like to share another pet with you: his Ball Python, Sammy Stick (this is not as in sticky- gooey, but rather as in stick- like). Garek picked out Sammy Stick for his 4th Birthday last year, so we have had him for about a year. Garek is good about making sure we are taking care of Sam and feeding him etc. Garek is not yet old enough to feed Sam himself, but loves his snake. He likes to give him baths (see the picture). He even had daddy bring him to preschool one day for sharing time. What a hit!

Garek will wait until another post to tell you about the dogs, Roxy and Lucy. In case you have not figured it out from this post, Garek LOVES all animals. I can see many a pet in our future...

Testing 1,2,3 (is this thing on. . .)

Since "Gigi's Blog" is billed as the St. Peter Dobo family, and I have been posting replies that she thinks I should have put as posts (since she did add me as a contributor/admin), figured it was time to step out in front of the curtain and say "Hi."

I added a poll over on the right to see what people think regarding vacations, so stand and be counted (since there is an extraordinary sense of democratic privilege and duty with the American public regarding this upcoming presidential election, let's ride the wave).

This is something we go around and around about, as there are times when each option is the clear winner for our family. Since we are coming up on our 10 year wedding anniversary (yes it has been that long- seems like just yesterday) there have been talks of a trip for two to some far away land. Other friends of ours (Jeff and Kim) are text book examples of road tripping with the kids (Their goal is to make sure their kids have a meaningful experience in all 50 states. . . we'll see how long the Lexus holds up), and Gigi thinks it would be great to start planning trips based on Civil War Battle sites. Some times hanging out at home is the ticket (get some work done, and work on improving everyone's Handicap on the Golf Course - yes we all have clubs, and in case any of you were wondering Gigi makes it look easy compared to when I started playing). And last but not least the practical Workaholic mentality of "stay the course" (ever notice how it always seems like more work to not work?) which unfortunately has been the norm for way to long (there is a reason why I have months and months of PTO accrued).

Elaborate on your vote if you want by commenting, but it will be interesting to see what everyone thinks (who knows you might influence our plans for this coming summer) and don't forget to vote!

Healthy Eaters...

You can take this title two ways and be correct. Gavin and Garek are healthy eaters! They eat good for them food and they also eat pleanty. (I wonder what they will be like as teenagers). These pictures are of the boys hanging out in the kitchen, but I realized that it demonstrated their love of healthy (but strange for youngsters) food. Garek's reddish mustache in this pictures is actually from drinking tomato juice. Don't believe me? I added the last picture as proof.

Addiction to X box 360

Not mine....the three boys. I bought Matt an Xbox 360. He loves to play Halo 3 with his brother Jake (they have a weekly Thursday appointment for this). Gavin and Garek are also allowed to play daddy's XBox. Thanks to Uncle Jake they have a favorite- Star Wars Legos, the Complete Saga. (Or as Gavin refers to it...The Complete Saga.) As someone who grew up seeing the original Star Wars movies, it is pretty hilarious to see lego versions of all the characters. Garek actually loves to kill of C3-PO, because he makes a funny scream. As far as games go, the violence involves blowing apart legos (no blood with legos) and using "the force" to build things. So the boys LOVE playing... and Gavin in particular LOVES talking about it. For instance, in the middle of violin lesson (mind you, his violin is on his shoulder), he will say to Paula (lesson teacher) "Have you seen the rolling guys on Complete Saga?" Now Paula had her own little boys, so she is aware of thought changes, but I think it happens about once per lesson.

It throws us all for a loop when he randomly adds in a Complete Saga Comment to a conversation. This may make you think he plays all the time...this is not the case. There are rules for Xbox: 1. Daddy must be home and turn on the xbox for you (after all it is daddy's gaming system) 2. You must earn your minutes of playing by practicing the violin (Gavin) or earning stickers for good behavior at preschool (Garek). We have started adding a third rule...if we hear about Complete Saga at dinner, there will be no xbox for 2 days. I wonder how many days we will go without Xbox before we stop hearing about it? For those of you out there who are thinking, well at least he talks during dinner... Really we are just trying to help him expand his conversational abilities (while saving what is left of our sanity).

Garek is teaching Sarah Kraatz (a family friend) how to play!!

Boys will be boys

Now that I have my homework done for class (until my new one starts on Thursday), this afternoon I was spending time doing taxes. Can I say I love Turbo Tax? I finished up with taxes in about an hour- yay!

While I was doing that, the boys were playing. For boys, this includes wrestling. Those of us blessed with y-chromosome characters have to expect this I suppose....

I cannot tell who was "winning" but as long as there is laughter involved (and no emergency room visits) it is all fun!!

Quantitative Statistics- yuck!!

So you may know that I am working on my Doctorate of Education. (Or you may not). Either way, I am finishing up my last assignment for my quantitative statistics class- Yay!! This has been one of my hardest classes. I am truly glad I was a science major way back when so I at least have had some statistics. Some of the humanties-type folks in my class are really struggling. In some cases it is nice to know when others in class are struggling too, you feel less alone. But really, I want to have someone to be the "go-to" person. The one I can ask how they did their calcuations and they can tell me. But alas, no such luck. Oh well...almost done. I supposed I should stop procrastinating on this blog and do that one last assignment. We are having dinner with some friends tonight, so that will be my study break.

"Bonehead"

Mom and Jim came down for dinner tonight. (They live about an hour away). We had Salmon, or I should say everyone except for me had salmon. (I cannot eat salmon without my stomach rebelling.) So a "normal" greeting between the boys and Jim:

Garek: "Hi Grandpa Bonehead"

Jim: No you're a bonehead"

Garek: " No you are a bonehead"

This will continue on throughout the evening. I know it will come as a shock to all of you out there, but Jim taught his grandchildren the word bonehead. Hmmm, not surprising?! I must say the boys take the rules very seriously, they can only say it to Grandpa. If Garek catches anyone saying it when we are not with Grandpa Jim, he will tell you "You can't say that word, only to Grandpa Jim."

We had a nice evening, mom and I played Life and Memory with the boys while Matt and Jim cooked salmon. Garek was very lucky and he got to go home with Grammy and Grumpy to spend the night. I have a meeting in the cities tomorrow so I will pick him up on my way back home. Gavin and Daddy are working at a pancake breakfast fundraiser for school while I am at an alumni meeting. Fun Fun!

These pictures are from the evening, thanks to Garek! (Gavin was already crawling into bed, as you see in the pics). I will learn how to format these better, for now, you see Garek, Gavin, Lucy and Roxy, Mom, and Jim and Matt already conspiring about the fishing trip. Garek took all the pictures except his and Gavin's.

Here it Goes...

Okay, so I am falling under all the peer pressure of my fellow "bloggers." I have no idea how long I will be able to keep up blogging or how interesting it will be to learn about the St. Peter Dobosenski's. But I will try.

I thought I would start by telling you about a day in the life of an online teacher/co-director...
Check email by 8 AM, respond to impatient students by 8:30... Work on paperwork for conferences later in the day...check on blogs of my Duluth, Shakopee and East Coast Friends....chat on msn with a few students (they have no school today, yet still want help)....bring Garek to preschool...walk 2 miles....eat lunch in car on the way home...finish conference paperwork.....leave for conferences in Rochester (2 hours away)...call Matt to remind him to pick up Garek...Conduct three conferences, one of which must go through a translator....drive home (eating in the car again)...do my own homework...start blog. Okay, so admittedly this is an unusual day, since I have conferences, but I thought you should all know that although I work from home, it sometimes means I drive to meet with my students.

Hope you all enjoy my blog, I will do my best to keep up with you experts!!