Wow, I’ve been so busy that I forgot to wish my wife a happy birthday for all to see. Well hon, you’ll still see I made it before the day ended at least! Hope you enjoyed your special day and remember, your Classic gift is on the way!

Check it out. I can hack!

What a wonderful day we had today. We went to the beach at Santa Monica and the weather was perfect. Not too hot and not too cold. There was barely anyone there, too! We were a few feet from the waters edge and had a blast for the entire afternoon there.

While this isn’t the first time the kids have been to the beach, it is probably Katelyn’s first time that she really “gets” it. She was scared of the rushing tide but ventured out to her ankles in it as long as she was holding tightly to daddy’s hand. We would run in and away from the wave and at first she would scream in fear but then it quickly turned into excitement for her. I had such a good time with her. I can tell she’s going to be just like me when it comes to water: she’ll love it forever!

Up on the sand, Joshua was a bit timid to go anywhere but from mommy’s arms. About an hour later, he finally got out and plopped himself in the sand digging with his shovel. He and I then played “bury daddy’s arm and make it come out” for a while. I also dug a deep hole and fell into it to allow for some burying of daddy in the sand.

I couldn’t get anyone all the way in the water so I was solo for the body surfing stuff. I went in and out throughout the afternoon and caught some sweet rides in. Man, I had a blast! The water was a warm 66° (this is the Pacific folks) and I never once shivered. I could have stayed in all day.

Around five-ish, we bailed up the street to Santa Monica and 3rd. We ate at this awesome Italian place (can’t spell it’s name) and dined outside. Crowd watching is always a fun thing in Santa Monica (as Brian pointed out Thursday.) The food was incredible and I got a parking spot right there by the restaurant. When we left, a convertible Ferrari was behind us (see the modi). Nice.

Okay, now where off to the pool. I’ll blog more later.

Guess what UPS just delivered? Liz’s iPod mini!! I had to actually sign for it. Man, I haven’t had to sign for a package from UPS in like years!

After closing the door, I looked at the from section because I was very curious who would require a signature. I first caught “PROMOTION” on the label and then “Citibank”. I immediately knew it was the iPod mini! I ran into the family room, jumping up-and-down before Liz. She looked at me and asked what was I so excited about. I brought the box over to her and pointed to the Citibank spot. She smiled and said, “Is it my iPod?” I told her, “Yup!” and opened the packaging box. I then gave her the iPod mini box and she opened it. She got the cool blue one and she said that she loved it. “I didn’t have any idea what color I wanted,” she told with a huge smile. “This is perfect!”

Oh man, I can’t wait to configure her computer and iTunes and plug this bad boy in. We are an iPod family now! Woo-hoo!!

Thank you, Citibank.

Tonight we took Joshua out to pizza for his birthday dinner. We took him to the new Round Table Pizza in Tracy. This was our favorite pizza chain but it was taken from us last year when the franchise owner of 18 local ones decided to either be dirty and loose his license or he thought the license fess where too high and bailed. I here both stories and it really doesn’t matter which is true, we lost our favorite but now it’s back! It’s a bit of a drive, but for great pizza, we’ll do it.

The place is in a brand new building and it’s the nicest pizza joints I’ve ever seen. The salad bar was really nice and for a pizza place, I was very impressed with the offerings. They had a good selection of beer (I had a Fat Tire) and Coca Cola on hand for the soda department! While TV’s where in abundance, their party room was empty and we took our spot in there and turned off the TV.

The service was amazing there. I mean, we had three separate employees serving us. Clearing our table, bringing us napkins, bringing the kids balloons, clean wipes, and so forth. The manager came over at one point and asked how everything was. I swear, I’ve got worse service at four star restaurants! I was impressed enough to say that 20 minute drive won’t be an issue in the future.

All in all, I over ate but it was my favorite chain. Remember, High Five Pizza Company in San Jose is my favorite pizza place, period. But since we’ve been starved for great pizza so long, it was nice to have this tonight. Me ‘n Ed’s, our substitute has been good, but just not Round Table good, so it was a great treat to have tonight. Mmmm-mmm, thank you Lord!

‘This is from when we went on a double date with the Jo Jo’s like, what, almost two years ago? Man, it can’t have been that long. Oh it wasn’t. It was when we saw The Passion of the Christ. I guess things happen so rarely like this when you have kids, it seems like years.

Anyway, Rebecca took this snap shot and I saw it in my slide show and just smiled and said, “I’ve got to get this on the site today.” I mean doesn’t Liz look awesome? Wait, be careful how you answer that!! Well the day is nearly over, so here it is before I slip out to get me some Coca Cola and Liz some KK’s.

Welp, it’s a new year and that means put away the Christmas stuff. So, it’s put away. We got up late, started late and finally finished. Since we didn’t go all out this year, it didn’t take to long.

We did plato with the kids after and had lunch and just have been enjoying a lazy afternoon.

So, here I am, off to send my monthly invoices now. Aaah, a new year, a new day.

Looks like Liz has fired up her interest in bringing her blog back, so I installed the latest WordPress early this morning and now she’s up and running! Keep your eyes peeled on it as I hope she’ll continue to blog on it and give you a different prospective of the RoxFamily then I do.

As to the design, this is a pure CSS design right now (you can even change it to your liking!). I will be changing it over to the “standard” RoxFamily look-n-feel once I get a chance. She’ll be in the purple color scheme. I hope to completely rebuild her site with a new CSS architect frame, however. That is, no HTML tables. Yuck, they are just such a pain and this will help keep the site manageable and easily user changeable in the future. In fact, I’ll probably have the option to go svenrox-style, joshuarox-style, and katelynrox-style. I think that could be really fun. Of course that means when I change the other sites to the CSS frame, they too will have that option. So, we’ll see how it goes.

Keep bloggin’, honey!!

Liz has had a bad splitting headache for three days now and today she slept most of the day. She feels better, but still not good. It’s worrying me that she has had these severe headaches for so long now and it’s not the first time, either. So be praying for her that they would subside and we would find the reason for them, too.

Here is a good/ long article from No Greater Joy:

In one of our recent seminars, a mother complained to Debi, “The children frustrate me so much. I tell them to do their schoolwork, and they just piddle around. I tell them to clean up their rooms, and they fuss over who is to clean up what. They are always irritating one another. It frustrates me so much, trying to cause them to maintain a good attitude. They are always complaining and whining about something. I get frustrated and spank them, but it seems to do no good. They just don’t seem to care. They pick on each other continuously. I get so frustrated….” Debi interrupted her mournful complaints to answer, “Yes, it is an attitude problem.” The weary mother hastily agreed, “That’s it! They have bad attitudes.” Debi responded, “No, it’s you that has the bad attitude.” The mother’s widening eyes and gaping mouth expressed her dismay as she stood waiting for the forthcoming explanation.

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