Falon’s World

We went to a lot of movies this Christmas Break. Here’s a short breakdown of what we saw and what I thought.

The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep

We got free tickets from GRNow for this movie and with my popcorn bucket (from Eric for Christmas good for all Celebration Cinemas) and gift card we got to go completely for free. The movie was cute, but very Free-Willy-ish. I guess some kids find it a little frightening, which I can see but overall it was cutesy but not a lot of originality or substance.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

We got free movie passes to this as well. It was…different. It was extremely violent, gory and disgustingly morbid. The girl next to me was incredibly annoying. Every time Todd (Johnny Depp) would whip out his blade to murder she would do this high pitched valley-girl giggle and fling herself around in her seat, and then promptly covered her eyes to avoid the gruesomeness of the bloody death. Incredibly irritating. After one more prolonged bout of mad-giggling I asked Eric if maybe she was having hysterics and I should slap her…but he said no. The storyline was twisted and interesting for sure, not so fond of the insane amount of singing…although it is a musical.

The Kite Runner 

I read this book before the movie came out – again free movie passes from school. It followed the book very closely and was incredibly depressing. Tragic book, tragic movie.

Charlie Wilson’s War 

This was the third and final movie pass that we got from school. It was a good movie. It was based on a true story and very political and therefore a lot of it went right over my head. But, the main character and his “sidekick” were very, very amusing. I really enjoyed this movie.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

I really enjoyed the first National Treasure and was totally satisfied with the sequel. It was as good as the first, uncommon in most sequels. These two movies are a couple of my favorites.

Today was mine and Eric’s One Year Anniversary. The longest relationship I’ve had since High School. Pretty crazy…pretty insane how fast it went too. I got Eric a fossil watch, and had it engraved.

He got me a variety of stuff. The frame was actually my 6 month anniversary present, he just finished it. Very sweet and sentimental though

Christmas morning, we all got up, and opened presents at Mom and Dad’s and then Grandma and Grandpa came over for awhile too.

My Dad is obsessed with Bubba the Love Sponge so this is one of his gifts from Adam:

My parents got Eric a rolling pin, but labeled it so that he would “know what it was” LOL

Mom went a little nuts and bought everyone coats:

I got two coats, a peacoat and a nice, long leather coat:

Then more Wii, even Grandma played:

Then we showered and headed down to Holland to have Christmas at Eric’s Grandma’s place. Family photo (minus Jason and Jennifer (and baby Stoike)):

My gifts for Christmas 2007:

Some things are missing because I wore/was wearing them/using them…

We headed up north Christmas Eve and hung out at my parents’ house for awhile. Eric had a lot of fun playing Guitar Hero on my brother’s Wii.

Then we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa’s house to hang out and eat a massive amount of Hors D’Oeuvres

…and drink, drink a lot Dad made these amazing pudding shot things…mmmm, they went down soooooooooo smooth

There was more Guitar Hero:

We all had a decent buzz going. Grandma got sloshed and dripped orange pop all over her carpet – hilarious. Eric had a little too much fun too. On the way home:

Then we got home and Eric puked all over the top of the toilet, on the floor, the wall, in and out of the garbage and all down the front of himself. Yuk! Talk about a buzz kill. I cleaned him up and ended up sleeping on the couch in the living room. Otherwise, one fantastic family event though!

We drove up north on Friday to pick up four of the labradoodle pups. We picked up 2 yellow males, a black male and a yellow female. The trip home was…interesting. I ended up having the yellow male with the green collar on my lap because he kept crying and the rest slept in the tub fine. Right up until the little black male vomited allllll over the rest of the pups in the tub. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of our time with the pups.

They had been going quite consistently in a separate box attached to their whelping box, but one night of doing this at our house and they quit. They started going everywhere, and getting it everywhere and in general being smelly and messy. So, our weekend consisted of constantly cleaning up the kennel whenever one would mess and running them outside for some energy outlet.

The pups ended up getting two baths. One when we first got to our house to clean up the vomit mess and one before they went home to clean off any residual “mess” smells.

I also put together a puppy packet for the newbie owners, bought new collars for each, a bag of dog food and a portion for each pup, a bone for the ride home, a towel from the whelping box covered in Coco/puppy smells, and printed photos of each of the pups throughout the time I’ve been photographing them.

As cute as puppies are I was glad to see them go to their new homes as I don’t have the facilities to house 4 un-potty-trained, 8-week-old, energetic pups for very long. They are pretty darn cute though.

The female with the pink collar got picked up first and with the excitement, the noise and the rush, I forgot to take a photo of her with her new owner I’m waiting on photos from him though.

The new families:

These are Mickey and Noodle.

There are three pups left that need homes.

Chocolate Male with the Blue Collar has really developed quite a lot of curl to his coat:

The Yellow Female with the Red Collar is still the smallest of the pups, she’s got an extremely petite build but is quite tall and leggy. Her hair has developed some tight waves but is very wiry in texture.

The Chocolate Male with the White Collar is still relatively straight-haired although he’s developing a wiry texture as well. I would love to see him go to a family with a lot of active youngsters.

Christmas this year was a very hectic affair with a lot of driving.

Our tree:

Our lights

On December 23rd we headed up to Holland to have Christmas at Eric’s Mom’s house with Jason and Jennifer. It was very enjoyable with a delicious meal of roast, mashed potatoes and carrots done exactly how I like them. I didn’t even get my camera out and Eric hasn’t posted photos so I don’t have anything to show of that .

December 24th, Christmas Eve, we decided we would open our presents to each other because we wouldn’t be at our house on Christmas morning and we wanted to have our own Christmas for the first time in our own house. I got Eric violin (fiddle) lessons with our friend Brittany for four months (two at a time in case he doesn’t enjoy them) and also paid for renting a violin at a place here in GR. It was a little beyond what I planned on spending but he’s been going on about wanting to learn for so long that I couldn’t resist. Plus, I knew he would NEVER guess. For him to have something to open, I wrapped a mini-violin, made for a 6-year-old (Brittany’s brilliance).

Eric went a little overboard with his gifts (again) this year too:

Then we headed up north….

Contacted my prof and I do have an 85.65% I’m ok with that though

Finally! My final grades are finally posted!

Introduction to Research in the Biomedical Sciences = A

I ended up with a 96% on our final presentation. She never posted my final exam, but from this post, I had a 94% and I ended up with an A, so my final exam couldn’t've been too bad.

Immunology = B

This was my worst grade of the semester, but I’m so happy with my final grade! I was so worried about this class I only got an 86% on my big 50 pt assignment. But, I got an 87% on my final, and it was cumulative too. My final grade according to BlackBoard is an 85.65%, a B, but when I add the points up myself I get an 88.88%, which is a B+. I think the grade I had mid-way through the semester, labeled “Midterm” and is a B is being figured into that final grade even though I didn’t actually take a Midterm test. I’m not sure how that works so I emailed the prof to ask.

Introduction to Health Professions = A

I whooped butt in this class. My final was a 96%, as was my midterm and everything else I got 100% on so my final grade ended up being a 99.5% – dang final brought down my grade!

Introduction to World Civilizations = A

I loved my prof, he was so great! One of my favorite classes here and I used to hate history. He said I deserved an A because I am an A student who does A work He’s a confidence booster .

Overall GPA = 3.75

I made the Dean’s List for the first time in my college career!!!!

Well our boys have been doing good. Mason is still growing it would appear. I’ve cut back both of their food rations. Even though they are spending more time outside (they LOVE the snow, only come in when I make them), they aren’t getting as rigorous exercise as they were when we were swimming them all the time. I am planning on buying them each a neoprene vest so that swimming is possible for them when we do go to the beach, and they will have a little better insulation.

Here are some comparisons of the two together now, Mason is now 10 months old.

He’s a little chubby (the dog thinks he’s starving 24/7 and will eat anything), but we’re working on that.

He’s almost as tall as Midas now. Which makes it even more amusing when he tries to run under his belly still:

Mason’s head looks a little small for his body…and is proportioned entirely differently from Midas’s:

His eyes, ears and nose are smaller:

He just has a more petite head. His jaw is slimmer than Midas’s as well:

But he’s growing well and developing fine. I’ve started to make them both lay down (instead of sit) before getting fed and that seems to really have helped Mason’s desire to learn the trick. He just hates laying down on command, I can’t figure out why. He acts like it’s the worst punishment in the world and even sends himself to his own kennel instead of just laying down. This morning was the first morning that he did it on the word command alone, with no hand signals to assist. I was very excited.

Midas and Mason are best buds, they do almost everything absolutely together. They got a lot of exercise this weekend running around at our house, my parents house, my grandparents house and up and down the Sand Dunes too. They were exhausted:

I bought a Furminator for Mason this weekend too. He’s got a very fluffy coat and even though he’s shedding like mad it doesn’t seem to be turning to the true adult lab coat. He still looks like he’s got the coat of a pup – very soft and full. He absolutely loved it! Anyway, this is what happened after being Furminated:

Thursday

I laid around A LOT and did a little cleaning and finished up one of Eric’s gifts.

Friday

We did massive shopping. We hit Hobby Lobby, 3 different pet stores, Home Depot and got the dogs licensed. It was productive, but I don’t have anything to show on here. Then we had friends over for pizza, headed out and went bowling

Photo of Eric bowling by me:

and then back to our house for a little while (I went to bed).

Saturday

We went to the Intersection and saw Branded and Emerson Drive. It was a good time. Had some drama up by the stage with these two girls thinking they deserved to be treated like queens and meanwhile shove everyone else around – they weren’t very popular. Oh well, otherwise had a blast.

Sunday

We went up North to see the ‘rents and the grand’rents. It included delicious food, Christmas decorations, puppies and a trip out to Silver Lake.

Silver Lake photos (all by Eric):

The boys raced around like Looney Tunes:

Mason hit a huge patch of ice and looked a cartoon the way his legs were flailing around wildly, trying to find purchase. It was hysterical, probably why neither of us got it on camera…the look of shock on his face – priceless. Midas, on the other hand, always finds time to lay down, he LOVES to snow snorkel:

This is my fave, he looks vicious – but really he’s just chewing ice/snow