Thornock.Org

Stephanie, Julie and me

As most of you know, we happened to be in town during my 10 year high school reunion. It was…interesting (for lack of a better word). I am very glad I went, but it was almost too surreal. As soon as I walked into the hotel room, it felt like I stepped back in time. Everyone formed into the same cliques. I don’t know why I expected any different…you would want to follow up with the people you hung out with. There were definitely people that were not there that I would have liked to have seen but for the most part, I was happy with the people that did show up. I got to reminisce about the EGGB (Elk Grove Ghetto Booty) club that me and three others were in. I was reminded of how I came out of no where and made cheerleading my freshman year over girls who had been cheering their whole lives (I attribute that to my sis, Hollie. I personally think the only reason I made it that first year was because you were my sister, not because of my talent. Ms. Schecher loved you).

These past ten years have flown by, yet a lot has happened; I left home for college, got married, received a bachelors degree, had a baby, moved across country, etc. I feel like I’ve grown up a lot. Somehow, through all the experiences, I haven’t aged in appearance. I still look 17. They gave out awards at the reunion and I was chosen from my table for the person that looks exactly the same as they did in highschool. That’s a good thing, right?

Then and Now

We also had a Seminary reunion, hosted by the awesome, Stephanie (George) Martinez, that same day. It was neat to see where we all are in life. Jake met Darrell Thornock (the red headed kid in the second picture) and we talked about the name and wondered how far back we are related. One of the girls has five kids. I can’t imagine what that would be like. Jake definitely wouldn’t be doing a PhD right now, he’d be making money at some big accounting firm. It was great…I just wish Shirley, Diana and Andrea were there. We missed you guys. Anyway, thanks Steph for putting that together. It was fun!
Pictures from the Seminary Reunion

This past weekend went by too fast. On Friday night we got a babysitter and went with some friends to the Carolina Hurricanes hockey game. Okay that’s misleading…we drove to the hockey game. I had called the ticket office a few weeks before asking if it is possible to get tickets the day of the game. I was being cheap and didn’t want to pay the $5 fee to buy tickets online. The kind gentleman said that they rarely ever sold out and when they did, it would be on a weekend night playing a great team. Pittsburg must have been a great team because on our way to the arena, traffic was HORRIBLE and they all seemed to be going to the same place we were. When we pulled in to park we asked the lady, who was about to collect our $8 for parking, if there were any tickets left. She informed us that the only tickets available were $85 for standing.

We considered standing at the entrance of the parking lot and making each car pay $2 to park and just tell them that they will have to pay another $8 when they drive up to the next person ($10 total seems like a nice round number for parking). When we each collected our $85 we’d go watch the game. We realized that probably wouldn’t be legal so we left. On our way to the freeway entrance we saw an accident. You could tell by their hockey jersey’s that they were going to the game. We considered stopping to ask if we could have their tickets since they probably wouldn’t be going anymore. Then we realized that might be very inconsiderate of us. So…we opted to go to Maggiano’s, an amazing Italian restaurant.

Some of you may be thinking…didn’t they already go to a hockey game for Valentines day. We ended up not going because of babysitter issues so we were going on Friday to make up for it. It seems we are not meant to go.

On Saturday we played games with our friends, Derrald and Lauren. We watched the UNC vs. Duke basketball game on TV after church on Sunday. It was a great game and UNC won. March Madness will be a little more exciting this year since we actually have a team that could take it.

I wasn’t kidding when I said I will be 10 pounds heavier when I visit Utah this Christmas. The Christmas goodies are killing me. I can’t believe how generous people are here. I have never received so many treats in one week. It started early last week and we have had goodies on our doorstep or people dropping by every day now. So far we have been given candy bars, fudge, chocolate covered pretzels, brownies, cookies, Christmas CD, and oranges (okay, so the last two aren’t sugary treats but still). I started feeling guilty for not giving back so I made my childhood favorite, Hershey Kiss Cookies. I made 100 cookies today and handed them out to friends. Of course, I snacked on the dough while making it and then shoved five baked cookies into my mouth. There are a few left just sitting on the counter waiting to be eaten and it’s likely that I will be the one to finish them off. Where’s the self control?!?! It’s completely gone! I’m hoping to get it back for the New Year. I may just have to get pregnant so I have an excuse for the extra poundage. (Just kidding…I’m not pregnant nor do I plan on getting pregnant soon—but man it would be nice to have a valid excuse for the weight gain. Sigh.).

December is a busy month. Not only do we celebrate Christmas, there are at least nine family members who have a birthday this month. So, I wanted to give a shout out to all the December birthday boys/girls! Happy Birthday Mom, Ed, Bryant, Ulises, Kelli, Savannah, Richard, Anthony and Virginia! I hope I didn’t miss anyone. We hope you have a wonderful day. We are so grateful to have you in our lives.

My mom and Dave visited us a month ago and we celebrated my mom’s birthday early. I found a Snickers ice cream cake, which I had to buy. It was in the shape of a football so I decided the theme of her birthday party would be sports balls. I hadn’t been to a birthday party for my mom in many years so although this was early, I was glad to have celebrated it with her. Since I’m on the topic of my mom, I’ll let you in on why she is so special to me.

Top 10 Reasons I Admire my Mom (in no specific order):
1. She always listens and will give great advice when you ask
2. She is very intelligent (don’t play her in Trivial Pursuit…you’ll lose)
3. She has a huge heart. She loves her son/daughter-in-laws as if they were her own children.
4. She has great faith.
5. She raised five children who turned out pretty darn good
6. She laughs at the silliest things, which in turn makes you laugh. (i.e. Jake’s elephant fingers)
7. She is humble, yet has a competitive streak that keeps things interesting. (i.e. Suduko races)
8. She doesn’t give up. She is a perfectionist and doesn’t want to let anyone down.
9. She gives and gives and gives.
10. She’s my mom, and no one can replace her. I love you, Mom!

If I had time I would write something similar for all of you birthday boys/girls but please know that we will be thinking of you on your big day and we love you all.

Halloween was fun but pretty low key this year. We went to a pumpkin patch on Monday and Allie LOVED all the pumpkins. She tested them out by sitting on them. Wearing her Ladybug costume became a ritual every day in the month of October. She loves wearing her “buzz-buzz” costume. So wearing her costume on Halloween was no big deal for her. She hardly noticed it until she saw herself in a mirror. We went to our church Halloween carnival and trunk or treat. I bought WAY too much candy. If you see me in December in Utah and wonder why I gained so much weight…it’s because of all the candy we have in our house. I bought one of those jumbo bags from Costco and we hardly made a dent in it. After the trunk or treat party we came home hoping for trick-or-treaters to take this candy away from us, but not a soul knocked. We found out this morning that we were supposed to pick up a sign at the complex office to place on our door if we wanted trick-or-treaters to come by. Oops. That would have been nice to know YESTERDAY. So here we are, left with 2/3′s of a jumbo bag of chocolate. Oh boy.

Here are some pictures of Allie.
Allie, Allie and more Allie
PS Check out the post below…it’s new too.

So, I just took my first test in Econ 378 (Stats for Economists). Three hours and ten minutes. It was tiring. The truth of the matter is that I am just a slow test taker. What takes most people 45 minutes will take me 75 minutes. But I guess if there ever is a time to take your time, it’s in the testing center.

I’ll be taking another GMAT prep exam tomorrow. It’ll be my fifth practice test. I am averaging about 84th percentile, so it’s enough to get me into a lower-tiered school, but not the big schools that I am trying to get into. I am getting really sick of this test. The answers are so hard to distinguish between each other. Probably the hardest part about it is keeping pace. You have less than two minutes to answer questions like this:

Billy Bob walks along a trail at a rate of 3 km/hour and returns along the same route at a rate of 4 km/hour. If his total walking time is 105 minutes, how long is the trail in km? Answer in the comments.

I missed this one on practice test #1. I can nail this question sitting on my sofa reviewing the GMAT manual, but it’s alot tougher to get this right when the clock is ticking. I guess the key is to learn from my mistakes and not make the on the real exam. Kind of like in econ…kind of like in life.

Hey all,

Some of you may remember me talking about golfing with my Grandma. A couple weeks ago, Kerrie and I went up to Idaho to visit the fam. It was great, especially the early morning round of golf with Grandmother, Jared and Jacob. Grandmother beat me and Jacob soundly, and I think she probably beat Jared if we count his mulligans . She’s a great golfer, and she’s so fun to golf with because she’s so positive. I have some fond memories of golfing with my grandma.

I took some video of her teeing off. Like to see it? Here it goes–

Grandmother Golfing Movie

We just purchased some video editing software, so I am hoping that this is the first of many videos to come of us, our family and our friends.

Hey all!

Just in case you haven’t heard the news, we’re having a little girl in May! We’re super excited…we’ve already got her a Halloween costume!

Well, as any common family member knows, children are fun to take pictures of. Hence the desire for a website. And thanks to our buddy, Jeff, this is desire is now possible.

So, check back occasionally, and we’ll post news and pics.

Jake and Kerrie