big son, the preschool graduate

Friday was Big Son's preschool graduation! It was an awesome ceremony. His teacher had the class perform for us and I was so proud of how well Big Son behaved and performed. I am so glad to have such a special boy as my son.

Also Little Son:

My Last Meal

My buddies at work bought me lunch today. They informed me that they ordered one of each entree at PF Changs as well as a fine assortment of pies from Marie Calendars.

It's okay, I'll understand if you drool a little. Go ahead.

The Last Thursday

So last night I was finally catching up on The Office and started with Goodbye Michael. I fell asleep soon after it started, but I got the jist of what was happening there... the same thing that is happening here.

Today is my last Thursday at my current workplace. I have worked here for the last four years and to be quite frank I was ready to resign a long time ago. Funny things happen though, in life, because today I am sort of sad. It's not that I will miss the work, or the workplace drama, or most of the people, or the fact that I can pretty much sit and type a blog post at work without reaping any sort of punishment. No, it's not that. It's the idea of leaving the few people I have grown friendly with. They have helped me through hard times. I have seen them endure theirs. I have seen spiritual turnarounds that have given me much joy. These are people I have cried with, complained to, and laughed with. I never thought I would say it, but I will miss them.

Yesterday I told Big Son that it was his last Wednesday at preschool. Tears welled up in his eyes because he's going to miss his friends. He gets that from me.

Goodbye guys. Farewell Thursdays.

tour of popcap games

I found this video on YouTube that shows off PopCap's 3rd floor a little. (I will be working on the 2nd floor though.)

mailman, watch out!

The other day The Wife and Big Son got online and added a cooking show to the Netflix queue. Big Son was pretty excited about it so when they went to get the mail this morning he was pretty disappointed when the DVD was "Disney's The Kid" instead of the cooking show. (The Wife thinks she might have forgot to put it at the top of the queue, or perhaps the cooking show needed to be shipped from a far away city or something.) 

ANYWAY, Big Son's reaction to all of this was:

"Mom, that mailman is in danger. We have a problem."

Also, Big and Little Sons think that Thailand is an amusement park.

slurpy spaghetti

The Wife sent me this pictures a few minutes ago. The boys are so into cooking and recipes right now, I can't imagine how much they loved making this with The Wife.

Little Son Slurpsalot

Big Son Slurpaholic (with cookbook)

about my new employer

From the PopCap website (http://www.popcap.com/about-us):

Our Mission

PopCap makes life fun! We make creative, timeless, irresistible games that everyone loves to play, anywhere, with anyone.

For over 10 years we’ve been a worldwide leader in casual gaming — creating award-winning franchises like Bejeweled®, Zuma®, Peggle® and Plants vs. Zombies™.

Years in the making, our games are sprinkled with a whirlwind of smile-inducing awesomeness and polished to a timeless sheen that keeps the world coming back for more. And people do — time and again, everyone’s playin’ PopCap games!

Company History

It all started in 2000, when PopCap’s founders John Vechey, Jason Kapalka and Brian Fiete decided to combine their experience from other game companies with their passion for simple, fun games. Just as the Internet bubble burst, the trio was left holding its first great hit with no real way to profit from it.

So they came up with a radical idea — “try it before you buy it” — and in October 2001, they posted their first downloadable game, Bejeweled Deluxe. Soon orders began rolling in. By the hundreds… every hour… day after day… from all over the world.

The rest is… well, the #1 puzzle series of the 21st century and the world’s greatest gain in the land of relaxing fun!

The success of Bejeweled empowered PopCap to experiment and we eventually created a bevy of entertaining games, like Bookworm®, Zuma and Peggle. Adaptations soon followed — for Xbox, PlayStation3, Nintendo DS, mobile phones, the iPad, and Facebook — and millions more people discovered PopCap® games. And they haven’t stopped playing since!

These days we have over 400 whip-smart, talented and happy employees in offices all over the world — from Seattle, San Francisco and Vancouver, B.C. to Dublin, Shanghai and Tokyo. And we’re as busy as ever dreamin’ up new ways to make life fun!

PopCap by the Numbers

Year founded: 2000
Number of employees: Over 400
Number of PopCap Games: 56
Number of awards our games have won: More than 100... we’ve lost count!
Plants vs. Zombies movie deal offers received: 41
Frequency of Bejeweled sales: 1 every 4.3 seconds
Chuzzles that Noni, the office dog, eats in a day: 4.5 (average)
Number of people who have played at least one PopCap game: Over 1 billion!

latter day saints

Big Son: "We don't go to that church that's crazy. We go to Latter-Day Saints."

Little Son: "Latter-Day Saints go marching in!!!"