Duncan Pfamily In Pflugerville

Today is…

October 27th, 2008

Rob’s 37th Birthday, Happy Birthday Rob!

birthday boy

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Seeing Pink

October 10th, 2008

You see the pink Kitchen Aide mixers:

the pink cupcake sprinkles:

a pink cookie cutter

Oh wait, no I wasnt baking anything and I dont care for the pink color. I will let Linda my mother in law and Emily drool over these items for me.

I was talking about my blog and the new look for the month. I am all for holidays even Halloween but I thought I would dedicate this month to my Aunt Josie.

In 2002 she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer. She was able to catch it early, she recieved great treatment and now she is cancer free.

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At Starbucks we have a way to award our fellow partners when they do something to help out the store, the enviroment, giving extra care to customers or each other. There is one award that is the Be Considerate award. We have never used these awards in our store but we plan to start since it could bring up moral. On Monday we started by having a barista meeting, usually every Monday we have a Shift/Management meeting. We thought the baristas were never heard and the store could benefit from them having a meeting of their own. They had their meeting while the shifts took over the floor.

For the meeting I brought in a cake based off the Be Considerate award since our store really needs help in this area.

Here is a picture of the card, sorry it was blurry and I was taking the picture when I was about to run out the door.

Here is a picture of the top of the cake:

For some reason everyone kept on saying how considerate it was for be to bring in the cake.

I wonder why??

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Boulder Dam

October 9th, 2008

Originally the dam was called Boulder Dam, twice actually. When it was first built the dam was called Boulder Dam because it was suppose to be built in Boulder Canyon. It ended up being built in Black Canyon 10 miles south instead. Then the Hoover administration decided to change the name to Hoover Dam as a politcal move in 1930. Roosevelt changed it back to Boulder Dam, then once again it changed back to Hoover Dam by Truman.

The Hoover Dam itself which is 726 feet tall and 1,244 feet long. At its base, Hoover Dam is 660 feet thick which is 60 feet longer than two football fields laid end-to-end. Combined with its top thickness of 45 feet, there is enough concrete (4.5 million cubic yards) in Hoover Dam to build a two-lane highway from Seattle Washington to Miami Florida. Or imagine a four-foot wide sidewalk around Earth at its equator.

Hoover Dam required over 3,250,000 cubic yards of concrete plus another million for the power plant, intake towers and other support structures.

Here you could see a model of how the dam was built. The base of Hoover Dam alone required 230 individual gigantic blocks of concrete. Five-foot tall blocks of varying width, ranging from 25 square feet on the downstream face to 60 square feet on the upstream face.

One of the most dangerous jobs was to be a High Scaler. They were paid about 75 cents per hour versus the average of 50 cents for regular Hoover Dam construction. They would use ropes to propel down and drill holes in the canyon walls. They would place the explosives, move out of the way of the explosions, come back and removes any rocks and debris.

We were able to take a elevator down into the workings of the dam and see how it generates electricity. Here is a picture of the turbines that spin from from the river water flowing through them.

Here is a picture of Lake Mead that was created after Hoover Dam was built. Water goes through channels built to detour the river. When the water rises do to flooding they open the flood spillways to let the excess water go through. To this date water has never crested the dam, although it was put through a big test in 1983. There was record snow melt and rain and it caused the water to rise considerablely. You could see how high the water got in this picture by the white line along the canyon walls.

Since 9/11 security has been a big issue at the dam. With good reason they are concerned about attacks to the dam itself. Right now you could driver right on top of the dam, it is actually part of the highway. They are currently building a detour that will take you around the dam instead of on top of it. Here is a picture of a bridge they are starting to build, it’s name is Mike O’Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. O’Callaghan was the governor of Nevada in the 70s, and Tillman was a pro football player who turned down a 3.6 million contract to join the Army after 9/11; sadly he was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan.

Once the bridge is built all Highway 93 traffic will be diverted off the dam to this bridge. You will still be able to visit the dam, it is something that should be on your list to see. Make sure you take the tour as well, it is very interesting. Much better than the little history lesson I just gave.

Off to the Grand Canyon in my next post.

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Back to our trip, in Las Vegas

October 8th, 2008

O.k. we are back on the road again and now we will share our visit in Vegas with you all.

The sign says it all:

Here is the same sign, changed with the help of Photoshop:

We stayed at the Excalibur, the princesses and prince expressed this was the best place to stay. The king and queen got it because it was cheap! 🙂

Next to our hotel there was the New York casino, it had the Statue of Liberty:

In front of the Statue of Liberty they did a memorial for 9/11. They had these cases lined up with pictures, letters, firemen t-shirts, uniforms and ect inside of them.

The worse part of our trip was the walk down the strip. For most of the walk this was our view. There were no exciting city lights, no wind blowing our hair.Instead we got the stuffy, stinky, and ugly wooden box.

Exciting isnt it? This was our view for a better part of our walk. They were doing construction and put this up to keep us safe? Make us see who could pass out first from the heat?

I needed a drink after that:

No, I didnt drink that all by myself! I let Rob take a sip too!

Back to walking the Strip, here we have the Eifel Tower I think it would of been a better view without the kissing couple though.

Here we have the water show we seen at the Belagio

The kids loved this place, M&M World

Here are the kids with some M&Ms:

That is all for Vegas, it was a short unexciting stay with kids. What more do you expect? We won millions gambling? Yeah right! Rob and I split $20, he headed off to lose it while I won back my $20. Huge gamblers, I know.

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A new temporary look

October 7th, 2008

Without the help of Rob I was able to figure out how to change the look to the blog. I am patting myself on the back right now, usually I am full of questions. After so many questions over a extended period of time Rob just does it himself. Usually a quick lesson is given in hope I will remember something. This time around there were no questions, no lessons and a happy husband who didnt get annoyed.

Also I want to announce that I am typing this post with my laptop!! It is back on my lap ready to fix some vacation pictures and post them. During the time away from my laptop I have found that adobe photoshop is my new friend. Ask Rob, instead of questions I am pestering him with pictures. I show him the original picture then show him them the new enhanced picture afterwards. Now that my laptop is back, I could pester you guys as well!! Lucky you!

Well that is all for now, off to get ready for work. New posts with pictures are coming soon, I promise!!

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Could it be?? Cont’d story from my birthday

September 26th, 2008

Rob walked in with a bag yesterday, here is a picture of the bag:

Hmm, time to inspect this bag a bit more, something looks like it…..

It is, it is!!!! Can you see this? This “CAKE” is in my house and it was not made with my hands!

Rob brought me a cake

Much better, now my birthday is complete.

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Happy Birthday Emily

September 26th, 2008

Five years ago Emily joined our family in a very dramatic way. I ended up having her early by emergency c-section. From day one till five years later she is just as dramatic.

Her day started before sun even was up. She came down a few times throughout the night asking if it was her birthday yet. She was so excited and couldnt wait for the sun to come up to get he celebration started. It didnt count that we went to Chuck E Cheese the night before.

Here we have a picture of a picture of Em in the NICU. ( the other picture is on the hard drive so I took a picture of a picture on the wall) Notice “pink bear” being much bigger than Em. My sister brought it to keep her company when she came to visit.

Here are some pictures of pink bear today. Every year on Em’s birthday we take a picture of Em with Pink Bear ( who is her favorite bear and must be next to her when sleeping).

Now for her present there is one in particular that I know I will drop weight with. I am going to teach her what 10:00 in the morning looks like on the clock. There is no reason why we should use this present before that.

Big sis helping Em out

With this smile you could tell this is going to happen daily, around 10:00am. Later would be better, but I know how Em is.

Another gift she exclaimed that it is cool!! I think it was because it was pink, not that represents WV.

Last but not least here is a picture of her simple Strawberry Shortcake Cake.

Happy Birthday Em!! Remember 10:00am!!!!!!!!

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Vacation Pictures

September 25th, 2008

O.k. there are a few new pictures from recent days. Where are the old vacation pictures? My lap top is still being fixed. I told Rob it will be a month wait and we are still waiting, more than a month later. We were at first told a part needed to be ordered then once that is done we will have our lap top back. My lap top is in Houston, it was there before Ike. So now Ike had delayed the return of my lap top and the updating on vacation pics.

Once we get them back I will post the rest of the pictures, I promise.

Janell

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