Next Phase part 2

So its been 2 months since we updated this thing and we thought it would be good to update everyone since so much has changed over the past two weeks. I would like to try and promise it will be short, but you know how that goes. So here we go:
When we left Korea we assumed that Tova would go back into teaching. Out of the blue she got a job as a supervisor-type at a daycare roughly two weeks after landing in the US. This totally changed our plans and we thought that the daycare would be a long term thing. Tova couldn’t shake the idea of teaching though. We wanted to look at schools in Jax but none were hiring, so we had to broaden our search. We kept it in Florida because Tova had her teaching license already in Florida. (and I am now allergic to winter)
Then, with the school year was fast approaching, she got offered a full-time 5th grade job at a school in Polk County (about 3 hours SW of jax, right in between Orlando and Tampa Bay). The offer was so sudden that she had to leave her daycare job that Friday. Then Saturday Tova and I drove down to the area and found an apartment.
That Sunday we packed everything that we had at the house.
Monday Tova drove back down to fill new-hire paperwork.
Tuesday we loaded up the truck.
Wednesday we unpacked. Thursday/Friday was new-hire training.
Monday (of last week) was her first day at her school, where Ellie and I helped move all her boxed up teaching supplies to her new classroom.
Last week was filled with start-of-year-meetings and setting up her classroom.
And today? The first day of school!
Crazy, crazy.
(during this whole process my dad said “don’t you guys do anything normally?” my response was “no dad, no we don’t”)
How are we handeling it? Fairly well. The apartment is nice, and Ellie has a ton of room to roam. She likes that.
How’s Tovas school?
Awesome. And we are not just saying that. The teachers and administration are awesome and have helped a lot.
What is Daniel doing?
I am working 100% from home. The nice thing about video editing is that you can do it anywhere.
What about filming?
Since it is so close to Jax it isnt a problemo at all. In fact I just got back from shooting another course.
How long is this move?
We anticipate staying here for quite a while. We like it here and are happy, and we want to be settled SO BADLY.
So that, in a rather large nutshell, is what we’ve been up to. We are excited to see what this next phase has in store for us.

Next phase!

Have I mentioned that Tova and I love planning? Before we left the states we had a dry-erase calendar that was of vital importance to our household. When we came back and got our things out of storage it was still intact! I looked at the calendar and was shocked at the uncertainty of our lives right before we left. The first week and a half on the 5 week calendar was filled with errands to run. The other 25 days all had question marks! Every Single Day! It made me think “What were we thinking?” Talk about uncertainty!

Little did we know that when our Korea adventure was over it was pretty much the same thing. A lot of question marks and uncertainty.
One of the question marks was what kind of job would I (Daniel) get. That was and is a good question! I really feel lead to be in the ministry and to prepare people to live Godly lives. One thing about that leading is that it doesn’t necessarily mean that I am supposed to be on staff at a church.
Over the past 3 months, I have been working on something that I am really excited about. While in Korea, I was approached to start a new venture in video-taping college courses for a college that specializes in distance education. This is something that I was very much interested in. It really made me feel like I could contribute and be a part in ministry.
Over the past three months I have been getting my feet wet with different software, different computers, different web sites, reading books on the subject, figuring out how to make a decent website by myself and so much more to get as prepared as I can to start shooting classes.
After four months, the time has come to show the fruits of my labor.
I have started a new company called Logos Educational Videos!

I created a website that explains a lot of what we are about and what we offer. I hope you will check it out and bookmark it. In a nutshell, we offer DVD courses to help Christians get closer with God. The awesome thing about this new endeavor is that people can purchase the DVD courses for their own benefit, or they can apply the courses to a full-fledged undergraduate or graduate degree right from the comfort of their own home, or wherever they want to watch the courses.
Right now I have two courses finished, with at least 4 more in the wings. Over time I hope to develop a full catalog of courses that will meet a wide range of needs. It’s a busy time but I am really enjoying it.

This affects this blog in a couple of ways
I won’t be posting much, if at all anymore. Moving back from Korea, there aren’t as many funny anecdotes. Also, I am too busy trying to get this business off the ground to blog. We will still update this blog every now and then, but it is probably going to be a scrapbook of the past 2.5 years of Tova’s and my life. (unless something crazy happens)
I will be blogging over on the new site. Those posts are going to be centered around Christianity today, and Christian education. I am going to try to post once or twice a week. I really hope that you check it out.

So that, in a nutshell, is what I have been up to. A lot of unknowns and question marks, but if we knew everything the future had to offer then life would be boring.

Random quote for the day

“Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.” ~Zig Ziglar

Don’t know why I like it, but if it comes from a dude who has the same first name as last name (pretty much) then it must be good, right?

A dead squirrel

I looked out the back window today and saw a dead squirrel who happened to land on top of the screened in porch. I felt sorry for my little fury friend. I left him there. Then I walked by a little later and he was still there. Now he was giving me the heeby-jeebies. I had to get him off the screened in porch.
I went to get the broom and I thought I could poke him off and he would drop on the ground. It wouldn’t help the dead squirrel but then I wouldn’t have to see him every day. I got the broom and I opened the door to poke him. When the door opened the squirrel rose from the dead! He looked around, then jumped to a tree and ran away.
Either he rose from the dead or he decided to take a nap. I am going with the dead and now alive story.

We are true Floridians!

Growing up in Chicago it always annoyed the EVERYTHING out of me when people would say they were from Chicago when in actuality they were from the suburbs. The best story was when I was working in Florida and I encountered a man with a cubs hat on (from here on out we will refer to the man as “dork-butt”,you will see why in a minute) Dorb-butt had a Cubs hat on.

I tried to bond with him and I said “Are you from Chicago”

Dork-Butt: Yes

Me: Me too! What part of Chicago

Dork-butt: Oh, I am from outside of Chicago

Me (already annoyed with the imposter): Where from? (Since I also lived in the ‘burbs for a while)

Dork-butt: I am from Gary.

OK SERIOUSLY!?!?!?! YOU ARE FROM INDIANA!!!!!! YOU AREN’T FROM CHICAGO!!!! YOU AREN’T EVEN FROM ILLINOIS!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways . . . I try to make it a point to say I am not from Florida since we’ve only lived here for two years, but I think we are officially Floridians.

Why? It isn’t cause we go to the beach year round (even though we do)

It’s not cause we got sunburn in February, or ’cause we wear sandals to church. It’s not cause we’ve weathered the outskirts of a tropical storm, or even cause we almost got killed by a giant palm tree crashing in to our apartment just feet away from a bed!

We are true Floridians ’cause we had our first encounter with a roach the size of a Buick! I am not talking about a 2011 Buick. I am talking about those ’50′s Buicks that could double as a bus/house.

Here is how it went down.

The baby is asleep and Tova runs from the bathroom saying “There’s a HUGE roach.”

Now when it comes to approximating the size of bugs Tova usually is a little off base. I rolled my eyes and went to investigate.

I looked in the shower and I almost screamed like a little girl. This thing was HUGE!

The edges of the shower were slick enough so roachasaurus couldn’t escape so I told Tova to keep an eye on it while I got the bug spray.

I came back and Tova got out of the bathroom as fast as she could

When I started to spray roachasaurus the can was broken and ended up spitting out spray. This just made roachasaurus MAD!

He started running around, staring at me, and in fact I think I heard him cursing at me. (What a rude roach. But I forgave him since I was trying to kill him. I prolly would do the same thing if someone was trying to kill me.)

After a bit I thought the spray can was broken. I asked Tova to get another can of bug spray to kill the epic-roachasaurus while I continued to try to kill him with the can I had.

It was taking her a while so I tried to fix the can of spray. It finally started to work and I started to kill roachasaurus.

What seemed like 5 minutes later Tova came back to the rescue. She didn’t have any bug spray.

What did she come back with?

She came back with this:

and this:

Yes, she came back with reynolds wrap and a can of pledge.

I about LOST it. Oh wait, I DID loose it. I tried to be the supportive husband saving his damsel in distress, but I laughed in her face.

I mean seriously, reynolds wrap and pledge?

While roachasaurus was dying feet away from us I stopped laughing at her and asked her why she got what she got.

Strangely enough she had a perfectly logical reason why she got those items: She couldn’t find the bug spray so she was going to disorient the roachasaurus with the pledge and then poke it in to the corner with the reynolds wrap freeing me to find a working bottle of bug spray.

It was a great idea, and it would have worked. BUT, it was hysterically funny to see my wife running in with a can of pledge and reynolds wrap to kill roachasaurus.

So we have taken care of roachasaurus and we are “true” floridians.

SNAKES ON A PLANE!!!!

or maybe just in the garage.

yesterday i went to the car to get something. when i got to the garage door something was squiggly and moving underneath our stuff in the garage. I hopped and skipped and almost screamed like a little girl when I realized it was a BOA CONSTRICTOR!!!

I wanted to see if it left the garage or made a permanent residence in the garage so i set up a video camera on a tri-pod and left it on for almost 2 hours. I won’t bore you with the video of my car, BUT I GOT THE PYTHON ON TAPE!!!!

here you go:

crazily enough i thought i was going to get video of him leaving. instead it got out of the garage while i was setting up the camera, and then the king cobra decided to make his presence known about an hour or so later.

at least that is the story i am telling myself so i dont get freaked out while i am in the garage.

The Zoo

We love going to go to the zoo. The Jacksonville Zoo is phenomenal and it is one of our favorite spots. We love it so much that the day before we left to Korea we went to the zoo.
The best thing about going to the zoo are the people. The people that go to the zoo are rather smart. They are able to identify every single animal at the zoo without looking at the signs. I didn’t have to look at a single animal sign while we were there, I just listened to the people tell me what they were.
While we were there I was able to take some pictures of the animals. Enjoy:
This is a cute frog:

Here are some rhinos:

 

These are some sharks:

And these are some sunburnt pigeons:

At least thats what the people around me said they were.

Starbucks

I am writing this post at 5am, on my i-phone while taking care of my sick daughter since it seems this is the only spare time i have lately.
So my professed love for starbucks is well known. Seriously, where can u go to purposely do nothing for hours on end? Since coming back to the states i have only gone three times since we are broke.
Yesterday i had some brainstorming to do and what better place to go than starbucks?
When i got there a huge car was parked in the compact spot. This is annoying and i saw the guy get out of the car after me. After i ordered my drink i saw that the guy had a gun! Not only that but he had two extra clips on his belt. Any chance of me giving him a piece of my mind went out the window when i saw that. The guy was was so cool that he didnt need no stinkin badges, so i have no clue what that was all about.

So i tried to shake it off and have an ennoyable experience. When i was about to leave i decided to get a bottle of syrup. I asked the lady “can i please have a bottle of sugar free cinnamon dolce syrup”
Before i finished with the word syrup the lady interupted me and said rather confused/rudely “we dont have any egg nog”
Uhm, what?!?!? Eggnog?!?! I have no idea how she confused the two but she confused the everything out of me by me confusing her with my order. I didnt know how to rephrase my request so i asked her again and this time she got it right.
All in all a strange morning at starbucks.

Jury Duty

While I was away in Korea I recieved a summons to appear for jury duty. I didn’t get one summons, but I got two! (summonses? summonszi?) They really wanted me to give my brand of justice I guess.

I won’t bore you with the details, but I waited a lot and then I was chosen as a juror. The guy was charged with evading a police officer in a car, resisting arrest, and battery on the police officer.

That was only the beginning of the details.

Apparantly the guy picked up a chick who was hitch hiking after drinking 10 white russians at night. Then he proceeded to race away from the cops run over a median then crash his car into a palm tree. Not only that, but then he climbed over the injured passenger and tried to run away. the cop tazed the guy 3 different times and they got in a fight. then a citizen, who used to be a cop himself, stopped to help and they proceeded to take the guy down.

This might seem like an open and shut case, but there were a ton of discrepensies in the stories. The cop said he tackled the dude, the citized said he did. The cop didnt write in his report that the accused hit him, but then later said he did. The woman said there were 2 cop cars who followed them and the one who tazed the guy was a women. Then to top it off the cop and the citizen met a week later, on accident, and talked about the facts of the case (which the cop denied talking about the case.) Also, I am pretty certain that the prosecution was trying to help the cop not perjure himself. YIKES! (they even had a side bar about it, and kicked us out of the room while they tried to figure it out.)

All in all i was at the courthouse on Monday from 8:30-4:30, and then Wednesday from 11-4 and I don’t know what the verdict was. Why?

Let’s back up for a minute. I do not like conflict at all. I just don’t like it. I blame the middle child syndrome on that :-p So every time a lawyer would object my heart would start racing. It was INTENSE. My nerves were shot. I was sitting there listening to the final instructions before we were to deliborate when the judge said “and you Mr. Rivera . . .”

I FREAKED OUT! I am fairly certain my heart stopped right then and there.

I looked at the judge with tears in my eyes and she said

“and you Mr. Rivera are the alternate juror, you are not going to go back in the room to deliborate. You can leave in just a minute.”

PHEW! I got to leave.

It was a relief since I really didn’t know how I felt about the case. The guy definitley tried to evade the police, that was a certainty, but did the other crimes happen? There were only 3 witnesses and all 3 told a different story.

I have tried to find the case online, and I don’t know the result.

I think that will bug me the rest of my life.

Update . . .

And it’s a long time coming.

Wow, what a whirlwind the past month has been. I will try to hit on some highlights.

Daniel – I somehow managed to get the family to the states just fine. Right now I am in Florida debating the merits of being a stay at home dad, or finding a jeorb.

Tova – Has a strong job lead and needs to pass a series of tests this Saturday. Needless to say she has been a studying fiend pretty much since we’ve gotten to Jacksonville.

The family – We’ve gotten a chance to show off the baby at my parents church, and at our home church. It’s been really fun getting back to a rhythm of going to church, going to walmart etc. The transition has been rather easy.

The baby – She has been a trooper. The couple of days leading up to us leaving Korea she cut 3 teeth in 4 days, bringing the total to 5. On the plane trips she was a perfect angel and didn’t cry at all. We didn’t have to worry about jet lag or anything like that either which was awesome.

We have been in Korea Florida for 2 weeks now and we are really surprised as to how much she has developed in the past 2 weeks. She is now eating solid foods, she is sitting up 100% on her own without any fear that she will topple over. She is scooting backwards, can get from her bum to her belly and back like a pro (even though it looks like she will snap one or both of her legs right off in the process :-p) She is waving back at us and all around is the coolest little girl EVER. Today she is 8 months old and can’t believe how much she has grown.

All in all things are good, and we just need jobs

And now the obligatory picture of the baby:

whatcha lookin' at?

(and yes the theme change is supposed to be an interpretation of the kind of place we live in now :-p)