Happy Birthday Laura

So today is Laura's birthday, as you probably already know. Last night we celebrated with some friends at Gaucho's Village in Glendale, a churrascaria. If you are thinking about going there we would say the food wasn't the best that we have had, but we had a fun time so it really didn't matter.

Attending at last nights gala event were Brent & April Lytle, Becky & Grant Tanaka, Tim & Laura McCormack (of course), Jenn Wright, Uday Dewan, and we had a special surprise appearance from Cynthia & Jon Mahoney! Thanks to all of you for coming out, we had a lot of fun and were glad you could be there. Here are some pics from the night.

Here's the whole gang all together. Que Guapo! =^)

Here's Brent showing us his best Gaucho imitation. Very chic!

Here's Uday practicing to take over the family business. We can't wait until you bring Godfather beer to the US!

Here's me with the birthday girl herself looking beautiful as usual.

Becky and Grant left the twins at home for the night to come out with us. Thanks guys, although we don't know if you came to be with us, or for an excuse to leave the kids home for the night! =^)

Afterwards the women formed a chorus line and sang YMCA in downtown Glendale.

Us men just stood and giggled as usual.

So we all had a blast. To all of you who couldn't come, you were there with us in spirit. Thanks for all the nice ecards and birthday posts on Laura's myspace. Laura says thanks!

Tonight we are having a second b-day party for Laura at the house . Laura's extended family is coming over and her cousin Morris is going to cook his famous stake on the barbecue. Besides that we leave tomorrow for Seattle where we will be visiting my family. Look for some more fun pictures of us having our yearly family get-together, and celebrating again Laura's b-day (thats three b-day parties!!), as well as my Mom's and my brother in law's (Kevin). We can't wait to see you guys up in Seattle!

Talk to you soon.

By the way, to everyone who knows Jeff, Congratulations on getting a job at Google!!! That is impressive these days. We all knew that you were smart, but now we know you are pretty cool also. =^) Say hello to Larry and Sergey for us!

Laura's Birthday Dinner - Details

To everyone in the LA area, here are the official details for Laura's birthday dinner Wednesday night.

Where: Gaucho's Village Brazilian Churrascaria "Steak House"
Address: 411 N. Brand Blvd. Glendale, CA 91203 (818) 550-1430
When: We have a reservation for 8:00 Pm

If you are reading this, you are officially invited. Please feel free to just show up, but a confirmation email or phone call would be nice so that we know who will be there.

To those of you outside the area, we are sorry you can't be there in person, but we will consider you to be there in spirit.

Big Day for Laura - National Board Part II Exam

Laura just left to take the first half of the National Boards exam part II, the continuation of the other grueling test she took right before our wedding earlier this year.

For those who don’t know, to practice dentistry in the US you must pass two very difficult exams. These exams, the National Boards, are broken up into two sections. The first, Part I, is generally considered more difficult because it covers all of the basic sciences that you study in the beginning of dental school. Normally you take it after your first two years of dental school, but since Laura went abroad she had to wait until she got back to take it. That made it even more difficult since she was taking a test on things she had not studied in a while. Fortunately, she did very well, scoring an 87, a score we expect will be good enough to get her into whatever school she wants to go to this next summer.

Now today she is taking part II. This part is clinically based, meaning it is a lot more specific to the kinds of things you need to know to actually practice dentistry, like pharmacology and dental procedures. This test is so long that they actually break it up into two days, giving about 400 questions today and another 100 or so tomorrow.

We all expect that she will do well, but any encouragement you could send by way of email would be appreciated.

Don't forget everybody that Laura's b-day is in two days! August 17th Laura will be turning 27. For those of you in town we will be going out to dinner Wednesday night to a Brazilian restaurant. Please contact me if you would like to go and eat churrasco with us, which is... "Churrasco is Spanish and Portuguese term referring to beef or grilled meat, differing across Latin America but a primary dish in the countries of Argentina, Brazil and Nicaragua." Ok, so that description doesn't sound that great, but the food is excellent. If you would like to learn more about churassco, visit http://www.v-brazil.com/culture/cuisine/churrasco.html

Here is an example of how big Laura will be smiling when she sees you at her birthday dinner. =^)
















And here is a picture of Laura and her brother a few birthdays ago.
















Come celebrate Laura's birthday and the end of all these dentistry tests! Email me at tim805 @ gmail.com or call to (661) 313-8219 and we will get you on the reservation.

Hope to hear from you soon.

3 Weeks till departure!!!

Well, it is exactly three weeks until we depart for Spain. We are very excited about this, and have been doing a lot to prepare. Since I know there may be some future exchange students from Pepperdine reading this at some point, I am going to list some of the things we are doing to get ready to go.

Things to Do (or that we have done):
1) Find a place to live - Well we officially put down a deposit on an apartment in Barcelona. It is very close to my school, so the location is perfect. We got lucky and got one that doesn't cost too much, but unfortunately had to sacrifice the second bedroom we wanted. If you want to see pictures of the place we are going to live for about 3 months, we included a few.

Here are a couple of pictures of the place.

It is about 50 square meters, which is about 480 square feet for the whole one bedroom apartment. - For anyone that is curious, the site we used (SHBarcelona.com) was pretty helpful. It took us maybe two months to settle on an apartment that we liked, and that was available. Hopefully we won't be sorry once we get there, but we have our fingers crossed.are confident we will like it.

2) Get our visas - This part of leaving was a big pain for me. I had to get the paperwork together for both Laura's and my visas. I had to fill out 6 application forms, three for myself and three for Laura. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why they require three copies each, especially since they give one back to you as a receipt. They could have just photocopied them and saved me the time filling them out.

Anyway, in case you are curious, here is everything that we had to have to get our visas:
- Three applications, filled out by hand (why? - makes no sense)
- Three passport photos, one for each application
- Health Insurance (I got a joint plan for Laura and I, about $300 for three months)
- Signed Letter from Pepperdine saying I would be enrolled there
- Signed Letter from IESE saying I was accepted there (that’s the school in Spain)
- Letter from Pepperdine stating I have financial aid to cover the trip
- Copies of our airplane tickets - and since they were e-tickets I also had to print out a page from my credit card statement showing the charge went through
- Copy of my marriage certificate, along with a special seal called the "Apostile of the Hauge" that I had to go to another office to pick up (they told me I have to travel with my marriage certificate, to prove that Laura and I are married - necessary? I think not)

3) Buy plane tickets - This is something we did a while ago, but was a very difficult one for me. I have always been a bargain ticket shopper, getting great deals in the past. For our first year anniversary Laura and I flew to Paris from LA for only $400 per person. Needless to say buying these tickets just about killed me, since I had to pay almost $1200 per person. To me I feel like I spent $800 too much on each ticket, but what can you do? That what prices are like these days.

4) Prepare to say goodbye to Buster - When we decided to go abroad, we had the full intention of taking our cat Buster with us. Unfortunately, they changed the rules on my planes so that it is now exceedingly expensive to take your pets. Perhaps I have Paris Hilton to thank for the new rules, since maybe the airlines are sick of all these little dogs being taken on flights, but now you must ship your pet seperately, at the tune of about $600 each way! I sure was not going to spend $1200 to send Buster to Europe for four months. Here is a picture of Buster for you to enjoy. =^)

Well, that is good for now. Laura told me not to bore you all with boring details or you wouldn't read it. =^) We will try to make sure to keep this as interesting as possible, especially since we have you all being spammed every time we make a post. - by the way, feel free to cancel off the list or add other people any time you want.

Thanks for listening!!!