Jenie and Frank dot com slash blog

I celebrated my 29.2 birthday on March 10th (ok, really it was my 31st, but Diane and I are just going to stay 29 for a while.  For my 30th, it was 29.1, and for my 31st, it’s 29.2) with a yummy dinner at Cheesecake Factory with Frank and my mom.  My mom was kind enough to drive all the way to Pleasanton just to join us for dinner.  Unfortunately, my dad was out of the country on a business trip, so we didn’t get to celebrate with him.

With my cheesecake birthday cake…yum!

Earlier in the day, Frank stopped by school to personally deliver flowers.  What a thoughtful hubby!  After dinner, he presented me with a talking Hoops and Yo Yo greeting card–I love those two characters because they’re just hilarious.  Then, he surprised me with a perfectly lovely gift from–where else–Coach!  HOORAY!  I have been seriously suffering from Coach withdrawal for the last year, and when I saw the pretty pink box in the shiny gold shopping bag, I literally jumped on him.

Frank had obviously paid good attention when I had been clicking around on the Coach website just for fun, because he picked out exactly what I had deemed my favorite one from the spring collection.   Double HOORAY!  I have to give him props!

The pretty pink box in the shiny gold shopping bag and our pup Kiya

Testing out my new bag!

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Today marks the 1 year anniversary of our Dream Dinners store!  We opened the store one year ago today, and boy, we have come a long way!  It’s been frustrating, exciting, challenging, scary, fulfilling…all rolled into one!  Frank has done an amazing job with the store, and we are looking forward to our second year, hoping that it will be very prosperous!

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I spent the early part of the week working on 2nd trimester report cards.  They went home with the kids today, and we officially have 1 more trimester of the school year.  Though day by day seems to go slowly, the year has quickly flown by!

Today was also ‘Pink Friday,’ the last day that school districts can issue pink slips to teachers who may be laid off at the end of the school year.  An overwhelming number of pink slips was handed out due to the state’s budget crisis–more than 26,500 teachers across the state received them as of this morning.  It was so frustrating to hear that 14 dedicated colleagues at my school received them.

Teachers, programs, materials…all of these cuts to education will certainly impact an entire generation of children for years to come.  We need to support education, students, and educators.  So what can we do?  We must contact our local legislators and let them know that we need to invest in education for the future of our country!  Let’s stand up for our schools!

We haven’t blogged in a long time!  We just celebrated our 2 month anniversary a few days ago and we marked the occasion by picking up our wedding photo proofs!  Looking through all the pictures has been a great way to relive the day!

Here’s a quick recap of some of our September activities:

Frank and I went to the 49ers opening day game against the Arizona Cardinals with my parents.  Had a great time even though our Niners lost.

Our Dream Dinners store had a booth at Newark Days.  We got a lot of good exposure for the store and signed people up for sessions.  Plus, I saw a LOT of Milani students, past and present, wandering around.  They thought it was pretty weird seeing me outside of “being a teacher.”  Some would say hi, and others would just walk by and stare.  Funny!

Frank and best man Alan played in a badminton tournament and won 3rd place.  Frank paid for it the next few days though.  He was so sore and looked hilarious walking up and down stairs!

We’ve spent most of our weekends cheering on the Cal and 49er football teams (at least one of our teams is doing pretty well!  GO BEARS!), putting wedding things away, and making room for our new kitchen items.

My goal of trying to keep to an earlier bedtime schedule so I’m not as tired as I was all of last school year has yet to be reached.  I’m getting closer to my target though, so I’m seeing this whole process as one of baby steps.  I’m working with a husband who is VERY much a night owl.  He always says he’s tired, but then he miraculously gets his “second wind.”  But he’s getting up much earlier in the morning than his pre-Dream Dinners days, so I think he’ll be on board with me sooner or later!

At 49er’s Opening Day, 9-7-08

Mom, Dad, and me at the “Bud Zone”–free food and drinks!

Frank and Dad, enjoying more food, even though we had just had dim sum in Millbrae

Just before kick-off

Our booth at Newark Days September 20-21, 2008

Our wedding photo proofs.  It was a great ‘present’ to open!

Our box of photos…LOVE the brown!

The store has officially been open for sessions for two full weeks now!  We’re happy to say that we survived the month of March and we’re ready to take on April!  We are learning a little more with each passing session and getting new ideas everyday.  It’s been exciting, frustrating, tiring…you name it!

We’re trying to settle into a more set schedule, but we’re still having trouble eating dinner at a normal hour.  Ironically, our business saves time and provides healthy food for our guests, but we’ve been eating at 9:30pm and getting take out.  =(  I’m desparately trying to change that!

And believe it or not, Frank–who loves his sleep–is waking up super early and making it to the store by 8, sometimes 7am!  Who would’ve imagined?!

Kiya is being such a good girl with all these changes!  She started seeing less of us beginning in February, and we felt so guilty that we started feeding her extra treats when we got home.  But with less exercise time, she started getting a little chubby, and she is by no means supposed to be chubby!  So, we’ve made it a point to make sure she gets time with us and time to play outside.  She’s lost her chubs now and is getting used to our new schedule.  =)

More to come soon…wish us luck for a great April!

We are so happy and relieved to say that we had a very successful Grand Opening party tonight! Thank you to all of our family and friends who were able to make it out to celebrate and support us! For those who couldn’t make it, we missed you!

It’s been just about the longest two weeks in our lives–Frank’s been at the store everyday, all day, and I’ve gone in right after school lets out. We’ve stayed until midnight on weeknights and until 2 or 3am on weekends. We are so looking forward to a more normal schedule!  And sleep.  We want sleep.  Desperately.

Our Grand Opening party was tons of fun. We had a great turn out and everyone seemed to enjoy the food and good company!

Outside the store:

Enjoying the company inside:

A HUGE thanks to our family and friends who came to our soft Grand Opening on Wednesday night and served as “guinea pigs” during our staff training! We hope you’re enjoying the dinners you made!

Ok, our Grand Opening is fast approaching… it’s time-time to initiate the (drum roll please..) countdown to our Grand Opening Party!

Certificate of Occupancy…..CHECK!

Health Permit…………………..CHECK!

Business License……………….CHECK!

Employees ……………………….CHECK!

Our food supply is en route and our store is almost ready to take on customers! Just some last minute business to take care of. We have about 1 week left until our Grand Opening Party… What a long process it has been. Looking to finally let the business good times roll!

Come join us for our Grand Opening Party on Thursday, March 13, from 5pm to 7pm. It will be a fun-filled event with drinks, conversation, and delicious Dream Dinners samples. Learn how Dream Dinners can simplify mealtime and bring your family together for healthy, nutritious dinners. The first 100 guests/families will take home an Herb Crusted Sirloin Steak! Sign up for a session on or before our Grand Opening date and you’ll be entered to win a 3-month supply of Dream Dinners. Visit our session calendar on dreamdinners.com to reserve your session!

Our store address is 39706 Cedar Blvd. Newark, Ca. 94560. Come help us kick-off our new venture! We hope to see you there!

We are very excited and pleased to announce that our Grand Opening date is set for Thursday, March 13th, 2008! It’s been a long time coming, and we can’t wait for the opportunity to open our doors!

Please join us that evening from 5-7pm and help us celebrate! It’ll be tons of fun!

Our flooring was completed on Friday! This was the last big portion of the construction process. The whole flooring process spanned about two weeks, from sealing the cement foundation to laying the laminate. Now the store looks almost done!

A pic of the front:

And one of the back:

It’s amazing how these little sprinklers can be the source of ALL my headaches these past few weeks. These innocent inanimate chunks of metal embracing frangible glass bulbs containing liquid which breaks, have delayed our construction efforts for a little over 3, yeah… 3 weeks. Here is the story behind it all…

Let me just first introduce the standard practice behind construction build outs. Usually, the process is as follows…file for permit. Get permit. Install according to permit. Set up inspection with the city. Inspection of work according to permit. Done.

So…way back in early December, we let the sprinkler contractor know we were going to be ready for them to install the sprinklers by the end of the year. After wasting about a week, they finally showed up on Jan. 4th. They finished installing our sprinklers on Monday, Jan. 7th (and made a mess doing it, screwed up our new paint and banged up our walls, but that’s another story). When they left, they told us they were waiting for the Fire department to schedule an inspection. I took their words and waited…and waited…and waited.

Finally on the 16th, after one and a half weeks went by, nothing! No word on the inspection. I finally had enough and went down to the fire dept. to see what the hold up was. I was ready to give them a piece of my mind after all the delays they had caused us, or so I thought…I found out that day that the sprinkler guy had just submitted the plans for permit on Friday, Jan. 11th. They filed an application for permit 4 days after they had installed the sprinklers! Holy cow! When I mentioned this to the guy behind the counter, he was like “I didn’t hear that!” because in the grand scheme of things, I, not the retarded sprinkler contractor, could get in trouble for performing the work without a permit!

To make things worse, the sprinkler guy had to re-submit the plans twice because the plans he created were not up to code! This wasted another 2 weeks. So here we are, the last week of January. Finally, we got the permit. We were able to schedule an inspection the day after, and that went well. We passed our inspection with the fire dept. So yeah, this sprinkler ordeal started on Jan. 4th and finally ended up done on Jan. 30th. Aye ya!

The thing is, if we were just doing the sprinklers and nothing else, I’d probably just be really pissed. But since there are lots of things dependent upon the sprinkler guy doing his job on a timely manner, I am really pissed and really screwed. You see, because we couldn’t get the sprinklers inspected and passed off, we couldn’t cover up the ceiling with our ceiling tiles. Because we couldn’t cover up our ceiling, we couldn’t heat up the space (no ceiling tiles means heat would escape to the top of the building and we’d be wasting money heating up the top of the building. Because we couldn’t heat the space, we can’t get people to come in and finish installing our floors. Because we can’t get our floors in, we can’t install our plumbing (sinks, toilets, etc). So, not only did this little sprinkler incident cost me much pain and suffering, it also delayed the rest of the work needing to go into the store. We had hoped for a Feb. opening, but now, realistically, we’re looking at early March at the earliest. Doh!

We got electricity last week and our lighting was installed soon after.

Here’s our Dream Dinners dove logo:

And just today, we had our signs installed. Our store looks official now! It was really exciting to see!

The installation in progress:

The finished product:

There are decals on the windows and doors too, but they’re not very visible in the photos. Now we’re just waiting for the sprinklers, ceiling tiles, and the flooring! Can’t wait until everything is finally finished!

Before our trip to Reno, the walls of the store were up, but looked like this:

We went by the store tonight after getting back from Reno and found this:

We’ve got paint! And look at the beautiful crown molding! I told myself at the time when we decided on this upgrade that I would have crown molding in my life one way or another. If not at my house, then at least at the store! Yea!