Scott's Idea of Heaven

If you ask Scott what his favorite place in the whole wide world is, today the answer would be, "The Jelly Belly store!" Aunt Allison came up to visit us, so we decided to make the trip to Fairfield to the Jelly Belly Factory. When we drove up to the building and saw ALL the Jelly Belly signs, cars and figures, Scott thought he had died and gone to heaven! We did the factory tour, which was really fascinating. And then we obviously had lots of fun in the Jelly Belly shop trying new flavors and loading up with enough Jelly Bellies for the next several weeks... The best new thing that Allison and I discovered are the "JBz", which are like flavored M&Ms: chocolate in the middle and a variety of yummy flavors for the candy shell. My personal favorites is the chocolate strawberry. And if you are interested, the newest Jelly Belly flavor is pomegranate. It was really yummy!

It was a really fun Saturday adventure, but I will admit that the sugar crash Scott experienced as we got close to home was not so fun... And I am sure we are going to hear lots of requests to go back to the "BIG Jelly Belly store" in the future.

We Love You, Daddy!

It took several attempts, but we finally got a perfect picture to give Daddy for Father's Day! We celebrated by letting Daddy take a long, long nap. Also, in an effort to return the favor for the spectacular Mother's Day I was able to enjoy, my friends and I sent our husbands on a surprise adventure. First, they went out to a very lovely part of Rancho Cordova (insert sarcasm) to a shooting range. They shot pistols and shotguns and really had a great time. Drew, of course, has lots of experience using guns, but the other two dads had never been before. We figured Father's Day was a perfect opportunity to try something new and very manly.

After shooting, we sent the boys to Claim Jumper where they could eat themselves silly. Ironically they all ordered a burger from the menu called "The Widow Maker". So after a very fun and successful Mother's and Father's Day this year, I think we have established some new traditions!

So what does SAS stand for anyway?

My acquaintances know I have a job, other than being Mom... My friends know I teach and do something with numbers... My good friends and family know I work for a company called SAS and teach something about data... But that is probably about all anybody (including my mother) understands about my career. So if you have ever thought, "SAS? Is that the shoe company? Or maybe a European airline?" and are curious as to what my job is, read on!

SAS is the oldest and largest privately-held software company in the US. It was started by a couple of guys at North Carolina State who needed a tool to analyze some agricultural data. SAS originally stood for "Statistical Analysis Software" but since the software now does so much than just statisics, the acronym was officially dropped. Here are more details on the history of the company: http://www.sas.com/presscenter/bgndr_history.html

I was first introduced to SAS during my first semester in graduate school. I was told I had to take a class to learn the SAS programming language. I just about dropped out of the program right then and there because the idea of writing code truly freaked me out. But I learned in the world of statistics, there are a bunch of smaller, semi-helpful software programs out there to analyze data, and then there is SAS - the granddaddy of them all. Any career in statistics will most likely include a solid foundation in writing SAS code.

So I took the class and did fine, but really had no clue what I was doing. But since that experience, I learned in the real-world how SAS is used in just about every industry you can imagine. My internship during grad school was with AT&T, and I was asked to analyze a model that would predict how likely customers were to accept offers for additional services. SAS was the only tool I could use to collect the various types of data I needed and do the analysis to answer the question. I used SAS in my master's project to analyze data for the BYU and USA men's volleyball teams to help them determine those skills that were most predictive of a win. At my first job with Intel, I used SAS to help the engineers determine if the tools they were using to make the masks (think of a mask as a photo negative used to etch a pattern on a silicon wafer that will eventually become a computer chip) were accurate and clean. One of my specific tasks at Intel was to set up a SAS program that would flag masks that officially passed inspection, but has some unusual measurements. My knowledge of SAS had improved significantly, but I asked to go take some advanced training classes up in San Francisco to help develop this program.

As I sat in class, I thought, "This guy (the instructor) has such a great job. He gets to teach interesting stuff to different people from every type of work you can imagine." After class, I asked a SAS employee in the lobby for directions back to the freeway. Turns out he was also a SAS instructor and was a very friendly, chatty guy. Through our conversation, I learned that SAS was looking to hire another instructor in SF. I said I was definitely interested in finding out more, and he passed that on to the instructor for my class, who was the western regional manager for SAS Education. The next day after class, I had an informal interview. A few weeks later when the position officially opened, I did a more formal (but still pretty easy) interview and was hired!

That was 6 years ago. I absolutely love what I do... Now I teach and write classes for SAS part-time. My managers have been extremely supportive through the major life changes I have gone through since my hire date, including marriage, 2 pregnancies and a move. Some of my classes are on-line and I can teach from home. Other classes are in a traditional classroom, but most of the time they are local here in Sacramento. And when I work, my mom is my babysitter! It couldn't be a better arrangement. I have taught students from all over the world and from every industry you can image.

I doubt anybody has read this far, but if you have, thanks for reading while I ramble on about my job! And if you want any cool stuff with the SAS logo on it, just let me know. Here's my little bio on our website: http://support.sas.com/training/us/instructors.html#s

The Next Ken Jennings

Scott has the most amazing memory I have ever seen in a kid or an adult. We realized he had a freaky photographic memory about a year ago when he would be in the tub, playing with his spongy letters. Each letter is one of 5 random colors. While Scott would be looking for a letter, he would say something like, "Where's the red B?" or "Where's the purple V?" He knew the colors of all the letters in the tub. A few months later we added a second set of spongy letters to the tub (slightly different than the first set) because he was frustrated he couldn't spell words that had more than one of a particular letter. Now he know the colors for each set of letters.

Since then he has showed us that he also knows the colors of all the letter magnets on the refrigerator. He also has a set of plain old wooden blocks with colored letters on a pair of opposite sides. Not only does he know the color of each letter, but he knows which letters go together. In other words he could see a letter "M" and without looking know that there is a red "C" on the other side.

Throughout the past year Scott has been pretty entertained typing words he knows in Microsoft Word. Last January, just before his 3rd birthday, I showed him how to change the color of the text. He caught on pretty quickly and started typing this:

It didn't surprise me that he was typing "babyeinstein" since he had been doing that for a while, but I realized that he was being very deliberate about the colors he was choosing. While he finished typing, I ran downstairs and looked at the intro screen on the Baby Einstein DVD and wrote down all the colors. When I came back upstairs to see the final result, I saw that the colors were all exactly correct.

The past few months Scott has been really into numbers -- specifically addresses. First he was excited to know that his house was "1773". Then as we would go to other places, he would always notice and remember the addresses. He tells me that he wants to go to "1777" (Tanner's house) or "1240" (the church). He sees an address once and it is locked in his brain. About a month ago we were driving in the car and he asked me what Aunt D's (Cindy) address was. I didn't know so we called and Cindy told me it was 307. Scott said, "No, it is 12345." I just thought, ok - sure - it's 12345. And the discussion was over. Then 2 weeks later, Mom was in the car with Scott and he saw a sign with 307 on it. He said, "307 - That's Aunt D's number."

So I am thinking I should start him now watching Jeopardy and maybe by the time he is old enough to be a contestant, he will have memorized enough answers to make a fortune! I think it is a great plan, but guess we should still plan to save for retirement and college, just in case :)