Dear Girls... 2010

Dear Girls,

Once again I find myself writing another year in review for my girls, in hopes that this blog still remains when you are old enough to read and digest it. Once again I will mention some events that probably will never be in the record/history books and others that I am sure will endure through time.

Our family has grown once again with Tio Christian and Lina introducing the first baby boy cousin to our family, Dexter. I was able to go to his baptism in London and it was beautiful. Your grandfather (grandpaw-paw) had a huge year and was able to retire! Isabella you have now moved from ballet to Irish dance classes. Right now your teacher is very excited to have you in her class because she think you may have what it takes to become a great dancer. Charlotte you have started your first ballet class in Westerville, Ohio. You bother you teachers all the time and tell them it is ballet day. However they need to remind you that it is on Thursdays.

Over the Thanksgiving Holiday Season we drove a total of 1300 miles taking us to Virginia, Washington DC, Youngstown(OH), and Michigan. I completed my first half ironman and Nicki was able to complete her second half marathon. Girls you were able to swim in Lake Erie for the first time, jumping off Grandpaw-paw's boat!

The war in Iraq is probably far from over but they are rebuilding their culture and buildings. While in DC your mom and I were able to see a friend of your uncle Keith that was injured in the war. It was great that he was back home and walking.

In technology 3D TV/Movies has been the rage! They are selling in stores and people are paying top dollar. Something that made the biggest splash in technology was the iPad by Apple. That came out around April 2010 ever since then may other people have been trying to make one. One more major technology note is that smart phones are everywhere while the iPhone is still leading the charge the Andriod OS is catching up very fast. Windows has just released a phone to try and compete let's see how it does.

Some of the major events this year were the world cup in South Africa, this year it introduced the world to the Vuvuzela. There were so many at the events that the TV channels had to mute the sounds on the field. The winter Olympics were in Canada, there was a 7.0 earthquake in Haiti (Jan 2010) which to this day my uncle is still there trying to help the Haitian people. There was a massive Oil Spill in the gulf that lasted for months! And finally there was a cloud of volcanic ash that covered most of Europe and all air transportation was grounded for days.

In sports one of the major stories was LeBron James leaving Cleveland and moving to Miami. Just so the history books get this correct. Yes Ohioans were upset that Lebron left, but it was how he did it that made everyone really upset. An hour long broadcasted TV show to announce his decision is just rude. Brett Farve and Lance Armstrong may have finally retired again!

While on TV all the rage was Simon Cowell leaving American Idol and Lost going off the air.

In entertainment Brett Michaels made a huge comeback to the world. As a teenager I loved the rock band Poison led by Brett, but this year his courage has brought him back into the spotlight. Eariler in the year he was the star or a cheesy tv show called "Rock of Love". From fox news: In April, the “Rock of Love” star had a major health scare when doctors discovered he had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage after complaining of a headache. “Less than two weeks after (an emergency appendectomy), I was sitting on my couch—and I knew instantly," he said. "When you have a subarachnoid hemorrhage, the vein actually explodes. There’s nothing left of it. It felt like someone shot me in the back of the head.” Michaels' girlfriend, Kristi Gibson, rushed him to the emergency room. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’m going to die.’ They were asking me if I had a will in place. It was painfully surreal.” Michaels spent eleven days in intensive care, followed by weeks of physical therapy. As the live finale of “Celebrity Apprentice” approached in May, fans were concerned the bandana-bedecked rocker wouldn't be healthy enough to tape the show. Michaels not only returned for the finale, he won—donating his prize of $640,000 to the American Diabetes Association, a disease he has suffered from since childhood.
Just days later, against doctors’ advice, Michaels performed on the “American Idol” finale, watched by almost 20 million people.

10 New words to the Oxford Dictionary are: Catastrophizing, Overthink, Matchy-matchy, LBD, Frenemy, Cool hunter, Bromance, Exit strategy, Defriend, Soft skills

Winners:
Oscars – (hosted by Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin)
Actor – Jeff Bridges – Crazy Heart
Actress – Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side
Best Picture & Directing– The Hurt Locker

American Idol – Lee Dewyze
NASCAR – Jimmie Johnson
Heisman trophy – Cam Newton of Auburn University
Super Bowl – New Orleans Saints
World Series – San Francisco Giants
NBA Champions - Los Angeles Lakers
NBA MVP – Lebron James

Top Movies at the Box Office:
Toy Story
Alice in Wonderland (2010)
Iron Man 2
The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Inception
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Despicable Me
Shrek Forever After
How to Train Your Dragon
The Karate Kid

GOOGLE Searches (according to Google Zeitgeist): Google.com - Fastest Rising
ipad
chatroulette
iphone 4
world cup
justin bieber
myxer
facebook
grooveshark
glee
mocospace

Google.com - Fastest Falling
swine flu
wamu
cash for clunkers
new moon
susan boyle
circuit city
myspace
michael jackson
stephanie meyer
northwest airlines

Google News - Fastest Rising
oil spill
haiti
earthquake
sandra bullock
favre
lindsay lohan
immigration
apple
unemployment
tiger woods

Google Image Search - Fastest Rising
jersey shore
kesha
justin bieber
nicki minaj
katy perry
avatar movie
facebook
iphone
haiti
earthquake
ipad

Rest in Peace
Corey Haim
Peter Graves
Fess Parker
Robert Culp
John Forsythe
Dixie Carter
Gary Coleman
Dennis Hopper
Rue McClanahan
Sen. Robert Byrd
James Gammon
Mitch Miller
Kevin McCarthy
Eddie Fisher
Tony Curtis
Barbara Billingsley
Tom Bosley
Jill Clayburgh
Leslie Nielsen
Blake Edwards

Timeline
January 1 – A suicide bombing occurs at a volleyball game in northwestern Pakistan, killing at least 95, and injuring over 100.
January 4 – The tallest man-made structure to date, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, is officially opened.
January 8 – The Togo national football team is involved in an attack in Angola, and as a result withdraws from the Africa Cup of Nations.
January 12 – A 7.0-magnitude earthquake occurs in Haiti, devastating the nation's capital, Port-au-Prince. With a confirmed death toll over 230,000 it is one of the deadliest on record.
January 15 – The longest annular solar eclipse of the 3rd millennium occurs.
February 12–28 – The 2010 Winter Olympics are held in Vancouver and Whistler, Canada.
February 18 – The President of Niger, Tandja Mamadou, is overthrown after a group of soldiers storms the presidential palace and form a ruling junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy headed by chef d'escadron Salou Djibo.
February 27 – An 8.8-magnitude earthquake occurs in Chile, triggering a tsunami over the Pacific and killing 497. The earthquake is one of the largest in recorded history.
April 10 – The President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, is among 96 killed when their airplane crashes in western Russia.
April 13 – A 6.9-magnitude earthquake occurs in Qinghai, China, killing at least 2,000 and injuring more than 10,000.
April 14 – Volcanic ash from one of several eruptions beneath Eyjafjallajökull, an ice cap in Iceland, begins to disrupt air traffic across northern and western Europe.
April 20 – The Deepwater Horizon oil platform explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing eleven workers. The resulting oil spill, one of the largest in history, spreads for several months, damaging the waters and the United States coastline, and prompting international debate and doubt about the practice and procedures of offshore drilling.
May 7 – Scientists conducting the Neanderthal genome project announce that they have sequenced enough of the Neanderthal genome to suggest that Neanderthals and humans may have interbred.
May 19 – Protests in Bangkok, Thailand ends with a bloody military crackdown, killing 91 and more than 2,100 injured.
May 20 – Scientists announce that they have created a functional synthetic genome.[39]
May 20 – Five paintings worth €100 million are stolen from the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
May 22 – Air India Express Flight 812 overshoots the runway at Mangalore International Airport in India, killing 158 and leaving 8 survivors.
June 11 – July 11 – The 2010 FIFA World Cup is held in South Africa, and is won by Spain.
July 1 – Belgium takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union from Spain.
July 8 – The first 24-hour flight by a solar powered plane is completed by the Solar Impulse.
July 25 – Wikileaks, an online publisher of anonymous, covert, and classified material, leaks to the public over 90,000 internal reports about the United States-led involvement in the War in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010.
July 29 – Heavy monsoon rains begin to cause widespread flooding in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. Over 1,600 are killed, and more than one million are displaced by the floods.
August 10 – The World Health Organization declares the H1N1 influenza pandemic over, saying worldwide flu activity has returned to typical seasonal patterns.
September 28 – Seven people are reported to have been killed and around 100 are missing after a landslide in Oaxaca, Mexico.
October 10 – The Netherlands Antilles are dissolved, with the islands being split up and given a new constitutional status.
October 13 – Thirty-three miners near Copiapó, Chile, trapped 700 metres underground in a mining accident in San José Mine, are brought back to the surface after surviving for a record 69 days.
October 22 – The International Space Station surpasses the record for the longest continuous human occupation of space, having been continuously inhabited since November 2, 2000 (3641 days).
October 25 – An earthquake and consequent tsunami off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia, kills over 400 people and leave hundreds missing.
October 26 – ongoing – Repeated eruptions of Mount Merapi in Central Java, Indonesia, have killed at least 240 people and forced hundreds of thousands of residents to evacuate.
November 11–12 – The G-20 summit is held in Seoul, South Korea. Korea becomes the first non-G8 nation to host a G-20 leaders summit.
November 13 – Burmese opposition politician Aung San Suu Kyi is released from her house arrest.[62]
November 17 – Researchers at CERN trap 38 antihydrogen atoms for a sixth of a second, marking the first time in history that humans have trapped antimatter.
November 28 – WikiLeaks releases a collection of more than 250,000 American diplomatic cables, including 100,000 marked "secret" or "confidential".
November 29 – December 10 – The 2010 United Nations Climate Change Conference is held in Cancún, Mexico. Also referred to as the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 16), it served too as the 6th meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP 6).
December 2 – NASA announces the discovery of a new arsenic-based life form in California.
December 21 – The first total lunar eclipse to occur on the day of the northern winter solstice/southern summer solstice since 1638, takes place.