Final Count

By about five o'clock today the blizzard of 2010 was finished...and the grand total was about 27-28 inches with 3-4 feet snow drifts in many areas around the yard and field. Pure insanity!

It was so peaceful when it was all over and we even saw some blue sky. One minute it was snowing, and the next, it was like nothing had ever happened. Beautiful and strange!

Three more days until the next storm...

Snowpocolypse 2010

It's been a busy month and a half since the holidays! We are back in the swing of everything, including grad class. We have been hit with the winter weather lately in the midst of work, school, seeing friends and family, and just trying to keep up! We've had some two-hour delays and we are now hoping for some days off next week.

our mid-week storm!

In the midst of a smaller storm this week we were blessed to see our nephew and spend some time with him! He is too cute for words...another post on some nephew stories to come (maybe even from Steve!)

How cute is he?!?!

Last night began the blizzard of 2010! When we woke up this morning it did not look terribly bad from inside the house

...but then, we went outside!



As of 8:30AM we had 23 inches...but it's still snowing! More pics to come when it finally stops. Stay safe everyone!

Christmas and Other Celebrations

We had a fantastic Christmas with friends and family. We spent Christmas Eve at Steve's grandmother's house where we ate a delicious meal and then, played scratch off lottery tickets. We did not win much, but it was still fun. Steve and I threw in a fake scratch off ticket where you automatically win $25,000, or so it would appear! Steve's uncle got that one and it was fun to watch his face for the split second that he thought it was real. The best part was that he had tried to find those tickets as well but could not.

Steve and I won about $5I keep meaning to post this picture, but we did a 5K right before the holidays called the Jingle Bell Race. It snowed the entire time, but it was a lot of fun.

After celebrating Christmas with extended family, Steve's brother and his wife came back to our house to open presents. Then, after everyone went home, Steve and I celebrated our own Christmas.

Christmas day we drove to my parents' house to celebrate. We had a non-traditional Christmas dinner, which I love so much more. Steamed shrimp=yum! It was a wonderful day with family and we cannot even begin to thank my parents enough for everything they did for us.

A few days after Christmas, we began the Christmas clean-up. It is always bittersweet because it means that Christmas is over, but it is also nice to put everything back in its place as well.

Moses helped with the entire process since the bins from the basement have all kinds of new smells!

After Christmas clean-up, we spent the day with my parents at the National Harbor in DC. It was beautiful and, despite the cold and the wind, there was a lot to do down there.
My main purpose for going was the Peeps store. The entire store is full of Peeps, Red Hots, and Mike & Ikes. I am beginning my Peep diorama for the Washington Post's annual Peep competition.


I will post pictures once the deadline for entries has passed. I do not want my idea out there in public yet. So far so good on the progress. The entire background and floor are finished, now on to the details and furniture making!

After the Peep store, we drove to Arundel Mills to see Sherlock Holmes. I cannot say enough great things about this movie. The characters were dynamic and so was the plot. Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. were spectacular. We highly recommend this movie to everyone. Other than the violence and some innuendos, it was a family film.

Other than working on the Peep project, catching up on some missed shows, watching movies, and just hanging out, we have not done a lot over break. We have seen lots of friends and family that we do not normally get a chance to see. We are grateful for the time off and have tried not to take it for granted. One more day of freedom...

Snow Days

The snow days right before Christmas were insane! I do not think that we expected quite so much snow, and we had to cancel a Christmas party with friends from church. A couple of our friends still braved the blizzard and came over to spend the night, eat a ton of food, and play games. I know that we did not get as much snow as some other cities, but it was still crazy out there. Steve shoveled two or three different times so that we could actually get in and out of the house, but the snow just kept coming down. Fortunately, we had been to the grocery store the night before and we had everything we needed to make it through the next few days.

Moses did not really like the snow!

His fur kept getting covered with snow and after this little incident he did not want to go outside at all!

Shoveling Attempt #2

Beautiful!

The next morning, Tim and Steve made a snow cat/Buddha/fat man out of one huge pile of snow

Thanks to all of the family members with big equipment, we were plowed out by early Sunday morning. Sadly, church was canceled that morning.

We continued to gauge how much snow we had gotten and how much had melted by the plastic Disney Christmas lights.

Snow day! Little did we know that we would be getting the next three days off from school!

So much snow! I'm sure there are still a few snow days left in our winter months to come. Maybe we will get snowed in with even more friends the next time!

Zoo Lights

Last night we went into DC with some friends for a house warming/Christmas party. The apartment got a bit crowded so a few of us decided to walk a couple of blocks down to the Washington DC Zoo for the Christmas Zoo Lights. It only costs $8 per person which is not too bad considering you get to walk through the entire zoo full of Christmas lights, all of the animal houses are open to see the animals inside, and there were different businesses there giving away free stuff.

Ra and I

Steve and Tim

Christmas lights! YAY!

This is the panda that is going back to China after the holidays

This panda could not be bothered to pose for pictures

Panda eating bamboo

tigers...I wish we could have seen them for real

Elephants

Steve tried to milk a cow, but he got yelled at by a woman who did not even work there!

You can barely see us!

There we are...cold and ready to thaw out somewhere!

All in all it was a great night with friends. We saw some interesting people on the metro (a lady with a full goatee who was talking to herself about fish) and we came home from DC with all wallets and valuables in tact! We highly recommend the Zoo Lights!

Decorations!

We have been busy little elves decorating the inside and outside of the house (outside pics to come later)! A gray little furry friend has been helping on a regular basis. He keeps pretending to play with various toys instead of admitting that he was just chewing on the garland all over the house. I love the smell and look of Christmas! Thankfully, we've taken the time to enjoy it so far, and I hope that we continue to because it flies by so quickly every year. Here are a few of the highlights:

Joyful Delights

We have been loving the Christmas season so far. We spent the Thursday after Thanksgiving decorating the entire house, putting up the tree, and lighting up the outside. In the midst of all of the seasonal decorations, I have come to love quite a few seasonal songs, movies, and delicious treats! Here are some favorites that you may enjoy as well:

1. Peppermint Chocolate Chip milkshake at Chickfila
2. Peppermint Yo Yo's from Trader Joes (oreo's with a peppermint creme!)
3. Putting candy canes in my hot chocolate...are you noticing a theme yet?!?
4. The following Christmas movies: Mickey's Christmas Carol, Christmas Vacation, A Muppet's Christmas Carol, Scrooged, and Home Alone
5. The new gingerbread milkshake from Red Robin
6. The SHeDaisy Christmas album and Michael Buble...wonderful!
7. Riding around to look at Christmas lights...a great date night! The Symphony of Lights in Columbia is always a fun time too.
8. Christmas pajamas and fleece pants
9. Traditional Christmas carols at church, school, and on the radio
10. SNOW!

My favorite things at school are the yearly canned food drive and helping the kids wrap presents. I cannot wait to wrap our gifts once they all get delivered! Yay Christmas! We have been so blessed this year and cannot wait to share lots of the above with family and friends.

No More Petsmart!

We have been buying toys for Moses since the day we brought him home. He gets a new toy a least once a month and he plays with ALL of them. He rotates through his favorites on a monthly basis, and there are always toys to be found in every room of the house. I recently remembered giving toys to my cats growing up, one of which was very fond of the plastic rings that come below the caps of milk cartons, juice bottles, plastic water bottles, etc... I was thinking about it last week and decided that we might give it a try with Mo and see what he thought. WOW does not even begin to describe it! Since we have hardwood floors in every room of the house except one, those rings go flying across the floors.

It's funny to watch him carry the ring in his mouth and run up and down the stairs. He keeps bringing it to the bedroom where it cannot really slide, but instead he throws it up in the air and chases it.

Moses is getting a stocking full of plastic carton rings for Christmas this year...no more money at Petsmart!

Pure disdain for throwing his ring behind him! HAHA!

Cute little fur face!

H1N1 is NO FUN!

You may have guessed from the title that one of us had the swine flu...that's right! I got this lovely virus from the kids at school and had to take quite a few days off from work. I still have not completely recovered because many people are getting a secondary infection on top of the swine flu...I got two...bronchitis AND a sinus infection. Thankfully, Steve has not gotten this, but he has had trouble getting rid of his bronchitis and had to return to the doctor to get more medicine. I think the two worst things about H1N1 other than the obvious are the fever that is practically uncontrollable and the cough is interminable. The doctor said that the cough could last for four or five weeks! Yuck! That has been half the reason that I have had no sleep at night, but Steve just got us some great cough medicine for night time! Woohoo! We both just hope to be on the road to recovery well before this coming weekend. We are attending the wedding of two of our dearest friends and want to be able to support them in every way possible as well as dance the night away with them! On a side note, just pray that Moses does not get the swine...the first case was diagnosed in a cat this week who obtained the virus from his human owner. Doctors did not think that was possible, but they were severely wrong!

Mo Update

We have gotten absolutely nowhere with all of the testing that we have done for Moses. We left the vet's office one day thinking that he had lymphoma in his kidneys only to discover that he does not. We did a few more tests with blood work and none of those produced any results as to why his calcium is high and he is drinking a lot of water. The other two tests that we could do to continue the search are way out of our price range. Here's our final decision: Mo either has lymphoma somewhere in his body and we cannot find it yet, but it will show it's ugly face shortly OR he has high calcium for no reason at all which the vets call idiopathic hypercalcemia. We have put Moses on a low-calcium diet (which he loves! Praise God!) and he is now taking a steroid every day. This is all in the hopes that his calcium levels will not continue to go up and to help keep the lymphoma at bay if he does have it. This will also prevent more bladder stones from growing. If the calcium continues to go up we will unfortunately face kidney failure. All in all we felt that this was the best decision to help our little buddy without putting him through too much more trauma and trying to fix whatever it is that he has. If lymphoma does happen we decided not to try chemotherapy (supposedly it is different for animals) because we felt it would be too selfish for us and the end results do not provide much more time. We'll see where all of this goes, but the vets are just as baffled as we are! We would like to get through the holidays with our little man and enjoy every second of it with him and our families.

Fall is Here!

I love fall around the Homestead...fall in general too. There's nothing better than pumpkins, spiced candles, turning on the heater, hot chocolate and new flavors of coffee, Mo's heated cat bed, and hoodies! We found some new fleece pants as well that have made this transition from summer a little easier too! We had all sorts of colors around the house, but the reds are my favorite:

headed down the driveway when the leaves first started to turn

Steve bought my these gorgeous mums from a local stand not even a quarter of a mile from our house.

These mums are not particularly fall colors, but I love them!

And now, off to an afternoon of pretending I do not have report cards and reading my Kindle with a cup of hot chocolate and my Mo instead!

Have You Been Naughty or Nice?

We still do not have too many updates on Moses. We left the vets office very upset last weekend thinking that he had lymphoma. It turns out they cannot find it, at least in his kidneys or visible on X-rays, and the kidney test came back negative. We are still waiting on some more blood work, so we hope to at least figure out why his calcium levels are so high and why is drinking so much water! We just want to have him back to normal!

We've been having a ton of fun with him though. He has lots of new cat toys, gets to eat pretty much whatever he wants, and continues to run the house. Here's his Halloween costume:

Ho, Ho, Ho! He's not too happy about this one, but it doubles as his Christmas outfit this year!

Too cute!

Playing with some toys...you can see his shaved belly from the ultra sound and kidney test. So soft!

I know this is long, but we wanted to capture him helping us make the bed...this is probably one of his most favorite things! Those of you who have ever had cats will probably appreciate this!

My Favorite Tech Things

"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Blue-ray and kindles and streaming and Netflix. Home grading papers we need to play Wii. These are a few of my favorite tech things."

I'm up early because Steve is camping and little Mo thought it would be fun to get up at seven o'clock this morning and prevent me from sleeping. Either way, it is definitely back to the usual routine around here...insanity! No updates on Mo yet, hopefully we will know more this week. We've been needing distractions from work and life lately, and technology has provided just that distraction. I feel like we have become the technology house recently and it is kind of fun. Here are a few of our favorite new techie things:

1. Blue-ray: It is difficult to watch movies now if they are not in Blue-ray. We always thought that it would be just a smidge better than the regular DVDs, but we were SO wrong. Blue-ray is absolutely fantastic. Our player also has streaming Netflix and Pandora. We bought a LAN connector to hook to the back of the player so that it picks up our wireless Internet and now we have Netflix right to our television. Joyous! You can stream everything yet, but many older movies and lots of television shows are ready to watch!

2. Netflix: I know we've blogged about this previously, but it is just fantastic. All of the video stores are going to go out of business between this and Red Box.

3. Kindle: I LOVE MY KINDLE!!!! This is one of the best gifts Steve has ever given me. I thought I would miss turning pages and the smell of a new book...nope! It goes so many places with me now, and if I finish a book while I'm out I just download a new one wherever I am. Amazon is genius! My mom and I also discovered that if we register our kindles under the same account on Amazon that we can share books. I know the library is free, but once you buy the kindle, every book is under $10 unless it's a textbook. I bought an NIV study Bible for $9.97! Gone are the days of full bookshelves and taking books to the thrift store.

4. Wii: We've had the Wii for awhile, but we recently got some new games. Wii Resort is a great way to expend some energy and relieve stress. From jousting to archery, the new Wii motion plus picks up even more motion. We also got my new favorite game, Where's Waldo, which is the original Where's Waldo book laid out in the Wii game. There is even some animation on the pages. I'm not going to lie, it's pretty fun, and you get to search for more things and people than simply Waldo. I am awaiting the delivery of A Boy and His Blob on Tuesday. It's a real shame that we have grad school that night!

These are our favorite tech items at the moment. We are back to being exhausted teachers who need a little break through television, video games, and books...

Prayer Request

Our little Moses has been drinking an inordinate amount of water the last few weeks which is quite odd for a cat. We got him to the vet and they ran some blood work and urinalysis. The news was not so great...we still do not know anything officially yet, but I was a little devastated. The blood work showed that his calcium levels are raised and that he could either possibly have a thyroid condition (hopefully treatable by medicine) or cancer. There were also some results from the urinalysis, but I did not really understand those. We will go back to the vet this week for some x-rays and maybe some other testing. My biggest prayer is that it is not cancer, but I suppose if it is, we will just take it one day at a time. We'll have more updates when we know more, for now, prayers are much appreciated.

New Products at Best Buy

We were running some errands around town yesterday, and we went to Best Buy to return a computer cord. We were walking to the back of the store to check out the Wii games and saw a little girl opening refrigerators in the appliance section. As we passed she opened an empty refrigerator and yelled to her sister, "look, vegetarians!" I did not know that Best Buy sold people who do not eat meat! We think she meant to say "vegetables", but either way it was funny because the refrigerator was completely empty. There was also a father letting his kids crawl around on shelves full of printers but that's a story for another day...