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...

Back to School

It was a LONG first week back to school. We do not even have students yet and we are already exhausted. Most people think teachers sit around all summer and do nothing, but I will not even begin to get into that battle. ("You work ten months a year and have two months off...teachers are so lucky"...most of the people who say that would not make it two weeks with 15-18 year olds!) Okay, I touched that battle a little bit; I'll save the rest for its own post on another day.

Being back in school is completely mentally exhausting. Your brain just cannot shut down when thinking about the kids, the classroom, and the lesson plans. We are excited about having the students come but know that the next ten months will be spent worrying about them, praying that they learn something from our classes, and attempting to build relationships with them. I can already see from my class lists that this year could be a challenge. I have no idea how the senior class this past school year could even come close to topping this years, but I suppose time will tell. I already miss the classes from last year!

Staff week was full of meaningless meetings that were the same as the last few years. I realize they have to hold these, but I did not find out anything new this year except for a new cell phone policy. It was a technology nightmare this week as well; all of the desktop computers at school were supposedly reimaged over the summer so that we could log onto the new county-wide server. Apparently, mine was not! Can anyone fix it? Sure, but like everything else in the county I had to put in a work order to have someone come out to fix it. If they just gave me the disk to run on my computer I could do it myself! All of the teacher laptops were reimaged on Thursday which was good because all I had left to work on this past week was computer stuff. It took a few hours to re-load all of the documents and programs back onto the laptop, but now I'm back up and running.

Construction for the renovation is in full swing right now. I will try to take pictures this week so that you can see what is going on right outside the windows of my classroom. Pure insanity!

We took our staff photo this week in the remodeled gymnasium. Our new bleachers spell out Vikings, our school mascot:
For one of our staff photos our staff sat in the gold seats to spell out all of the letters:

Here is our whole staff together:
All in all, it was a productive week, and it was wonderful to be back with my coworkers. Here's to the last sixteen hours before the alarm goes off and the first day of school of 2009-2010 begins!

Please pray for us!

Ray Charles Has Been One-Upped!

Nora is your every day house cat...or so it would seem! Nora plays the piano; she plays about as well as a cat can play (not great), but her videos have taken YouTube by storm. A Lithuanian composer named Mindaugas Piecaitis got word of her skills and he wrote a symphony based on one of her videos. You can view her video here or watch below. I find it hilarious that she sits at the piano like a person while the other house cats watch her play and that she occasionally looks at the camera to make sure people are watching her. Enjoy this cute little ball of fur as she demonstrates her "talent". Now if we can just get Moses on camera as he plays hide and seek maybe we'll have something!

The Last Summer Movie Reviews

Summer is drawing to a close and so are our movie reviews. We've been watching quite a bit of Netflix movies, but we went to see a couple as well:

1. The Time Traveler's Wife: A I read the book a couple of months ago and I thought that the movie was a true representation of the book. The characters were completely believable and the plot followed the book pretty well. There were quite a few parts from the book that were completely cut out, but I believe that it is for the better! If you read the book and see the movie you will know what I mean! I loved it! Steve liked it pretty well for a chick flick, but he thought the beginning was a little confusing until he figured out the whole aspect of the time traveling and flashbacks.
2. A Perfect Getaway: A- We were pleasantly surprised with this one! I was a little apprehensive because I do not like murder mysteries, but this movie was just suspenseful. There was a bit of vulgar language and obviously some blood! A couple is on their honeymoon in Hawaii and another couple turns up dead. As they meet people along the way they are wondering who the killers could be. The movie takes an interesting plot twist, and if you consider all of the scenes prior to the twist the plot was well-written. The ending is slightly cheesy, but the rest of the movie is decent!
3. Taking Chance: A Steve's dad and my parents all recommended this movie to us. The premise is based on a true story that a marine named Chance Phelps died in service, and his body is being escorted from battle back to his hometown. We did not realize all that went into the process of bringing home a deceased soldier. The story is amazing as are the lives that are touched through the entire process from start to finish. This was a made for HBO movie but you can now watch it through Netflix. We cannot say enough good things about this one!
4. The International: D I have to be completely honest...we both fell asleep and missed about an hour of this movie. Needless to say, we did not re-watch it! The beginning was quite confusing as to what was actually going on and the role the government and police all played in some big scam. We woke up to an intense fight scene with lots of guns and more confusion. We were able to put most of the pieces together from seeing the first thirty minutes and the last part of the movie; the ending was terrible and did not suit the movie at all. Even though we missed some pieces, it was terrible. The main female lead is left out of the ending of the movie and it was as if they simply cut her from the film. I will not even describe the plot because it is just not worth seeing!
5. Twilight: A- I have to admit, this movie was pretty good. I did not see it in theaters because I had been told how horrible it was. I think that if you have not read the book it would be difficult to understand everything. I believe they encapsulated the book perfectly! Many people stated how cheesy the movie was, but we watched the behind the scenes and making of the movie and it was phenomenal to see how everything was put together. Many of the actors did their own stunts and there was not one green screen used in the entire movie. We were really impressed by all of it. For a modern day vampire movie it was great. I am greatly looking forward to seeing the next movie and may even talk Steve into taking me to the theater to see that one!
6. 17 Again: B We were also pleasantly surprised by this movie. We are fans of High School Musical and we love Matthew Perry. The movie is definitely a teen comedy, and we were afraid that it would be similar to other movies like Freaky Friday. Matthew Perry becomes his seventeen year old self again but with his present day mind. He believes that he is given a gift to relive events from his past but in the present day and that he can make his life right again. It is a cute story of the realization that you cannot change the past and that you must embrace the present and the future. There are some cheesy parts, some fantastic pop culture references, and many unrealistic high school scenes...I think we also enjoyed this flick because we are teachers! (Adam Shankman from So You Think You Can Dance was also one of the directors...great job! You should check out the behind the scenes footage on this one too!)

Coming up for the movie theater: Toy Story 1 and 2 in 3D, Sherlock Holmes, The Princess and the Frog, and Planet 51!

Family Celebrities!

The water main break this week was pretty popular around this neighborhood! The news crew showed up to see the county trying to clean up the mess. Unfortunately, they did not get here in time to capture the geyser...enter the Ammann's with their video and still photo footage! We got to meet Stephen Tschida of WJLA ABC 7 news. It was hilarious watching him prepare for the news segment, especially getting his hair perfect! After he taped the segment, he interviewed Steve and he made the eleven o'clock news along with all of our video footage! YAY!
They never posted Steve's video online, but they did post his cousin's video who made the five o'clock news! We have Steve's news video still taped on our DVR...let us know if you want to watch! It's somewhat sad that this was the highlight of our week :)

Breaking News!

A water main broke right outside our house and cousins' house today. It took a few hours before they could get it stopped. The upside is that we actually had some action around town today, and the bad news is that we may not have any water tonight or tomorrow...we'll see when they come around with more details later.

San Diego

We will not bore you with the details of every minute of our trip to California, but we'll share some photos and tell the highlights. We now know why people move there and never want to leave, and every wonderful thing that you have ever heard about San Diego is probably true! Tim invited us to visit him out in San Diego, CA before leaving the navy. We spent a great trip with him joined by two other friends and some of their family. If you want to see more of our pictures, click on this link to view them.

We were blessed to stay with some of Tim's family, and we are so grateful because it is the only way we would have been able to go. This was the view from their beautiful home:
We spent a day at the amazing San Diego Zoo. We highly recommend it! We got to see all kinds of gorgeous and funny animals, and the best part was that they were so close to us! You could even reach out and touch some of them. Here's a cute little meerkat:
And the adorable koala bears that looked like stuffed animals:
I love giraffes so we spent a good deal of time looking at them. Had some of them just bent down, I could have touched them!

Cute little baby giraffe:

The tigers were absolutely stunning! I wanted to bring one home for Moses so badly!

The guys had their own little photo shoot one evening near Point Loma:

We were blessed to visit the cove in La Jolla where we were staying. The sunset was phenomenal and the beach was full of seals:

These guys were everywhere:

We also spent a day at Sea World in San Diego. I had not been since I was five years old, and Steve had never been. It was a blast! We saw a sea lion show, the dolphin show, Shamu, were able to feed the sting rays, and saw a ton of other animals. It was a great day! Here is Shamu at the interesting "Believe" show:

And a sea otter from the sea lion show...he did not cooperate so well:

We were also blessed to visit Mt. Soledad, a war memorial dedicated to all types of military. You could see the entire city of San Diego below the memorial.

Tim took us to the navy beach in Coronado for a day. There were hardly any people on the navy beach and we spent the day enjoying the sun, reading, eating, and hanging out together. Across the water you can see Point Loma.

We were also able to visit Point Loma and saw the National Cemetery. It was eerily beautiful; all of the graves look out onto the water on both sides of the road.

We took a two-hour harbor cruise and were able to see the naval yard and a bunch of sites around San Diego:

Cute group shot on the harbor cruise:

We ate a ton of delicious, authentic Mexican food, stayed up way too late, got a little bit sun burned, and had a wonderful time with great friends. We had a blast and would visit San Diego again without a doubt! Good times, good friends, great God!

Enjoy some videos from the trip below. These are from the zoo and the sea lion show at Sea World:

Animal Diaries

I received this as an email awhile ago and thought it was so true and quite comical. Enjoy the truthfulness in this one!

DOG DIARY

8:00 am - Dog food! My favorite thing!

9:30 am - A car ride! My favorite thing!

9:40 am - A walk in the park! My favorite thing!

10:30 am - Got rubbed and petted! My favorite thing!

12:00 pm - Lunch! My favorite thing!

1:00 pm - Played in the yard! My favorite thing!

3:00 pm - Wagged my tail! My favorite thing!

5:00 pm - Milk bones! My favorite thing!

7:00 pm - Got to play ball! My favorite thing!

8:00 pm - Wow! Watched TV with the people! My favorite thing!

11:00 pm - Sleeping on the bed! My favorite thing!


CAT DIARY

Day 983 of my captivity. My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some sort of dry nuggets. Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength.

The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to disgust them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today I decapitated a mouse and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts, since it clearly demonstrates what I am capable of. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a 'good little hunter' I am. Bastards!

There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of 'allergies.' I must learn what this means, and how to use it to my advantage.

This morning I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this again tomorrow -- but at the top of the stairs. I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches.

The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released - and seems to be more than willing to return. He is obviously retarded.

The bird has got to be an informant. I observe him communicate with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe.

For now...
Cat