Snowed In

Today we had a blizzard go through the Washington area. A real one! Kyle and I have decided it can now be called a "real" winter. Generally, an inch of snow in the area can be a cause of panic....I guess when you get 21" it's acceptable. Before the storm hit people stormed the grocery stores to stock up.

Apparently the grocery stores were completely out of milk, ground beef, and eggs. I only made a short trip into Wal-Mart last night after going to see Avatar, so that we could buy a new kennel for our cats before the trip, so I cannot personally attest to the state of the grocery stores. However, I did notice that the food isles at Wal-Mart were in a state of disarray (and oddly enough, they seemed to be out of ketchup).

At the moment I can hear the plow making its way through our parking lot for at least the 4th time today. From the window you can see our car. There is literally an unbroken blanket of snow from the road in the back of the car to the road in the front of the car....you can't see underneath it (except along the sides). I've watched a few silly people try to dig their cars out. They must have somewhere important to go to brave the roads, or they feel spending 45 minutes digging their car out from under the snow is a good way to spend a snowy day. Tomorrow I plan to take some pictures.

Youth Group Craziness and Christmas Trains

Last night we went to the church for the youth group "spy" night. Mostly, we played various games that had a spy twist to them. During the first game, which was basically capture the flag, I got elbowed in the nose. It wasn't pretty, and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the kitchen with an ice pack on my face. Luckily, the damage was minimal, and other than a tender face and a small bruise it wasn't too bad. Kyle and I have decided that next time we are going to wear helmets with face masks, since last time his glasses got smashed. Hopefully nothing more will happen of that nature...at least for a while.

The following are some pictures from our trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving. On Friday we went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens to see their train exhibit. The cool part is that all of the buildings are made out of organic matter (like acorns and stuff).

These are just a few of the photos that I took. The buildings were all Chicago landmarks. The little kids were fascinated by all the trains and the "snow" that was falling from the ceiling. It was a much better way to spend Black Friday in my opinion.

Today it snowed! It feels like an actual winter day, which for Virginia's mild winter was a nice change. We put our tree up and enjoyed the opportunity to feel festive. While we were putting up the ornaments, Sphinx started to chew on the nativity set (more specifically the head of a wise man). Needless to say, we had to move the nativity to a cat safe area. Anyhow, here is a picture of our tree this year. I'm hoping that the cats don't manage to knock it over this year...

Paintball

Here are some pictures from the paintball trip we took with the youth group. It was a great day and the weather was perfect. The only thing that caused some problems was the excessive amounts of mud on some of the courses, but other than that is was smooth sailing.

This was before we got too messy. I think we had just completed the first course.

Go team orange! This was the only course where we were able to stay out of bounds and coach our teams/take pictures of the actual courses.

Ouch! His front was totally covered too.

Our group at the end of the day, tired and muddy. The last two games we played were total elimination w/ no time limit. My team dominated :). The biggest bummer was that I never saw Kyle during the matches, and never had a chance to take him out (we were on opposing teams).

Oh the things you will see.

So one of the best things about this area is the plethora of things to do. Of course, this can also be a downfall, as there are so many choices and it can be overwhelming. Kyle and I have made a conscious effort to take advantage of these opportunities and have been going downtown more often.

One of the best parts of going downtown is coming up out the Smithsonian metro stop. This is because you never know what you will be greeted with. True, half the time it is a group of scientologists with a book table...but still, the anticipation is always there when I ride the escalator. The most recent surprise was to arrive on the Mall and be greeted by hoards of people who were there for the DOE Solar Decathlon It was so cool. Luckily I had my camera and was able to capture some fun pictures, but the pictures on the website are free from all the bystanders....so you can actually see the houses. Some of the houses were so interesting looking, that I had to laugh when I saw U of I 's house in comparison...it looks like a morton building. But, at least it would fit right into the landscape of good old Illinois. Anyhow, for those who might like to see some good pictures, I've posted the link to the website. I really liked Cornell, Team Spain, and Team Alberta. http://www.solardecathlon.org/2009/final_results.cfm While we were downtown we went to the American History Museum. My favorite part was seeing Julia Child's kitchen. Kyle of course wanted to see the exhibit "America at War"....longest exhibit ever.

Two weekends ago we went to the National Gallery of Art and the Portrait Gallery. We wanted to check out the temporary exhibit of Spanish Armor. The detail work was amazing, exquisite. Kyle got yelled at for taking a picture. Oops. It's frustrating because half of the Gallery allows photographs and half doesn't. Anyhow, I was excited to see some of the works that I had learned about in and art history class. I was surprised that I still remembered some of the names. It was certainly a great museum, but I have to admit it all starts to look the same after a bit, so it is best to spend only a short amount of time there at once.

Last weekend while Kyle's dad was here, we made another trip downtown. There we went to see Ford's Theater and the Peterson House. I thought the museum at Ford's was very well done. One of my favorites, in fact. There was just enough information to be interesting, but not overwhelming. It was a good choice, since we didn't have a lot of time before Kyle's dad had to leave. Ford's is putting on a production of A Christmas Carol at the moment, so maybe I'll try to go see it. Interesting tibit: The commonwealth of Virginia's motto is "Sic Semper Tyrannis" meaning "thus always to the tyrants" or "death to the tyrants". This is, of course, what Booth yelled while jumping from the balcony. Interesting choice. At least it is better than our unofficial motto: Virginia is for Lovers.

Hmmm....this looks so plain. Next time I will post pictures.

God is good

So I spent Last night and this morning at the women's retreat at church. It was amazing! It started with a wonderful dinner prepared by some of the men at church (several of which are great cooks/chefs). There was this cream sauce on the pasta that was delectable to the nth degree. For desert there was a flourless chocolate cake that was positively incredible. It was so nice to relax with friends and enjoy a meal that I didn't have to prepare. On that note, I have to say that I love how our church doesn't have age specific ministries. As a result I have met some women who are amazing at all different ages and backgrounds. It makes for some wonderful conversation.

Our speaker was Ellie Lofaro and she was amazing! She speaks nationally, so if anybody ever gets the chance to hear her talk I would recommend it. First of all, I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time. Maybe it's because she is an Italian from Brooklyn and all the wonderful things that come with that heritage. Who knows. But I have to say that her message was so refreshing and uplifting. The whole theme of the weekend was imagining. Imagine what God can and wants to do for you and through you. There was of course a lot more than that, and I still need to devote some time to looking more closely and some of the scriptures that we touched on, but in short it was just what I needed.

This morning we resumed our gathering over a wonderful spread of breakfast items. Ellie talked again for most of the morning, followed by some worship music and prayer. It was a short, but very powerful retreat. I ended up buying two of her books, which I hope will be as engaging as she was. I have high hopes (the woman taught English in NY public schools for 10 years..she must have captivated her students to have thrived in that environment as she did).

Kyle volunteered to help clean up and I ended up staying as well and helped dry dishes (gotta love the industrial dishwashers). I ended up coming home with some of the wonderful cream sauce that was left over from dinner and some very pretty flowers. I'm going to try to get the greens (Acuba) to root. Supposedly it's fairly easy to do with this plant. So with any luck, I'll get some more plants out the deal for our apartment.

So all that is left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening. I think we might rent a movie. Star Wars maybe. Last weekend we went to see the informant! and really enjoyed it. The two teens behind us certainly didn't appreciate the humor....stinks for them. So anyhow, as soon as my dorky husband finished up his computer game it's off to the video store.

This and That

So, today Kyle and I drove forty minutes to a baby shower that we thought was today, only to arrive there and have Kyle remember that it actually was yesterday. Oops! How lame to get the date mixed up. Even more of a bummer because Kyle has to go into work again tonight. School has started, but I still haven't gotten any calls to sub. So I've just been hanging out and using my time "wisely".... Seriously though, having a second car makes a huge difference. I've been able to go to youth group for the past two Sunday's even though Kyle has had to go into work. I've also been able to join a Friday morning Bible study, which has been great so far.

One upside of all my free time is that I have been motivated to work on a lot of my ongoing knitting projects that I had going on and have finished quite a few of them. I'll try to post some pictures of them next time. My camera has been out of batteries and I haven't had a chance to replace them yet....must get rechargeable batteries. But like I said, it has been nice to have the time to knit enough to see the progress almost immediately. It makes for the motivation to keep it up.

Well, I think I'm going to get some ice cream and watch some more of the Emmys.

Enough already!

So last week was very stressful, but thankfully it ended on a good note. As I wrote earlier, I had things pretty much figured out as far as work stuff goes. Well, Wednesday night I got a call asking if I would be willing to be considered for a FT long term sub job, as a growth and human development teacher until the position could be filled. I agreed that I would like to be considered. Well, the school called me Thursday to offer me the position. I told them yes, that sounded great. Two hours later I got a call from another high school in the area asking if I wanted to interview for a full time English position. Yes! So I schedule the interview for Friday, but realize I need to tell the school I agreed to sub for. So I call them to let them know. I go in Friday morning to meet with the principal and she says that she is nervous about not finding a backup sub in case I get the job (which she is sure will happen), but to let her know just in case. Well, the interview goes well, but not well enough. I don't get the job, and when I call the other school they have already found another sub. Bummer. So I am right back where I started, which is okay with me. What was the most stressful is that I had all these anxieties about how I would prepare for the school week that starts tomorrow without knowing what classes I was going to teach or having any clue about the materials. So I didn't sleep well, and then I was just nervous about the interview and such.

As I said, the weekend ended well. Kyle and I took our first step towards helping out with the youth group at church and joined them for a LOTR marathon. We watched the first two films and played a game of ultimate Frisbee in between. It was a lot of fun, but we were exhausted after our long week, so we didn't stay for the last movie. Saturday we finally bought a car for me. It's a 2007 Chevy Aveo. It looks like a toy. Anyhow, it was a good deal for us and it is really all I need. It will get me where I want to go without any crazy frills, plus it has pretty good gas mileage. So that was exciting.

Other exciting news was finding out this morning that a good friend from college is engaged. It is really exciting news, but it also just reminds me of how far away and out of touch we are with people back home. I mean, we aren't across the ocean, but it feels that way sometimes.