Word of the Week

...SNOW. Yes, it just stopped snowing yesterday. I have not been in to the city to go to work for one week since I worked from home last Friday. We got an additional 12 inches of snow yesterday and the conditions warranted a blizzard warning because of high winds and snow drifts. I am getting restless. I should be scrapbooking. I should finish cleaning. Should I try and do tons of projects around the house that I have been thinking about? Believe it or not, I have been content reading, watching a little tv and one movie a day. But now I am getting anxious for all this snow to be done because I want to get out of the house.

A REAL Snow Day

My goodness, if I thought there was snow on Wednesday, then I don't even know what to call our current 22+ inch accumulation. Some are calling it snowpocalypse or snowmageddon, I'm just looking at it in disbelief. This is the second time this winter that we have had this much snow at once. We went to be with about eight inches on the ground and woke up to nearly twenty.

We did go out and frolic around a bit and saw a snow plow pass by our street three times without turning into our neighborhood so I'm not sure how long we'll be stuck. My wonderful husband did spend a few hours shoveling our driveway, but the snow in the road is still knee-deep.

Snow Day!

Remember how excited you were as a child waiting to hear if school was closed or merely delayed after a snowfall? I felt like that last night as Brad and I stood at our front door looking at the snowflakes that had been falling for five hours, hoping it would be "enough" to keep both of us working from home. Well, if you are wondering what happened, I am home and he is not. The major roads have been properly maintained, but the train was likely to be a mess as was the hilly drive to the station so I am working from home. I hope to get outside for a bit after I get some work done and take some photos - will post then!

Touched in Church

Okay, get your mind out of the gutter - that is NOT what I mean. In church we sat next to a young boy, sitting alone, in the last pew. We have been attending a new church in town so we are still shying towards the back at this point. He followed the service through the hymns, readings and Lord's prayer. he even signed in cursive in the sign-in log.

When it came time for the offering he got the gold plated bowl first and then passed it to me. He proudly put an offering envelope enscribed with his name (in cursive again) and in the "other" area, he simply wrote "Food." He placed a small bag of cereal in the envelope to give to the church. At the end of the service, the reverend asks for prayers and he raised his hand meekly and said, "For my 11th birthday tomorrow." I sure hope he had a wonderful and memorable day.

Detox

I just completed one week without any sweets including ice cream, cookies, chocolate and coke. Also, one week without caffeine (headache on day 1, none since). We are doing a 5 week detox to help us slim down and get ready for running additional races this year and get back on track to eating healthier meals. Other things we are without? Alcohol, creamy salad dressing, almost all processed foods and carbs and some red meat (more fish and chicken). The other night we each had a small portion of pasta to get some carbs and I felt awful all night through the next day. needless to say, the pasta has been put away! Of course, our scale broke and is stuck on 120 pounds so now that we want to weigh in weekly on the same scale, we need to buy a new one. Certainly just a small thing to deal with.

A New Year - A New You?

Happy 2010! I was talking with a friend the other day and laughing about how ten years ago the "hot" phrase was Y2K and everyone wondered if the internet would shutdown among other things. Seems silly now, doesn't it? We spent New Years Eve with some good friends and I even won a little black dress contest so now we can go out to dinner for free :).


Right now we don't have any "big plans" for 2010, but not to say there won't be any. We'd really like to take a large trip this year since we didn't do one in 2009 and my top choices are Italy, Greece or Hawaii. We may go see a friend at med school in St. Maarten too which would be a fun long weekend. Our current plan is a diet cleanse - not as awful as it sounds. We aren't doing anything radical like eating only cookies or grapefruit or becoming organic vegetarians, but for the next five weeks we are eliminating several things from our diet including: alcohol, caffeine, soda, ice cream/cookies/cake and most processed foods. We went to Costco to stock up on bulk sizes of fruits, veggies and fish to get us started. Hopefully the updated food with help boost our energy and we will see more improvements at the gym too.

Happily Livin'

It feels WONDEFUL to be living in our home!!

Last week I took a few pictures of us outside in an effort to capture "the" Christmas card photo, which we did successfully. Also took this great picture above of us standing on our front porch. And to think such an awful looking structure was standing there less than six months ago.

We hosted Thanksgiving for nine adults (siblings and parents) recently and I think it all went quite well. My sister and I baked on Wednesday and Thursday morning Brad and I work up at 6:30 a.m. to put the turkey in the oven. Everything else fell into place thanks to the help of our moms.