Snowmageddon 1.0

The snow storm the area received on February 5th resulted in Doug and I being off work for 7 days + 2 weekends for a total of 11 days! We didn't return to work/school until February 16th... just in time for my birthday! I was pretty ready to come back anyway. We stayed snowed in our house until February 9th when we decided to venture out for burgers at Red Robin. The roads were awful... in hindsight we shouldn't have been driving, but we really just needed to get out of the house.

About halfway there, Doug's car ran out of wiper fluid and we could barely see out of the windshield so we stopped by the new Wegmans to get wiper fluid and some other essentials.


You can barely see because the windshield was all gunked up, but the roads were BAD! This is a pretty major road that we're on in this picture.


This is Doug walking by a huge pile of snow in the parking lot. He's 6'2 and it towered over him.


We finally made it... the burgers were excellent as usual!

*Warning* Pyrex May Explode

The other night I decided to make Ritzy Chicken for dinner. I was really excited about it. It was a recipe that my mother in law gave to me probably about 4 years ago, but I had never gotten around to making it. I just was too busy preparing extravagant meals EVERY night... NOT! The sad truth is that I prepare an actual meal about 1-2 times every 2 weeks.

I threw together the ingredients really quickly because this recipe is a breeze. I even remembered to preheat the oven. I put it in the oven and came back when the timer beeped 30 minutes later to this...

KABLOOEY!

The Pyrex exploded while it was cooking! I had never had this happen to me before and it has definitely made me a little weary about cooking with Pyrex in the future.

Simple Recipe for EXPLODING Ritzy Chicken:

1) Cup up 3-4 pieces of chicken.
2) Spread chicken along bottom of bottom of an 8x10 Pyrex dish.
3) Mix 1 Can Cream of Chicken and an 8 oz container of sour cream.
4) Spread this mix over the chicken.
5) Crush up a sleeve of Ritz crackers and sprinkle it on top.
6) Drizzle 1/4 cup of melted butter over crushed Ritz crackers.
7) Bake for 30 minutes at 350°
8) Enjoy! (Unless it explodes and is full of glass slivers.)

11010 <--- 26 Years Old

I just celebrated my 26th birthday on the 16th. Doug made me a Funfetti birthday cake and realized that we didn't have enough candles at home. At that point he got a little creative and decided to light my birthday candles in binary. Binary is a base-2 number system that is used by computers. Computer geeks, like my husband, use it.

Here's my binary birthday cake. Binary works right to left instead of left to right like we read. I don't know why there are 9 candles instead of 6, but Doug seemed to know what he was doing.


Also, this Friday my class threw me a surprise birthday party. I really had no clue! My room moms met us at the bathroom on the way back from lunch. I got really worried and thought that they had rescheduled the Valentine's Day party that was canceled from the snow without telling me. One of them talked to me in the hall so I was the last one in the classroom. When I walked in the door all of the kids yelled, "Surprise!" I'm pretty sure that none of them had a clue (except for the 2 kids whose moms were involved). Kids basically stink at keeping secrets, but it was great!

The reason why I mention this is because I got this awesome spur of the moment present from one of my students...



YES, that is a cookie taped to a piece of construction paper.

I heart SNOW!

So in case you haven't heard, we've gotten some snow here in Northern Virginia.



Doug shoveled the driveway this morning.



I helped... by modeling this huge hat!


Next, I decided that Darwin might want to try out the snow.


He thought about it...


...but decided against it.


Then I came inside and made some of these...


They're really quite easy when you have a just add water mix...


I'm already off school Monday and Tuesday this next week... now I just need to find something to keep myself busy.

* * * S * N * O * W * * *

Snow in Virginia makes a happy teacher! We got school off on Wednesday because of some snow and now Friday for an impending snow storm!



:)

My 2010 Glasses

One of my friends updated her Facebook status with a statement that really stuck with me,

"2009 holds so many things I wouldn't want to do over, but I can honestly say I've learned and progressed from it. Here's hoping we'll all be up to the challenges facing us in 2010 and that they'll serve to make us all better people in the end. My 2010 glasses aren't rose-colored, but I look forward to great lessons and blessings ahead!"

I'm still trying to learn and progress from things that happened in the latter half of 2009, but I'm hoping things take a turn for the positive.

Who knows what 2010 will bring?

Snowed in...

DOUG IS OFFICIALLY HOME! Yay!!!!

This last weekend, the east coast got quite the storm. Doug and I came home late Friday night from a Christmas party at my parents' ward and went to bed early. The next morning, we woke up with several inches of snow on the ground. That in itself would have been exciting because it was the first snow to really stick this season... But it CONTINUED to snow for the rest of the day, pretty heavily at times. I heard somewhere that we accumulated 30 inches of snow, but I personally did not measure it.

Winter Wonderland! The view when we opened the garage for the first time.

 
Saturday afternoon, they canceled school for Monday and Tuesday, so it meant that there would be no more school before winter break!! Good thing I gave my kiddos all of their homework in advance, just in case the storm was bad! ;) Church was canceled on Sunday, so we basically stayed in and hung out all day. We barely ran out of milk the day before, so everything I cooked over the weekend needed to use powdered milk. Yuck! (I grew up on the stuff, so it brought me back...) Luckily, we had plenty of TP and other essentials to get us through the big storm.

The best sledding hill in the neighborhood is right next to our house. We 

could hear kids screaming as they went down it the whole day.

I was hoping the Doug would get the day off on Monday, but when he called the hotline it was an optional vacation day or something like that which basically meant he didn't need to go in, but he would have to take a vacation day if he didn't. He wanted to use his vacation days for later, so we managed for get him out the door before the sun rises as usual. He drove regular the hour and a half to work and told me later that the roads weren't all that bad and traffic was light. A lot of people took the day off, so he was able to get more projects... which is a good thing because the newbies don't get to do interesting things very often.

Monday and Tuesday I was home alone, with not much to do. The roads are/were yuck and it takes like 3 tries to back out of the garage with the piles of snow on either side, so I opted to stay in. So far I've watched about 24 episodes of Gilmore Girls, organized all of the baby clothes that my sister gave me (just to get rid of mind you, I'm not announcing anything :P), cleaned the house, and then decided to wash the cats (never a good idea). So, basically I haven't left the house since Friday night and it is now Tuesday evening...

Darwin looking oh so thrilled after me giving him a bath and then blow drying him to make sure he didn't get too cold.

The kitties keeping me company while I organize the baby clothes.

An aerial shot of all of the Tupperware containers full of baby clothes that my sister has sent my way. I guess I'll be able to use it all one day (unless I have all boys or something...)

Back in the Routine of Things

I'm starting back into the routine of my Facebook and blog checking. It was really hard to get online for a while after Daisy's death. I'm really thankful that the holidays were right afterward because I needed time to heal.

One of my best friends that I grew up with died in a car accident the end of October. I hadn't seen her since our sophomore year in high school when she transferred to a different school, but we had reconnected through Facebook in the last year. She was teaching English in middle school and had a little boy starting kindergarten. It was really great to exchange silly little memories of us as kids. Her death was sudden and hit me pretty hard. It happened over a weekend so luckily Doug was there to comfort me as I bawled. I went to her viewing and was rocked by the reality of death for the first time in my life.

Jenn's death caused a lot of thinking on my part. I was having a hard time coping the sadness, but Doug called me with a surprise that next weekend and we adopted Daisy. Lucky and Darwin are great, but they've never really been lap cats. Daisy was an absolute joy in my life from the moment we got her. She would follow me around the house, sleep with me every night, wake me up in the middle of the night licking my face, sit in my lap as I worked, watched TV, ate dinner. She was my constant purring companion.

The day that Daisy died, I had been planning to sneak her up to see Doug in Annapolis. We decided that morning on the phone that I should just stay home because Doug was going to be home early for the Thanksgiving holiday and I would see him in three short days. My mom was in Boston at a conference and my dad and siblings were going to pick up Liza from college for the Thanksgiving holiday. They were trying to find a place to Johnny, my little brother, and I offered to take him for the day.

Johnny was upstairs on my computer and I was watching TV when I heard a board fall down in the basement. The cats are always knocking things down in the house, but I had a feeling and went to check right away. What I found when I went down the stairs was terrible. Daisy was laying on the floor with a board laying on top of her head.  She was bleeding out of her mouth and ear and was jerking violently.  Her eyes were unfocused, but she still looked afraid and in pain.  I knew that there was nothing I would be able to do, so I just picked her up and held her up to me to comfort her.  I rushed her upstairs dripping blood all over the carpet and floor until I was able to lay her in the kitchen sink and call the vet.  I remember screaming at Johnny to grab a towel while he just stood there and stared at me in shock.  Johnny held her in a towel while I drove frantically the 20 minutes to the vet.  I remember a mother and younger daughter being there holding open the door for me as I ran in.  I don't remember what I was wearing or if my hair was brushed, I just remember crying and begging them to fix her or to at least make it so that she wouldn't feel pain anymore.  They gave her pain medication immediately and then did x-rays to see if there was any hope. The x-rays confirmed what I feared I already knew... there was nothing that they could do for our little Daisy.  She had lost so much blood that it was taking them forever to even find a vein to euthanize her.  Once they did, I held her as she slipped away.

Johnny was with me the whole time helping the best he could through the panic. I felt really bad that he had to be there for the whole thing, but in the end, I'm glad that there was someone else there with me. My dad came later that night, picked up Johnny, and helped clean things up. Doug came as soon as he could the next day and came home the rest of the week instead of going to the apartment. We buried her at my parents' house the next day.

The first couple of days were hard, very hard. I had told my students all about getting Daisy and naming her. They had been asking for daily updates about her. I was terrified that they would ask me how she was doing and that I would just break down. I even met with the school's guidance counselor in the morning before school started with a system to have a student bring a note down to her if they brought up Daisy. Luckily, I was able to dodge any questions about her.

I was really saddened by the loss of Daisy, but had the most difficulty with flashbacks of the experience. My family helped out a lot by talking to me during my commute so I wouldn't have time to think about it. Luckily, with time, comes healing. I guess sometimes things in life just suck.

I hope that there is a kitty celestial kingdom (heaven) because Daisy definitely would have made it.

I took this picture the morning of the day that Daisy died. The cats don't like it when I get out of bed in the morning, so they lay on me and look all cute. Daisy always slept with me... Darwin was just being jealous.