PLAYOFF TIME, BABY!!!

May is looking like a good month for my teams! The Boston Celtics are still alive and fighting and the Pens are in the conference finals, fighting for the right to play for the Stanley Cup! I would dearly love to see the Pens win it all. Then Pittsburgh would have 2 championships this year and I can get another collectible Wheaties box to go with the one I have from 1991.

Catching up...part 3

April shaped up to be a really fun month. Our best friends from up north came down here for almost a week, which was really wonderful since we'd not seen them for a long time. We had a great time...getting to a Durham Bulls game, after which Alice & Kayley got to run around the bases. I love going to the ballpark. Baseball is really meant to be experienced in person and minor league parks let you feel like you're part of the action and a lot less expensive.





We also celebrated Alice's 9th birthday in April. She wanted to go roller skating, so off to the rink we went. I made pizza and we had lunch here before we went, and after returning home, we had cake and ice cream.





April also saw Chris and I make it our 16th wedding anniversary. Yay us! Time sure flies by!

catching up, part 2

That brings us to April. Chris actually has a nice boss now who seems to appreciate his hard work (and more importantly lets Chris know his appreciation!). His boss gifted us a pair of hockey tickets for a home Hurricanes game on April 4th. We have unfortunately, reached the point where we cannot use babysitting help but cannot yet leave the kids home alone for long, so Chris gracefully stayed home with the kids while I went to the game with my friend Faith. Faith is a huge hockey fan, so this was a winning plan, particularly since the Canes were playing my guys, the Penguins! (you know how I feel about my love for all things Pittsburgh)


Anyway, it was a good game and we had incredible seats...lower level, center ice. We had an awesome view! Carolina has a good team this season and unfortunately for the Pens, it went into overtime where they lost. Let me tell you, the arena here is LOUD. They actually play real hurricane warning sirens in the building to get everyone fired up about the game. I was pleased and proud to see a good representation of Pittsburgh fans at the game, including a section of waving Terrible Towels. I am indeed proud to be a Pittsburgh fan!

Catching up on life...again.....yet again...part 1

Well, as you can see, I have not posted in a while. About 2 months long. Since last post, Alice took part in a fitness competition. There were over 30 or so elementary schools in the area that chose to compete and Alice was one of the students selected for her school. Her event was speed rope, jumping as many times in a minute as she could. Alice did great, getting 158 jumps. She got a participation ribbon but was only 12 jumps fewer than first place for 3rd grade girls. I unfortunately did not have my camera with me so I have no pictures to post. She has a tshirt that she wore, with all the events & kids' names on the back. Alice is very proud of her shirt and so am I. I recently picked up a jump rope and tried to do what she did. Needless to say, it is a lot harder than it looks! I was horribly inept, but may strive to improve on that this summer.

Fun in DC

This weekend, Maria, the girls and I drove up to Sara's for some visiting and fun. Diana & Ken also flew in from Chicago. The 4 of us sisters all together is a guarantee of fun and mayhem, in spite of Sara being sick and my allergies acting up. The nonstop rainy weather and germs inspired naps in between the fun. Someone (probably Maria) managed to get Ken to read aloud from a trashy novel that Maria'd bought at the airport last week. That was some unplanned comedy right there. Ken opened up the book at a random spot and started reading (in this monotone voice that makes Ben Stein sound animated in comparison) that made the smutty parts even funnier. "Oh god. oh god. I want more. I want more. don't stop. oh god..don't go..." Andrew had been upstairs putting Ella down for a nap and when he came downstairs in the middle of the smuttiest paragraph, completely unaware of the spontaneous story hour event, the looks on his face were beyond priceless! I got cramps from laughing too hard! We decided that the plot must've been written by an 8 year old with some editor inserting the smutty parts. Not a book intended to boost your IQ in any way!

Some of us went to a coffee shop nearby during some kiddos' naptimes (Sara took one, too) and like everywhere else I go, I discovered Steeler love there. There was a Super Bowl Terrible Towel on the counter, with a mini helmet that'd been autographed by Byron Leftwich sitting on top of it. Naturally I bonded with the lady behind the counter, sharing stories and comparing which memorabilia we had in common (which included the Terrible Tote and the Polamalu hat), much to the amusement of Maria, who has been utterly schooled by now (thanks to hanging out with me so much) to the vast reaches of Steeler Nation.



We went out for dinner at some Italian place that had a dedicated kids dining area, which Dale & Dinah loved. They had their own server, their own little table and got to watch a movie while they dined. I was mildly envious! After the kids went to bed, we played a game of 80's Trivial Pursuit, which Ken knocked out of the park. We decided that next time, he can read all the questions instead of playing, which will level the playing field. It was the shortest game of that game we'd ever played! Due to the fact that I was in an allergy medicated haze, Maria bestowed upon me a new name, Bernie (weekend at Bernie's).





Sunday morning was occupied by Andrew making beignets to go with breakfast, me taking more medicine and some of us heading downstairs to play on the Wii. Bowling is about the only game I've gotten comfortable with on it. I am pretty old school when it comes to video games, so I play more on the gamecube and old Nintendo when I actually have time to play games. Andrew patiently showed Dale & Dinah how to play it, and they had a blast!




I tried to get a good picture of the kids in their leprechaun hats that I'd made for them, but I got the kind of photo that I usually end up with when I try to get one of my own kids. But it's still funny.




The drive home was yucky. Unlike last time I was in DC, this time the traffic getting out of there was nasty. We only went about 10 miles in the first hour, it stayed backed up before Richmond, and didn't really speed up until we'd gotten off 95 and onto 85. Maria and I took turns driving and by the time I got all the way home after dropping them off in Hillsborough, it was about 7 hours after we left Sara's. Granted, that did include a stop at the massively sized Wegmans that is south of DC, but still. I barely had the energy to spend much time with Chris before I fell asleep. Today should be better. I woke up feeling crummy but not so much now.

Life is a bottle of ketchup

Here I am, yet again, playing catchup with posting. It seems like all I've done lately is write "catching up on my posts." Stress will do that to a person. But to get myself caught up here and write about the fun that goes in between all the stress...

February 28th, Maria, Kelly and I went to Drag Queen Bingo in Durham. It is apparently a very popular event here and all the proceeds go to a really great cause, the HIV/AIDS alliance. I'd never seen drag queens in person before but I like bingo so I went. That was a few hours of hilarious fun. The dude hosting was dressed like he was captain on the Love Boat and his drag queen sidekick, Mary Kmart, was hilarious. There were singing numbers between every game, which is why the event was several hours long. I was a little annoyed by the fact that some kid won the 500 buck cash game, not because I expected to win anything, but because of the fact that there were a LOT of shall we say, risque and sexually charged jokes flying around the room. Not an appropriate venue for a child, in my opinion. I would not have taken any of mine there! But it was great fun.



This one in the orange circus tent dress reminds me of that over the top Mimi character from the Drew Carey Show. The funniest part of this one is that during his(her) song, you could tell the dress wasn't put on all the way because it bunched at the top and near the end of the number, the fake boobs started to slide down a little!


here's Capt. Stubing and Mary Kmart (isn't this a cheap tart of an outfit?) heehee

We dumped Larry the Cable Guy

Chris and I decided that we didn't watch enough tv to justify keeping and paying for the non-promotional and newly increased cable rates by our local monopoly, Time Warner, since our promotional bundled price was ending soon. So we turned in our DVR and ditched cable. We decided to go instead with antenna and got a signal converter box for the free network programming. We also joined Netflix and are having a lot of fun watching all kinds of movies that we'd never seen before (and not heard of before) because we refuse to pay the exorbitent movie ticket prices at the theatres. We then bought a netflix player, Roku, that lets us stream movies instantly over the internet to our tv. That is something that is included in the subscription price for Netflix (the instant streaming). People who don't have a netflix player can still watch stuff on their computer and we can do that as well. The instant selection is a bit smaller than the DVD selection that Netflix will mail to the house, but there is still plenty to choose from, including many television shows that are out on DVD as well, and it supplements the DVD's that come in the mail. So far, we are enjoying it immensely and I figure we are saving almost 100 bucks a month from doing this. (Well, this and I'm switching our phone and internet service to another provider that will save us about 20 bucks a month. Don't worry, our phone number is not changing.)

Anyway, there was something really empowering about dumping Larry the Cable Guy and we are happy with saving that money for something else! There's something really un-American about doing business with a monopoly, and now we aren't!

Catching up on life...again.....

Hmmm, it looks like some recapping is in order here. We had a fun visit last month with Aunt Aileen & Uncle Jon when they stopped by on their way to Florida. Aunt Aileen generously sacrificed one of her t-shirts on my behalf and made me a fabulous pillow that shows Big Ben and the Bus on the front. It looks right at home sitting next to my football pillow and in front of my Steelers blanket on the recliner! They also brought me a Pittsburgh meal. We had chipped chopped bbq ham sandwiches with Heinz pickles and for dessert, Steeler smiley cookies from Eat n Park.

Earlier this month, Mom came back down here for a few days, splitting time with me and with Maria. The same day she got here, Will came over and joined us for dinner, since he was in town for work. That was fun. He brought me the post-Super Bowl Pittsburgh newspaper, so I was very happy. I was later on, gifted through the mail with some Super Bowl Champs goodies that Alicia and Karen decided I couldn't live without. Will also picked out a tshirt for me. It is indeed a wonderful thing to have a Pittsburgh connection!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

6 LOMBARDI TROPHIES!!!!! STEELERS WIN THE SUPER BOWL, BABY!!!!!!

Between butterflies in my stomach into the 3rd quarter to hyperventilating into my Terrible Towel at the end of the game, I am soooooo WIRED right now!!!!

Snow in NC!!! Awesome!

Look what we got today!!! A few inches of snow, which normally for us would be no big deal, but since we live in the south now, this rocks!!! The kids were home from school, even more fun is Chris stayed home from work since they told us on the news to stay off the roads. We got to use our boots, snowpants, shovels....fun!

The kids got another break since school also got cancelled tomorrow due to worries about ice tomorrow morning. We'll see how bad it is as far as Chris going to work or not, but we have to wait until tomorrow for that.

Some pictures from this morning...




Kristen and Alice made their own dessert, pouring Hershey chocolate syrup on the snow and eating it with a spoon outside. Gotta love freshly made dessert!

GOIN' TO THE SUPER BOWL, BABY!!!!

Time to get ring #6!!!!! STEELERS-CARDINALS....see ya in 2 weeks!!!!

Exam time

I have become re-acquainted with the notion of mid-year exams, as I discovered all the upcoming dates that Matthew gets an early release for and a couple days off, beginning tomorrow. It's been a while since I survived high school, so I'd forgotten that there were days in January that offered some bonus free time. Matthew is quite enchanted with this aspect of being in high school, as you might imagine. It does require me to re-think my daily time for the next week, though. Hopefully we can actually spend some time together that doesn't degenerate into a stressfest like our usual interactions.