Day out

Judy, Kurt, Trevor, and I cancelled our planned trip to Richmond due to the weather.  We stayed local and went to lunch at Trevor's and my favorite buffet.  Judy was able to eat her diet food, Trevor and I had sushi galore, and Kurt threw everything up in the parking lot afterwards. (He's been having stomach issues similar to what Holly used to have.)

As Judy and I chatted on, the boys pulled out their DSes. You need big pockets to hold these, plus a phone, is all I can say. 

Lighting is less than flattering, my flash was accidentally left on!  

They came back to our house for several hours, nice to hang out for the day.  Field trip will be rescheduled at a later date.

Chilly at work

7:30 a.m.  It's 55 degrees at my desk.  And it's dark too, because a year ago, there was a vote, and a majority-by-one determined that the florescent lights would not be turned on during the day.  It's like working in a dungeon, cold and dark.  So dreary.

 I plug in my little heater (thank you, Robert), and an hour later, it is 61 degrees.

By 10, it's reached 67.  Six more hours and I can go home!

At some point, I went up to the third floor. It's toasty warm up there, but the construction noise from the 4th and 5th floors was so awful that I preferred my freezing space.  At least I can hear on the phone.

In two weeks, we move up to the fourth floor.  But it's not being renovated. It has, however, had some demo work done.  And then the county Board of Supervisors decided that, although they'd approved the demo work, they were not prepared to approve the reno work.  So the demo'ed fourth floor is having what's left of the floor--concrete--finished for us.  They are replacing the walls that were taken down.

It's expected that we will move one more time after that, back to our original fifth floor. That was the only floor that was approved for renovation.  No time frame on that.

Meanwhile, the parking lot is going to be redone, repaved, relined.  There are new city rules that ultimately result in allowing fewer spaces than we have now.  While the parking lot is being made new, half of it will be unusable.  There is parking two blocks away that we are encouraged to use.  There will be half of the usual parking lot, and there is limited all day street parking.  I think I'll be okay, since I get there earlier than most people.

I was really hoping to not be here for the parking lot issues, but here I am.

Tuesday

Cold, but the blue sky and sunshine made all the difference.

Morning.

Afternoon.

The driveway 1/3 shoveled.

A day off of work for me!

So cold!

It's been bitter cold for days, and the weekend was super windy.

Snow today, hard and dry, lasting almost all day. It's only 15 degrees, it's too cold for snow!

We stayed in and stayed warm.  I had postponed my planned Valentine's dinner for Robert and made his new favorite pork green chile. He made scrambled egg burritos swimming in green chile for dinner.  To.die.for. 

Can't WAIT for spring!!!

Men Cook for Woman Valentine's Dinner

Robert slept in on Sunday. I had to leave the house early to pick up Trevor and Kurt. I was a little unsure what to expect after the weather last night, but the roads were fine (exceptions were the two abandoned cars that had slid off the road and were facing backwards).

Kurt came back over after church for the afternoon.

Robert and I dropped him off and headed out to the Men Cook for Women dinner. We had no idea what to expect. We knew men bring food, men cook steak and chicken. Women don't.

 The daytime view is lovely. Nighttime, breathtaking.

 Everything was sooooo nice!  This is an annual thing, and it's very organized. The tables were set up with white tablecloths and Valentine decorations scattered across.  Places were already set. There was another table with candles and flowers. 

People are so friendly here, which made me really brave. It's a small church, but because there are two services, there are a lot of people we don't know.  Both couples we met are also brand new. We've heard talk about all of the new people (which includes us). It's always funny when you assume someone else has been there a long time, and you find out they don't know anyone either!

 By the time the women were seated, places were set with filled salad plates and baked potatoes.  Men served drinks, other side dishes, and offered meat selections. 

It was so impressive! First the service--I've never had less than a buffet meal at a church before, ever.  And the food was fantastic!

When the meal was done, the men served dessert:  pina colada cake, pumpkin pie, and chocolate cupcakes that surprisingly tasted as delicious as they looked.

It was a really nice evening.  When we'd first arrived, we sat in the parking lot asking, why in the world did we sign up for this?  But it was fun, and we enjoyed meeting a few more people.  Hands down, this is the friendliest church we've ever been to.  Ever.

Valentine's Day!

Robert went up to Mason to take food to Holly.  It was super cold. He spent some time in her room fiddling with a few things (flowers!).  They made a trip to the grocery store and went to Q-Doba for lunch and even ran into Chipotle to get her dinner for later!

Before he left, he'd given me a sweet little flowering plant and my favorite chocolate orange sticks and Reese's.  Man after my own heart, exactly what I wanted (especially those orange sticks!).

I took Trevor over to Kurt's house to spend the night.

I cleaned house big time, including that pull-out-the-couch kind of vacuuming, and found an old pair of Robert's reading glasses, haha!  I've been wanting to train Kota to put her own toys away. I put them in her bed.  I don't think she liked that.  She looks so sad!

I realized she had her own idea of picking up--she moves them in front of the coffee table, exactly where I don't want them!

We had a few little snow squalls but weren't expecting any wild weather.
Robert called about 80 miles out, reporting white out conditions and fog. 

He called about 40 mins. later, after sliding on sheer ice in a curve, back and forth three times, going sideways down the interstate at 50 mph, and passing a car that had already bashed into the guardrail.  His only comment:  "I'm glad I know how to steer on ice."  Yes, we're glad about that too.

The snow squalls were patchy, even locally. We got practically nothing here, but a friend three miles away was snowed in.

It took Robert maybe half an hour longer to get home, but that was okay.  I am SO thankful that he went instead of me.

Light!!

My friend Cindy shared a picture of a new chandelier hung in her bedroom.

I coveted. I so rarely do that! I wanted a light like that.  I wanted THAT light.

This is our first home without lights in the bedroom ceilings.  Not really a big deal to me, except that the light switch by our door is connected to a small corner accent light that leaves me still in the dark.

So Robert spent hours upon hours over the past two months looking at possibilities. We read reviews after reviews. Did I like this? Like that? What size? We compared measurements to existing chandeliers we have, and we made a cardboard circle to put on our bedroom ceiling for perspective.

And we ended up finding THAT light and bought it with Christmas money.  (Thanks, Dad and Sherry!)

At first, every time we walked into the room, it was a complete shock to see it hanging from the ceiling.  But we liked it.  There's still no power to it. Robert will have to tap in to the walls and bring the power up into the ceiling.  Meanwhile, we can enjoy looking at it and imagining the light it will bring into the room.

The dog

I heard something down the hall and couldn't figure out if it was Robert (who I thought was in the shower) or if the cats were up to something.  It was coming from Trevor's room.

Trevor had left an open bag of Cheetos in his room.  Kota had found it, which was surprising, because I didn't realize she went into our rooms if no one was there.  She began eating Cheetos and got her head stuck in the bag.

I laughed until I cried, calling for Trevor to come see and take a picture.

Poor little dog!  I felt a little guilty that I laughed so hard at her, but her feelings didn't see to be hurt, and her breath smelled better than it usually does.

Saturday

Trevor had a ref recertification class for soccer, so he was out of the house early.

I picked him up at noon, and we went to Hibachi for lunch.  It's become kind of "our place."  It's not so much a favorite of Robert or Holly, but Trevor and I really enjoy going there.

We watched a bit of TV. We're currently watching both Top Chef and Survivor, so we juggle between those.

Our pastor put a last minute invite out on Facebook so Robert ended up meeting with him.  For beers. At a local brewery. As far as I know, Robert was the only one going. Hahaha.  He had a good time. It's only 5 minutes from our house, but he was gone for four hours.  I checked, and we're still allowed to go to church tomorrow.

I ran to Walmart and bought new sheets for Trevor, who tore a hole in them.  Last week, I'd had to buy Holly new school sheets for the same reason. So funny, I haven't bought sheets in a long time, so I guess they were due.

I tried to duplicate the cucumber wasabi sauce I had on tacos last week at Macado's (lunch with Judy).  Trevor had it with fish tonight.  It was okay, but I obviously have to work on it.

Oh, and the weather was nice.  High 50s.  Finally.  It won't last, but spring is coming!

Quick trip to GMU and the rest of the weekend

I made a quick trip up to Fairfax on Saturday.  It was a gorgeous drive, blue, sunny skies, except that it was 19 degrees outside.  Ha!  Holly and I had already planned to stay inside as much as possible. After we put away the food I'd brought up, we made our usual trip to Walmart.  We tried a new (to us) Chinese restaurant--unfortunately, it was not one that will go on our list of favorites. Holly described it as mall food. I think the mall food is better, although this was edible, and it certainly could have been worse.

I'm back up for Indian or Q-Doba next time.  :)

We went to the mall. We haven't been there in months, maybe not even since last spring.  I specifically wanted to get one thing from Sephora (which we don't have locally), and they were out of it!  Holly chose something else, and she had just enough on a gift card to cover the cost.  It worked out perfectly. We found available seats and sat down and chatted.

On the way back to school, we stopped at Chipotle so she would have something to take home for dinner.  She treated me to Starbucks on campus, where we surprisingly found a small table tucked into a corner.  We went back to her room, and she put on her new sheets (old ones tore).

I had an easy drive home, fueled by Coke, Cheetos, and pumpkin seeds.  I've relaxed a bit about night driving (that deer fear), and as has been the case for the past few trips, I drove the last hour in the dark.

As I walked in the door, Judy texted me that she and Charlie were at the new bar/restaurant down the road, so Robert and I went down to join them for a couple of hours.  Fun, fun!  We were at a little table in the packed bar with a loud UVA basketball on 5 giant screens. (It really was fun, we ignored the basketball, haha.)

Robert and I went to church yesterday morning. As much as we've church hoppped for the last almost-five years, this is the first time the pastor and other people have ever friended me on FB. We've been going there for two months, and we know people. Really awesome.  Talked with one of my new friends yesterday and found out they'd gone to "our" Calvary Chapel here for a year before leaving in August. BAHAHAHA!!  That's crazy!  We were both pretty, um, excited in our exclamations that, "Us Calvary Chapel people always find each other!"  A lot of truth in that, and I'll be laughing over this for a long time.)

Hung out for the rest of the day, made chicken wings in the crockpot, and watched part of the Superbowl. 

The end.