We had a very nice Christmas this year with my family at Mom's house. Mom made a delicious turkey dinner and after opening gifts we watched a couple movies while Mom made empanadas for a snack.
Dodge's parents sent us some very nice gifts. The cookie racks were very much needed and I have a new recipe I want to try in the dutch oven.
Photos from Christmas have been posted to my Flickr account! Take a look!
Here is a photo of my growing "Pooping Toy" collection. Technically only 2 of these items are mine. Dodge is the proud owner of the reindeer and polar bear but he's really ok we me keeping our poop in a group at my desk at work.
It started three years ago when I got Matt's gift in the work gift exchange. A pooping santa and some other little gag gifts. Lovely. It was last year's Christmas that I got the pooping snowman from Matt to add to my collection. Very funny joke, Matt. How did you know I needed more pooping toys?
Also last year my sister, Christy, had purchased a pooping reindeer for Dodge. She was unaware of my other toys which made it even funnier. Our family is cursed to collect pooping items!
This year our work decided to skip the gift exchange. Matt was relieved because he didn't think he could find any more pooping toys for me. However, Christy did not disappoint us by finding Dodge a Poo-lar Bear. I'm keeping it in the packaging. I don't want to ruin it's value by playing with it.
I've brought all the pooing toys to work so they can all hang out happily on my toy shelf together. The santa and snowman candies are long gone but today I realized the reindeer still has some poop left in him. The brown jelly beans look very old and nasty (fossilized poo?) so I don't think I'll be tempted into eating it.
We went to Ed and Misty's on Saturday and we had a little gift exchange. I got an origami calendar! Pretty neat, huh! Pictures of some of the folks (mostly people's adorable kids) can be found in my Flickr. It was nice to see Nathan and Kim all the way from Poland! Before he complains; yes I was happy to see you too, Alan.
Dodge got me a Kindle for Christmas this year and yes I've already opened it. To be fair, he opened his first (I had bought him one, too). I only wanted mine after seeing him use his for a few days. I was trying to hold out for Christmas!
Matt's latest project is turning his little cubicle into a warm and inviting place to spend his eight hours a day.
Since I've moved to our current building, (ohhh maybe 5 or so years ago) I've had zero cell phone service while inside. I dunno. It's some sort of anti-cell-signal eater building.
Today was a work Christmas Pot Luck / Party. It was a lot of fun with a ton of food and little fun games. This is a picture of some of the few items left after everyone had eaten. I didn't bring my phone with me to get a picture of it before hand.
We woke up to quite a bit of snow this morning. Most if not all the local area schools were closed. Our street had a large tree down in the middle of the road for some reason as well. It must be a pretty heavy snow.
It's still snowing and according to the weather man this morning is likely to continue until this afternoon. The main roadways were pretty clear and I had no trouble getting to work though.
Our boss wanted us all to dress up for Halloween. Since later we found out she wouldn't be in due to her Father visiting we all said poo on that idea. Our new student Craig wasn't sure whether we really weren't dressing up or were just tricking him into not dressing up while we all did. To be safe, he brought a costume to work today just in case.
My mom's sister, Sandy, is visiting from Utah and Saturday we had a big family get together out at Linda's. This is a picture of my grandma (sitting) with her 5 kids standing behind her (Linda, Janet, Sandy, Cathy & Jimmy) and Jimmy's wife Kathy standing next to her.
Lots of good food and afterwards my mom took about a ba-billion pictures of everyone. Make sure you see the real cute picture of me and my little sister. It was a real nice time.
I was falling asleep so Dodge and I left early and I took a long afternoon nap.
Step 1: Buy a frosty
Step 2: Buy french fries
Step 3: Dip fries into frosty and enjoy.
Today on Arts & Crafts with Matt, Matt shows us how to reuse past projects to make new things of beauty.
Matt says about his creation, "It smells like the rain forest. And aluminum." He wants to make sure that everyone takes some time to smell the flowers today.
Today on Cooking with Matt he shares "Matt's Bad-Ass Good-As-Shit Steak" recipe. This is a picture of him pretending to draw it on the board left handed because he didn't want to just stand and let me snap a picture. Once again the recipe is drawn as a picture so follow along.
Thank you, Matt!
Everyone meet Craig. Craig is a new student assistant here at work that I get to torture teach.
Today we're celebrating Jerry's birthday at work so we have food goodies we brought in. Lately we've noticed food poachers that come and take our food even though they don't belong to our group. I have assigned Craig to watch the food table and bite anyone who comes close. Matt suggested if anyone does sneak a bite to tackle them and make them spit the food out.
Craig's on top of it. I told him to show me a menacing face for this picture. I guess that's the best he can do.
It's too small to read but the cap on my Snapple says:
"The average human eats 8 spiders in his/her lifetime while sleeping."
As if my tummy wasn't feeling squeamish enough. Now I'm thinking about eating spiders and I'm associating spiders with my Snapple.
I think I'm going to go get myself a glass of water to drink with my lunch.
Yarrrrr and Yo Ho Ho!
Mom sent me the link to scrapblog.com today so I gave it a quick try with some Belgium photos. It lets me connect right to flickr so that was pretty cool. If it posts on here easy it might be a fun and easy way to do some digital scrapbooks.
Today Matt took some time to impress me with his calculator spelling skills. He started slow and simple for me in case I didn't catch on. Messages like "hello" and "hi boss".
I then challenged him to make a complete sentence.
He sat figuring out all the letters he could get out of the calculator and pondered the sentence he could make. He finally came up with "I see hogs" (pictured above).
Actually his first one used a 2 instead of a 5 for the "s" in see so it looked like "I zee hogs". When I asked him about it, he said he was being even fancier and spelling it with a french accent.
Dodge wasn't able to afford any time off work so Mom came with me to my first appointment today. I just spent time with the nurse. Giving her our medical history and getting the basics of what pregnancy means. They took like 6 dang tubes of blood and I had to pee in a cup. Mom says to get used to peeing in a cup as I'll do it every time I visit now. I made my appointment for next month and got my prenatal vitamin prescription.
The estimated due date we were given was May 4, 2009. Seems so far away!
When we got out mom handed me a little bag. She said she's had it for over a week already but she was out of town last week. We got love grandma and grandpa onsies and an organizer! Mom knows how I love organizers! This is the first official gift we've gotten so I had to take a picture of it.
Thanks Mom!
I see the doctor for my first visit on Thursday but patience has never been one of my strong suits. I've checked parenting web sites trying to figure out an estimated due date and other baby information.
Today I bought a pregnancy tracker app from iTunes for my phone. $2 for a quick look of how far along things are. Like I wouldn't know anyway but eh it wasn't that expensive.
When the doctor gives me his estimated due date, I can enter that in and follow it according to that timeline. Right now it's just estimating based on my last period.
Today we had a visit from the local Fire Department, Police Department, and Security Office. Why? Well, because someone toasted a bagel which set off the fire alarm in the building. The person who toasted the bagel didn't even burn it that badly. In fact, I'll post a picture of it afterwards. However, nevertheless they claimed the bagel set off the fire alarm causing everyone in the building to evacuate. It was interesting to see the response to a suspected fire.
First a single security personelle enters the building, by himself. Then a police officer enters the building, by himself. Then a firement enters the building, by himself. Apparently these three then join together to form Captain Planet and extinguish the fire.
Anyway, just a bit of excitement to start the day.
Dodge and I celebrate our second anniversary today. He came home with flowers and cards for me. Since it is Wednesday and we both have to work tomorrow, we decided to just go out to dinner and then came home to watch a movie. Nothing big but still nice.
Picture mom took of us at Paul and Trisha's reception party. We were all hanging out for quite a while before the wedding party turned up.
Paul and Trisha got married today. It was a very beautiful ceremony in Dewitt.
While Dodge is at an all day bachelor party, I am at the ren festival with the Detriot crew. Sharon bought this huge staff from a guy at the pub. It's cool looking!
Dan told me that Jack Black is going to be at the Holly Ren Festival on September 13 and 14th shooting a movie. We are totally coming back that weekend.
After the ren festival we went to Buca's for dinner and then back to Sharon's house to relax in the hot tub, drink some beers, play some cards and watch the Olympics. Was a very long day but was a lot of fun.
Today we had "Italian Day" at work since our boss is Italian and she invited some people we work with from downstairs to come have lunch with us. We all had to bring in Italian food. Well what the frick do I know about Italian food so I made these pizza bite things. Ghetto Italian!
That's a picture of Shankar helping himself to panna cotta, or what we affectionately called "Boob Pudding" due to it's shape. It was really tasty.
We played a game where we had to guess things about Italy. I ended up winning and now am proudly displaying my "Italian Day 2008 Guessing Game Winner" certificate. How I won, I'm not sure. The guys were picking on me for my answers.
The biggest news of the day though was:
I ATE TOMATOES AND LIKED IT.
One of the guys from downstairs brought a crusty Italian bread that he rubbed with garlic and then a bowl of mozzarella, basil and tomatoes to put on top for a bruschetta. Honestly the pot was mostly tomatoes and I must of looked a bit woeful as I knew I was going to have to try some so the dude didn't feel bad.
I ate the crap out of it. In fact, I went back for seconds. I explained to him how I dislike tomatoes and that I consider them evil but I really liked his bruschetta (meaning it as a compliment). He was a bit of a smartypantsknowitall and explained that the roma tomatoes he used was why I liked it because of the diddlingdo and the doodlyblah. I didn't listen too hard.
So there you have it. Proof that all tomatoes are not the devil. Just most of them.
Trisha's bachelorette party was a bunch of fun. We started out at Trippers and went to the Whisky Barrel. The Whisky Barrel was a little odd. Those folks would line dance to absolutely anything. Country western, dance music, beastie boys. They weren't picky. A lot of cowboy hats though so I was happy.
I took a lot of pictures but not all of them are appropriate for public viewing so it's a private set on my Flickr account. I sent it to Trisha so she can share them if she chooses to.
Today Matt impresses me with his cooking skills. He made what he calls "Matt's Lemon Pepper Italian Chicken of Goodness" last night and shares his recipe with me. Instead of writing it down, I opted to draw it out in hieroglyphics. There are four steps. Follow along with the picture.
All this = GOOD.
My mom has finished posting all her photos from Punta Cana to her flickr. You should go check them out! They went on an excursion to Santo Domingo while there and there's some really neat pictures of Columbus stuff that they saw.
Most interesting is they said Columbus never posed for a portrait so all pictures and statues of him is an artist's rendering and not actually what he looked like. I'm guessing he must of been an ugly fellow.
My pictures can be found by following this link to my flickr account.
We were going to go to see our friends in Detroit tonight but Dodge isn't feeling very well. Because I had no plans for dinner tonight, we decided to go try the Wrought Iron Grill. It's a new restaurant in town that has only been open for about a month and a half.
We really liked the atmosphere of the place immediately upon entering. When we sat Dodge commented, "I like this place" before even ordering any food.
We got the Mediterranean Platter for an appetizer. I love hummus and had to order it when seeing it on the list. The tabouli was ok although I had never had it before. The spicy feta dip though was fantastic and was my favorite on the plate. I also ordered a Dead Guy Ale to drink. It was pretty good but the bottle made it worth ordering.
For dinner we both ordered specials. The waitress told us each month one third of their menu will change to be more seasonal as well as having daily specials. I had a fettuccine with prosciutto and peas. It was absolutely delicious. Dodge ordered the prime rib and it was hugemongous and also very very good.
The place was a little more pricey compared to other restaurants in Owosso but it was also more upscale than most other places in Owosso. Was a great place for a date night and we will be back.
The toolkit made me laugh as it came with everything. Compressor to inflate the tire, special lugnuts for the spare, flashlight, and little white gloves so you don't get your hands dirty.
Since we were now a team and not him paid to help me, he gave me the task of figuring out how to get the compressor working while he removed the old tire. I should of put on the little white gloves...
We got the tire on and since it has a max speed of 50mph I turned back towards Owosso to get a new tire put on. He said it was under warranty but I didn't have enough tread. Also my rim is a little bent so I might have some vibration. Great.
