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Anyone who watched the news this weekend already knows the east coast got slammed with a major snowstorm. DC is still digging out from under, and they’re about to get another 5 to 10″ of the white stuff this week.  Before this blizzard I was pretty excited about L’s trip to DC (they’re supposed to leave this Thursday), but I’m not ashamed to admit that now I just really REALLY don’t want her to go. There are just too many “what if” scenario’s that are running through my mind constantly, I can’t even bring myself to say to myself “oh, I’m sure they’ll be fine”.

I emailed the teacher who is the main organizer this morning.  I’m sure he’s getting inundated with parent emails, and I’m equally as sure they won’t be making a decision one way or the other until they know exactly what happens during Tuesday and Wednesday’s predicted snow storms, but I really wish they would send out a note saying “we’re going to wait and see”, just so I know someone else is thinking about this besides me.

Of course I could always pull her out of going, but I’d lose the money I put in to it (a lot), which isn’t even the main reason – it’s just that my daughter would kill me if I didn’t let her go and the whole group was still going.  So that’s why I’m kind of hoping it gets canceled.  Isn’t that awful?  I just want them to not go.  All of them.  Period.

Check out these images.

M is studying the Civil War in her social studies class, and they have an assignment that required them to select two out of eight activities that were supplied by her teacher.  Initially, her selection made me groan… I mean couldn’t she just research the Union and Confederate flags and write a paragraph or two??  But then you’ve got to know my daughters… they have each found a passion in cooking, so when M found out one of the activities involved baking a recipe that was common in the Civil War era, she knew immediately that was for her.  Her “assignment” is due tomorrow… the only complaint here is the the recipe made 36 “ginger cakes” and she has to take all but 6 to her class tomorrow. 

• A week from this Thursday L leaves for Washington D.C for a full week!!!  The 7th grade takes a voluntary class trip, and this year consists of a dozen or so chaperones and 82 twelve and thirteen year old boys and girls.  Why do they take it in February you ask when it’s so flippin’ cold in D.C.?  Well it’s because the main organizer/teacher is a soccer dad, and he’s got to work the trip around the season.  He’s obviously got his priorities right.
• Back to D.C….  We’re in the deep south around here.  We just don’t have gear for snow.  We have canvas sneakers and our “winter” coats are your basic fuzzy north face jackets.  So when we hear there’s currently 8″ of snow on the ground and more on the way, we all scatter to search the clearance racks of our local Academy sports stores.  I was very pleased to come away with a down coat for only $22, but we’re having a much harder time finding shoes.  I got her some leather sneakers as a last resort, but what she really needs is some snow boots (they do a LOT of walking), and her size is not to be found anywhere… so I’m still searching.
• They’re staying in two different hotels on their travels, and were able to choose their roommates, so L is super-excited to be staying with her BFF (from the Christmas Gala pictures) plus a few other girls she’s good buddies with.
• Meanwhile back at the homestead, M is already fretting over the fact her sister’s going to be gone for a week and is having mini-freak out sessions at the thought.  However, I’m not sure how sincere these are since the first or second sentence out of her mouth was something to the effect of “can I sleep in your room while you’re gone”. She loves L’s bed, and wants a double bed of her own for her birthday…. apparently I promised this at some time in the past, which I can’t recall, but M’s memory is like a steel trap, so she remembers it all quite well.
• Monday through Wednesday of this week are the Track and Field tryouts.  At first blush it looked like over 300 7th and 8th graders were trying out for roughly 120 slots, but according to feedback I got yesterday, a bunch of kids that filled out registration forms didn’t show up, and the coach said he’d only cut kids if they didn’t appear to be trying; L said there were plenty of those.  They had to do a timed one-mile run and she said a bunch of kids just walked it.  Probably not a good sign they’ll be real productive on a track team.  Anywho…  the time trials today include sprints, and that’s my baby’s forte’ so I’m interested in hearing about how that goes.
• Oh… back to the Washington thing… here’s a concern:  She comes back on Thursday afternoon, and Friday night we have a family thing so won’t be leaving the city till late, then we’re driving to Atlanta and she’ll be in the first soccer tournament of the year that weekend.  I have no idea what kind of shape she’s going to be in when she gets back, but I would bet she’s going to need a good amount of rest and sleep to catch up.   I’ve just seen her overly exhausted in the past, and always get a little concerned when her schedule jumbles up like this.  I know she can handle it, but it’s my job to worry.

Each year my boss gives me the best Christmas present EVER!  It started I think 4 or 5 years ago and now just a few weeks before Christmas she always ask “Aren’t you getting tired of this?  Don’t you want something different?”  My answer (actually a collective answer with my daughters) is NO!  This is our Christmas treat, we look forward to this every year… please don’t stop.

It’s why I can’t leave my job.  Truly.

The treat I’m referring to is a huge gift box from here.  Every year the box of goodies is a bit different so we never really know what to expect.  In fact I’ll get a call at work from home with excited squeals on the other end saying “MOM, it’s here!”  And I know exactly what they’re talking about.

I don’t know why it took me so long, but for the two people that report to me, I finally started giving them a box as well each Christmas a couple years ago and they are equally as thankful. So if you’re in search of a yummy gift for next year, they run some great specials.

So… why I am bringing this up on January 25th? Well in our box there are steaks, and chicken, and this year marinated salmon, and some scalloped potatoes that are to DIE FOR… and there are always, always a box of desserts.  This year we got the Carmel Apple Tarts, which M doesn’t particularly love (she’s never tasted it because it didn’t pass visual inspection), but L and I devour.  I thought they were all gone (and normally they would be), but in cleaning out the freezer I found one loan tart that had fallen out of the box… and the Heavens opened and the Angels sang.

So after our supper of beef tenderloin, complements of my boss, L and I split the tart and topped it with vanilla bean ice cream and for three whole bites (6 if you don’t have to split it with your kid), all was right with the world.

I just thought I’d write down this moment of bliss so I can come back and read it over and over again throughout the year and look forward to receiving our box in approximately 11 months. 

• Still no pictures.  My camera is getting dusty.  I really wanted to invest in a Canon 7D, but obviously can’t justify that considering I’m not using the camera I have.  I can’t really afford the purchase till I pay off my new windows anyway, which hopefully will happen this spring… then there’s summer camp costs… then there’s new school fees and birthdays at the end of summer… then there will always be something else.  Speaking of which…
• Did I mention I had to buy new tires for my car two weeks ago to the tune of $900!?  I’m still annoyed about that.  My car is only 18 months old and the tires only had 23,000 miles on them.  Of course Honda doesn’t provide warranties on their tires.  Arg.
• But on to more exciting things – L and I got i-phone’s last weekend!!!  (yes, I realize I whine about spending money in one bullet, then admit to spending $200 on new phones in the next bullet, but it’s my blog and I can mix this up however I want)  It’s been barely a week, but we’re both in love and have been loading up on apps.  I’ll list my favorites so far below.  Because we switched from Sprint to AT&T, we all had to get new phones, so M has a new one that looks very similar to L’s old one.  It slides up and has a full keyboard underneath that allows her to text to her hearts content.  I did however have to put the kibosh on her texting me from the play room when I was just upstairs, the conversation went something like: “M, texting is fun, but it should not replace talking”. 
• M’s eczema is back.  I hate winter.  Oh, also she had her first experience with what we think was food poisoning Monday.  She’s still not back to normal on eating.  Thank goodness she likes Ensure, or she wouldn’t be getting any vitamins or calories at all.
• It’s been a tough week at work, but much tougher for others than me.  I’m so thankful to have my job!
• The girls and I are very excited to be going to the men’s basketball game at the University tomorrow morning. The only college game they’ve been to (other than soccer), was a woman’s volleyball game, and I think they’ll really enjoy basketball because there’s so much action.  Of course I didn’t even think about doing this till late yesterday, so we’ll probably be in the nose bleed section of the coliseum, but maybe some people won’t show up and we can grab some seats closer in.
• Oh, also last weekend both girls got new haircuts.  The woman doing L’s hair really didn’t want to “cut it”, so it’s only just a bit shorter or trimmed up than it was.  M’s hair stylist didn’t have that problem however and whacked a good 4″ off her hair.  It’s in a little bob and looks SO CUTE!  Like really, really, really cute.  I’m going to have to get some pics of this, the bob style just suits her so well.
• Well, L starts back with soccer full-swing next week, she has it Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.  She’s been doing a Center of Excellence training the last few weeks that our club offers each January to get kids back in shape before regular practices start, and I’ve got to say, she looks REALLY good, I’m not being prejudiced either, I mean she is just hitting the ball really well right now.  Her team has a “friendly” (ha!) game scheduled against another local team the first weekend in February, but L will be out of town on a school trip, so she’ll miss that, but the weekend of Feb 20 – 21 we’ll be back in Atlanta for the Concorde Cup.  This will be a very heavy tournament season, we’ve got 8 regular season games, 4 tournaments, and then it all ends with the state cup in May.  Also we’re told there “may” be another combined team like the one that went to Disney last fall, but no one has confirmed that yet.  If I had to guess, I would bet it’s the Javanon Cup in Louisville, Kentucky in April, which two of our Elite teams won last year, so I’m positive our club wants to go back with a strong presense.

Ok, so back to i-phone fun!  Here are my favorite apps so far, in no particular order:

• Dark Nebula (game)
• Skee-ball (game)
• Mint.com (finance)
• GPS Drive (gps system for .99)
• facebook
• bump (allows you to easily grab others contact info by just bumping your phones together)
• runkeeper (LOVE this!, if you use it let me know so we can join each others street teams)
• WW mobile
• All the news apps: MSNBC, NPR, USA Today, etc…

till I actually have something to write about.  Our life is so boring right now, ridiculously so!  Let me see if I can muster up something…

• The southeast obviously got the nation wide cold snap too, with the wind chill we were in the single digits, and expected snow last Thursday enough that they canceled school.  Turns out there was no need for that, but the girls had fun at their grandparents and made play dates.  They’re getting really good at that.
• Today was our soccer club’s “COE”, or center of excellence.  Supposed to start last Tuesday, but canceled due to cold.  For the first time I signed up M, and I was really nervous at first, but she did great.  They split the kids into two groups, L looked great and scored several times during their scrimmage.  M did well too, and played defense most of the time.
• Report cards came out… both girls did great.  Gosh, I sound like a friggin’ broken record…  um.
• I really, REALLY need to pull out my camera, the girls are photo-deprived.  L tried to find a pic to use for her FB page, only to realize the last time I took a “nice” pic of her was last summer at the beach.  I’m failing in my duties quite obviously.
• I joined WW before the holidays, thinking it would keep me honest and did well for two weeks, then fell off the wagon BIG TIME!  So today I bought the “bigg*st Los*r” Wii game and did that for an hour or so, plus walked for 45 minutes while the girls were at soccer and feel ok.  I’ll probably be sore tomorrow, and hopefully feeling the soreness will keep me on the right track.

I’ve been tired a lot lately, and I know it’s from shear boredom.  I sat down yesterday and really tried to think up something fun to do, either just for me or with the girls, and could not think of a darn thing.  Do you ever get that way?  Just nothing exciting going on and you feel like you’re drowning in it.  My whole social life is wrapped up in my kids athletic activities, and we’re just between seasons on everything right now.  Things will get more exciting, at least I hope so, or 2010 will go down as the most boring year ever. 

I’m so glad it’s 2010; it’s not that 2009 was a bad year for me personally or as a family, but it hurt so many people close to us, with the economy and loss of jobs.  I think we may see a little more of that in the first part of this year, but I also think we’ll begin to see the up-tick in new jobs creation, and being employed in the staffing industry, this will finally mean putting people back to work instead of out of work, so personally I. Can’t. Wait!

As for the new year celebration, we were able to spend it like we did last year, and that was with some good friends in Atlanta!  My niece, who is one of L’s favorite people ever, flew up from N’awlin’s to spend the week with us.  The main difference this time is that I have very few photos to prove it.  I purposefully decided to put the camera down and just enjoy it rather than being worried about recording it.  So the only pics I have are just some snapshots of the girls putting treats together for the guests that arrived later.  Another difference from last year is that a couple of girls M’s age/size were there as well and they got along fabulously, I couldn’t have been happier that both my girls had friends to hang out with for the night.  We ended up ringing in the new year and staying up till almost 2am.

Oh – and on this next time I WILL bring my camera – we found the American Girl doll store in Atlanta.  I’d never been to one, and it’s quite a destination point.  M got an AG doll for Christmas last year and to save money we’ve been outfitting her in the (much less expensive) Target brand for 18″ dolls.  Well, think of it as buying a Target t-shirt for your tween vs buying a t-shirt at Abercrombie… there’s a BIG difference.  I admit I succumed to the eye candy a bit, and we now have one very fashionable AG doll in our house.   They have a little bistro there with seats for the dolls to pull right up to the table, and also a salon for the dolls to get um… dolled up.    Very cute.  The people that thought this up are laughing all the way to the bank.

As for our last weekend of vacation, we’re back home now; I’ve finished taking down all the holiday decor; L is back to running and getting in shape for soccer and her first track season; and M and I are currently OD’ing on college football bowl games. 

I hope everyone has a great 2010 and the start to the new decade brings you a ton of happiness!

One of my frustrations with blogs is how they show images.  I don’t think blogs in general do a very good job, specially if you want to show a lot of images from one event because they take up so much room, so when I found a site that had an image gallery that showed really nice quality photos, I immediately wanted to find out some more about it.  Word Press (and probably some other blog programs as well) allows you to install plug-ins, and that’s what I’m using here.  It loads the thumbnails easily and without taking up a lot of visual space.  Then just click on the first photo (or any photo for that matter) and a pop up screen will come up with the image gallery.  It allows me to show a lot more photos in an easy to use manual slideshow format.  Just use your arrow key to scroll up or back, or use the p and n keys on your keyboard to do the same thing, or you can use the mouse to scroll as well.

For those interested, the two plug in’s I used are: NexGen Gallery and Lightbox 2

I’ve had fun updating several posts starting with our summer vacation this past June and adding more pictures.  I’m still playing with these plug-in’s, so if something isn’t working right, please let me know. I’ve tested it in Internet Explorer 8.0 and Firefox so far and it seems to be ok on my side.

I have two VERY excited girls on my hands tonight.

So this is what happens when she remembers she’s a girl.    It was the first time she wore make up that was more than just a little blush and lip gloss, but I still did it with a very light touch.  Her best friend, Sara came over and they got ready together, and afterwards Sara spent the night so they could talk about everyone afterwards, which of course is almost as fun as the Gala itself.

Camera Info:
Canon 40D, no flash
28-70mm L
AV Mode
ISO 1000
F2.8