I am so thankful for warmth!  This past week, an ice storm caused us to be without electricity for a several days.  The cold inside our home was miserable, but we survived.  Thankfully, I had an activity planned up in Indianapolis for Saturday, so I took Zippy and got out of Dodge.  We stayed in the luxury heat of my parent’s house while Michael stayed back and suffered in Louisville.  Here are some pics…

  Here, Zippy is demonstrating how to stay warm in a house where the temperature is below 40 degrees.

What is something random that YOU are thankful for?  Be thankful! Happy Thankful Tuesday! 

 This weekend, I went spelunking with a group from my church.  Before you think bad thoughts about me for going spelunking while pregnant, I’m home safely and had a blast.  Baby had fun too.  Here are pics!

Gearing up for some fun!


The hole in the ground…

AMAZINGLY cool ice formations…

I don’t make it a habit of taking pictures of myself, so I stole this pic from a friend.

Where’s Waldo??? (I didn’t go up that high…See, I DO have some sense…)

Me showing off my uber-cool “You-Wish-You-Could-Be-Like-Me” Look (Here, please notice the long john’s coming out of the slicky pants, AS WELL AS the ELBOW pads that I had strapped on my knees for the purpose of cutting off my circulation during the trip…OR because that was all that we had…)…hey, when you’re 21 weeks pregnant, you make do when it comes to grungy clothes and caving garb–nothing else fits!) This pic was stolen too.  Now you see WHY I don’t make it a habit of taking pictures of myself…

I thought that this was the hardest part of the trip…

Here I’m wishing I had muscles, but gladly taking the kind assistance of my friends.
(Otherwise, I’d still be in the cave, eating my granola bars & trail mix.)

Still smiling…
 
The After Shot

The TRUE AFTER Shot…

Great times were had by all!

Happy Wednesday!

‘Twas the night before Christmas two fortnights after Christmas….

I’ll cut the Shakespeare jargon.  I know I’m coming up on a month after Christmas, but it’s never to late for some pics.

First, we went to my family’s…

We played this Christmas memory game to get our Christmas $ from my parents.  There was a winner’s prize on the line to the person who found the most $ in matches.

There were also some penalties in the form of wearing hideous outfits.  Funny enough, it seemed to be only my sister who ended up with all of those matches…

Here she had to wear Survivorman hat, tacky necklace, hideous prom dress and size 80 jeans (or something like that…please don’t ask why my mom has these things around the house????)

In this picture, I was probably strategizing my moves to cheat my way to a victory. Kidding.

Here is one of my gifts that I love!  My grandma painted all of us gals a candle for Christmas.  She’s a china painter, but was experimenting with painting on candles.  Though I love it, it’s something that won’t last forever, and I do plan to burn it.  I’m not all about sitting some nasty (albeit beautiful) piece of dust-collectin’ wax in my home for years to come….so I took lots of pictures of it to enjoy it for future years….so I can burn it now and still enjoy it forever…best of both worlds, I reckon. 
 

–Next stop was my BrotherandSister-In-Laws–
Michael got into a game of indoor football with the nephew…
   
Michael’s sister organized a fun Christmas game…
 
My nephew is learning early to open doors for ladies…and how to ‘dump ’em’ out at the final destination

Cute kids run in our family…

I got a VERY FUN GAME as a gift that we all learned to play…

Whew…here’s the result of all that activity…

Now you’re caught up through the holidays.
Thanks for bearing with me for all the pictures you did (and didn’t) want to see.
Happy Monday!

After a week of wonderful fun, a relaxing vacation, and a much needed break, I can attest to the fact that it’s back to the grind here in Louisville.  Vacation, Vacation, where did you go?

Last night, after making one batch of entirely ginarmously FLAT sugar cookies for my lil’ brother’s birthday, I tried a second time.  The second batch was forgotten in the oven and burned.  I decided after two failed batches that I should just skip my attempts to be a loving sister and go to bed.  Though, one thing stood between me and sleep: a pot of beans simmering on the stove.  I added more water to the pot, Michael turned on the timer(so I could wake up & transfer them to the refrigerator), and then I went to bed.  One hour later, we woke to more smoke in the house than one would ever have thought possible.  In addition, lingering with the smoke was the worst possible odor that could ever invade a home.  Through open windows, fans blowing, a trip out to the car to escape from the stench, and using my comforter as my gas mask, I was too quickly reminded…VACATION IS OVER.  Shame.

If only I could bottle up the stench and download it to the blog for you to experience with me (read: pity me.).
To remember the better days of last week, here are some pictures to enjoy…meanwhile, I sit at work in my clothes’ still-smell-like-burnt-bean rankness wondering how long I have to wait for another vacation.  Vacation, come back–PLEASE!