We’ve had a very busy week here with back-to-back-to-back personal visitors (3 sets to be exact), mixed in with some spring break hikers. These days, the one common theme with visitors is introducing them to our game of choice, Bohnanza, or the Bean Game where you get to impersonate a bean farmer. Our friends introduced…
One of our favorite things about living in NH was the SNOW!!! Our first year living there, we had record amounts of snow (somewhere around 120 inches). NoVa may not have the cumulative amount of snow all winter long like NH, but it has surprised us with its random snow events! Like today, when we…
You probably don’t remember this, but in 2008, Deal & I set a goal to watch all the Academy Award Best Picture winners over 80+ years. As of April 2010, we had finished and blogged about 1958 through present. See here for 1981-2009 and here for 1958-1980. Please note, we rate on a scale of…
The point of this post is to tell you some exciting news … at the beginning of January, I started a new job as a medical writer/researcher for a small nonprofit … but before I get to that, let’s entertain a little stream of consciousness, shall we? Yawn. It’s been almost a year since we…
I know y’all enjoyed my “What have we been up to?” post from a few weeks ago, so I decided to write a part two. Okay, the truth is, none of these things warrant their very own blog post, so I am lumping them together. First of all, while Deal and I DO NOT celebrate…
We ventured up to the Philly area for a quick overnight trip with 3 purposes. 1) Meet my college roommates’ 2 new babies. Here is my public apology to my 2 other friends in the Philly area who also have newish babies, but didn’t make the visit list. It was a short visit! 2) Attend…
It feels like it’s been forever since I blogged, but it’s only been 10 days. Still, let me tell you what we’ve been up to! BD hosted a hiker ruck last weekend. We had no idea what a ruck was, but when we looked it up, it said this: the undistinguished crowd or ordinary run…
Turns out BD is just as awesome of a place to visit in the winter as it is in the summer. The GAF (Great American Family) from Danville visited this past weekend. And although I still believe they are the GAF, I am disappointed to report they upgraded from dial-up to high-speed Internet. They, however,…
We have been called again. And we accepted the chosen path again. Julie/SILMeow and Russ/Napolean Dynamite asked us to be the godparents of lil E! We are thrilled and honored! Just so y’all know, we have put our godparent status on ebay. In case you’re looking … Deal went to Chi-town for a few days…
I mentioned that Deal & I are doing the Insanity (NOW) workout to get in shape for Mount Rainier. We are only on day 12 and I cannot believe we have 48 more days of this insanity. But we are feeling good about our progress and I definitely think we can make it to base…
Our kindred spirits visited us. Yes, we have our very own kindred spirits, another couple who spends as much time outdoors and reuses foil & saran wrap just like we do. Unfortunately, they live all the way up in NH, so we don’t see each other very often. Any visit with Paul/Second Nature and Kristen/Gr8ful…
My sister has lived in Newtown for the last 10 peaceful years. We have spent Christmas at my sister’s for the last 10 years (give or take a few). You can imagine that this year was quite different. The black cloud lingering over Newtown is not going anywhere anytime soon. You just feel the sadness…
We spent last week in Chi-town becoming acquainted with our new nephew! We did a lot of this: and this and this We tried to take a little of the load off of the brand-new family of 3 by helping with dishes, meal times, bath time, changing diapers, getting peed, pooped and spit up on.…
In the dead of winter, I would like to talk about gardening. Fitting, right? This was my first year I tried my hand at a garden and I am proud to say my thumb was a little greener by the end of the season. Even Deal was impressed with my skills. Luckily, BD has a…
Anytime Deal goes anywhere without me, I tell him to take pictures so I can blog about it. He usually takes one picture of whoever is on the stage and calls it a day. Back in October, he took a short trip to visit theHoss/Jason in Columbus and took pictures from the trip. He was…
Everett Hudson (courtesy of SILMeow/Julie and Napolean Dynamite/Russ) Born Nov. 30 at 9:30 am 6 lbs 8 oz 21 inches of perfection Can’t wait to meet lil E in person!
Deal and I spent Thanksgiving apart this year. Don’t gasp. We live and work together everyday, so we should probably take breaks like this more often!! What this means is you get 2 tales instead of one! We had very different Thanksgivings, and I will let you be the judge of which was better (not…
I used to joke that when Deal worked in parks and recreation, he went to all sorts of cool conferences. I mean, they played wiffle ball and Minute To Win It. Where was all the learning in that? In his new role here at BD, though, he attended something that tops the cake: a chainsaw…
Everyone has a horror health insurance story. And everyone has a political view on health insurance. I am just going to tell you our experience of getting individual health insurance and you can make your own judgement. My opinion is that it’s neither a horror story, nor political, just kind of comical. Deal and I…
During the last week in October, my mother-in-law, MamaF, scheduled a 4-day trip. It turned into a 7-day trip because of the storm and flight cancellations. For most people, 4 days with their MIL is a nightmare, let alone 7 days. For me, it’s only a bad dream. KIDDING. I am one of the lucky…