It's the most wonderful time of the year

This afternoon, I heard a knock on the door. Normally, I do not like to get unexpected knocks on my door because usually 1) it is someone trying to sell me something. (Most recently meat. Door to door meat? Who ever heard of such a thing?) or 2) It's a friend and my house is a mess and I don't want them to see my mess. Well, today, it was the GIRL SCOUTS SELLING COOKIES!!!! I know this technically falls into category #1, but I was just so happy to see them. I love Girl Scout cookies! Let's be honest, what red-blooded American DOESN'T?!? So I went to grab my wallet, which fortunately had lots of cash in it. However, when I came back to the door, they told me that they only had one box of Thin Mints and two boxes of Samoas. Who can live off of 3 boxes of Girl Scout cookies for an entire year? So I did what any normal person would do and insist that they go home to get more cookies. And they did. We now have 14 boxes of GS cookies in the house, which Scott thinks is more than enough, but I'm unsure if they will last me until next February. However, Scott keeps reminding me that as they were leaving I was yelling out my front door that if they had any they need to unload at the end of their fundraiser to please, please remember where I lived, so maybe I'll be lucky enough to score some more. Every good Mormon mom needs an adequate food storage, right? (Oh, and yes, I did technically buy them on a Sunday, but this is supporting a cause, right? So really, it is not shopping, it is more like paying my tithing on a Sunday.)

Better late than never

Yesterday, we spent a good part of the day making sugar cookies. I never got around to it before Valentine's Day, so they were our Valentine's cookies.

(Again with the faces?)

President's Day Parade

On President's Day, we went to the Alexandria City parade. President's Day is kind of a big deal around here, I guess mainly because Alexandria is George Washington's hometown. We happened to sit right across the street from our good friend Lucas (and his parents) and they were nice enough to cross and sit by us.

About 90% of the parade was the Shriner's. I didn't mind, because the stunt go-cart racers were awesome.

The bagpipers were also pretty cool.

It was pretty cold.

Afterwards, we got sandwiches at Cosi.

I don't know why, but for some reason, I can only get my kids to make crazy faces for the camera these days. Donovan is trying to cross his eyes here.

Kittens, inspired by KITTENS!

I usually don't post youtube videos to my blog, but this little girl made me laugh so hard I cried real tears.

Chuck E. Cheese Field Trip

Avery's class earned a field trip to Chuck E. Cheese. This was their reward for everyone getting into all their class clubs (shoe tying club, phone number club, etc.).

Snow Bunnies

We finally got some measurable snow on the ground here. We were a little bit happy.

Quick Trip

A couple of weeks ago, Scott was supposed to speak at a conference up in Long Island, NY. His flight out of DC got canceled, and the best the airline could do was get him there the next afternoon - AFTER he was scheduled to speak at the conference. We decided it would be fun to drive up with him. We checked the weather report, which called for light flurries, packed up the van, and got on the road. North of Baltimore, it started to snow. When we got onto the NJ Turnpike, it was snowing so hard that we couldn't see 20 feet in front of us and the snow was piling up on the road. We saw dozens of cars off the road in the ditch. Since we were only going about 15 miles an hour and exits on the turnpike are few and far in between, it took us nearly 40 minutes of driving like that before we reached the exit. We prayed the whole time that we would be able to reach a hotel safely, and we finally did. I really feel like we were blessed to make it safely, when we saw so many having troubles. I also felt bad that we didn't help anyone, but I knew the minute we stopped, we would never be able to start going again. Needless to say, Scott didn't make it to Long Island for his presentation. So, since we were about 15 minutes outside of Philly, we decided to make the most of it and have a mini vacation.

We saw the historical sites:

It was cold, and we were unprepared

We replaced our National Parks Passport book, the original got sold in the trunk of an old car.

And we continued our quest to find the best cheesesteak in Philly. We tried out Jim's this time. It doesn't compare to Pat's.

Welcome Home, Papi!

Scott's Utah Trip

This week I (Scott) took some time off to go snowboarding in Utah. (I'd write this in third person but Tiffany always makes fun of me when I do that. )

I was invited by a buddy to head out there for a week, his wife's family has a cabin that's walking distance from Brighton, up Big Cottonwood Canyon. Here's what you can see of the cabin under the snow:

It was very cosy, and very warm. We never lit up a fire in the hearth, I think we might have melted if we'd tried. I had to open a window some nights just to keep things comfortable. Here's a shot of part of the inside:

We had a great time. It snowed every day this week so the snow was deep. On Friday the sun finally came out for most of the day - that's when we took this one:

The skier in the photo is Andrew, he's the man with the cabin. Thanks for the invite!

This one is from earlier in the same day, we had just ridden down through the rocky chute in the center of the photo. You can't really tell how steep it is from the photo, which is probably the snowboarding equivalent of a fish story. I swear, it was SO steep . . . Still, not bad for an aging, balding, father of two.

This was from day 3, after I'd started to get my groove back. This would be a lot more impressive if I'd ridden away clean, but it still felt like a decent drop:

All in all it was a pretty great trip. I sure am glad to be home though. Now I just need to figure out how to move my family to Utah so I can do this kind of thing all the time. . . Anyone out there hiring?