Brrrrrr.

I promise that I don't always talk about the weather as much as I have been lately. It's just that this Winter has been crazy cold, and full of a lot of new weather experiences for the both of us. Whenever I was freezing in college my friend Huck would always say, "You think this is cold?! I am from Alaska and this is what we call Summer weather!" Oh how he'd rub it in our faces. And I could do nothing but just sit there shivering in that 40 degree weather, all while hating his guts because he had some real bragging rights. Oh Huck, if you could see us now! Walking around in -4 degree weather actually having the nerve to say, "This isn't too bad, it's much warmer than yesterday!" And it really isn't all that bad, I think we have gotten used to it pretty quickly. Tonight we even ventured out to a restaurant to get some dinner. Granted, by the time we got there our snot was frozen to our faces and my cheeks were so cold it felt like someone had slapped me really hard for five minutes straight. Right now it's -12 degrees out and our windows are laced with ice, even on the insides. Our apartment is all snuggly and warm though, you would never guess it was so cold outside from here. I am pretty excited to have an excuse to stay bundled up inside with Garrison and Cat. We both were fortunate enough to get the next four days off from work and school and it will be nice to spend so much time with each other after a hectic week of life.

Sunday night G and I went to the Vic Theater just down the street and saw two movies for five dollars. Five dollars! The movie theaters around here are all $9 for one movie, at the cheapest. The first movie was pretty funny (Role Models) but the second one was so horrible. It was nice to be out of the house and we still had a huge bag of popcorn left so we stayed anyway. The inside of the Vic is beautiful, it's an old theater with balcony seating and intricate, gold details on the red velvet walls. I wanted to take pictures of the inside of the theater so badly, but it would have looked strange and I didn't feel like blinding everyone with the flash.

Before the movie I went on a walk and was only out for about 25 minutes. When I got back to the house, my toes were so numb I couldn't feel them at all. I was so cold that I started a shower and got a little freaked out when I realized that I couldn't feel the water temperature around my feet. I sat and rubbed them for five minutes until they started to tingle a bit and continued until I could feel the water. The whole time I kept thinking about when my dad fell through the ice into a lake when I was a child. I remember being really scared while I watched him and my mom rub his legs and toes. I was also thinking about this man that I had seen on a science channel show called Superhuman. They called him the Ice Man, or something like that and his body didn't react to cold the way most bodies do. He ran for eleven miles barefoot in the snow, in the middle of Winter. AND he was only wearing running shorts. He would also sit in large tubs of ice water for hours and his body temperature would not drop one bit. During my near-frost bite experience, I was wishing so badly that I was as cool as Ice Man (get it?!) Do you have to train for something like that? And how do you even discover that you are capable of such things?

I have been wanting to create a game of our own with C for some time now, but haven't had the time or frankly the energy to cut cardboard with dull kid scissors and write out millions of cards. And then there is the task of finding extra game pieces and unused dice. Yesterday we put our heads together and combined her love for art and silliness with the Jenga game we have had since our wedding. The result: Super-duper silly, even MORE kid friendly JENGA! I was really happy with the outcome and we had a ton of fun pulling out the personalized pieces one by one, until the tower collapsed. We colored the 35 different blocks with markers and crayons and wrote fortunes or activities you would have to perform if you picked that piece. Activities such as, "Sing your favorite song", "Stand up and fly around like a bird", "Do a silly dance", and "Sleep like a Sleeping Beauty sleeps" (thank you C). Here is a picture of the finished product:




















Yesterday, the kids and I were reading a book about four little kids that each had something so cute about them that their parents had to either kiss it, tickle it, or touch it to their nose...not the best children's book I have ever seen. About half way through it was all I could do to keep reading with every ounce of enthusiasm I could find within me. And then the funniest thing happened and I couldn't stop laughing about it for the rest of the book. There was a picture of a dad throwing his little baby boy into the air saying something pretty lame like, "My little chicken, you are mine. I will fly you to the moon and you will be home soon". The way the pictured was painted though made it look like the dad would really have to go out of his way to catch his baby that he had tossed into the sky. C just stared at the picture wide eyed and when I was done reading she said, "Oooooooh...I HOPE he catches that baby!!" :-) Again, thank you C.

Tomorrow we are sticking around the house, keeping warm and getting things done. We both need to go to the post office at some point so hopefully it will be more comfortable outside than it was today.

AND NOW, more pictures for all of you!


Shopping after Christmas:

Making our gingerbread house with Carly:

G, Me, Chazz, and Lindsay, Christmas break:

Our little snowman:
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