First weekend in 2012

I have been remiss in blogging, simply as the beginning of the year began with a bang! Not literally, of course, however we had a beautiful influx of guests, including our grandparents!!!

Grammy Ona and Pop-pop Tom drove out here to visit. It is always so much fun to have visitors! They took us out to eat (yahoo!) and then we went to the Udvar-Hazy Air & Space Museum. Here are some pictures from the day:

Let me tell you - the way to go to this museum is with a pilot! And a smart one to boot. Here is Pop-pop Tom watching a live feed from the space station, while next to the Enterprise. Very cool.

So pop wanted to see the jets, and I wasn't sure why, however I followed along. He saw this one, turned around and stated "I flew this one." Which is totally cool! My favorite part was the young man who was reading about the plane who also turned around and asked me "He flew this plane?!" I nodded, also incredulously. It was really neat.

 Here are the two INTPs in my life reading dutifully about something cool. They both seemed wrapped up in the complexity of the machinery. I think they look cute (especially the one on the left - Grammy Ona may disagree though... ;o) )

Speaking of Grammy Ona, she was indeed there. I was moved as they both stood by the Enola Gay talking about the plane and, most likely, its most renowned flight. (You can see Grammy Ona's Purse... pop certainly isn't carrying it!)

I wish I could have captured a picture of the IMAX film we watched "Red Flag" - however you can't quite catch an IMAX movie with a phone camera... that's the point. It was fun to chat afterwards about Pop's days working in Nevada.

Thanks for visiting!!!

"Spring" Cleaning

Today I got umption in my gumption to clean the house on this holiday. Inspired by the arrival of guests in a few days, I decided to get a lot of the chores done around here that were piling up. The day was brilliantly interuppted by calls from quite a few family members, which was a lovely distraction.

Now I am going to list all of my accomplishments, not to brag, but more so to encourage myself with the daunting list of everything else left to do!

- Got wood at Home Depot to cover the hold in our sewing table, spray painted it black, so now it looks nice
- Spray painted a bulletin board from church to see if that looked nice. It does! Just have to figure out how to get paint in the crack.
- took down the tree and all Christmas decorations
- cleaned off balcony, including throwing out old plants, cleaning out our poor dying vermicomposter (sorry guys, can't have you and your odd flies in the house this year), and sweeping it all up.
- cleaned and organized the craft area
- Did a lot of dishes
- vacuumed the house
- began - and nigh completed - going through our memorabilia in the office to make it look less like one big ginormous pile.
- made a grocery list.
- miraculously cooked dinner
- got some good storage boxes from office depot
- got our Colorku board all set up in a safe place.
- put our vacuum cleaner together after having to clean it out thoroughly
- Oh! Laundry! We did some of that too.


Sounds pretty good! Here's what's left:
- Discovered 3 boxes of *stuff* left over from graduate school and who knows what, including office supplies and piles of paper.
- Jon needs to finish a huge pile of memorabilia (consequence of having an organized wife - the bachelor boxes of stuff no longer cut it!)
- Sara needs to clean off all the stuff on her desk that she found during this process and needs to find a home for.
- Figure out a way to improve the bulletin boards
- Grocery shop - having food would be very very nice.

Now if you have read my to-do list thus far, impressive! It was nice to have a day away from the computer and feeling relieved about some of the necessary accomplishments around here. Now here's to the next holiday, when we can finish a lot of it up!

Our first guests!

So it may seem like we have alot of "First Guests" - however tonight was the first time we invited new friends over! They are our friends Chris and Laura from church, and they are awesome. First they are awesome because they just are. Even though we are all introverts, we had very engaging conversation for over 2 hours! That is impressive. We are very grateful for our new friends and look forward to getting to know them over the next few months.

Second they are awesome because they ate my gluten-free chocolate cake! (Thank you sister Jess!!!) This is absolutely delicious and I highly recommend it to anyone! It was the first time I made it. It's pretty much liquid chocolate combined with liquid blackberry sauce. Additionaly my "Percolcating" Pandora station based upon Joshua Radin music seemed to be a pleasant, and unnoticeable, pleasant musical background. 

And Jon is wonderful. He's been listening to me giddy all week about the prospect of new friends, my first bold go at hosting, and helped me get things in order to welcome our new friends. And then he just finished cleaning the dishes while I blogged about the evening :o)

Hurrah for people! (well, in small doses....)