Megan's Room

Megan's room has undergone a major overhaul over the past few months. Her room is our bonus room, and used to be the kids' playroom. I painted this treehouse on the wall before Nicholas was born.


Here's the room under construction:











For her birthday, in the fall, she got some new bedding. She choose the color scheme herself (pale green, grey, and turquoise) and Grandpa was nice enough to do the painting. Grandma helped her go through all her stuff and decide what to keep. She organized the doll closet all herself!


































Isn't she cute? Grace, aka mini-Cheetah, is the perfect accessory!

Knoxville Snow

So a few days after we returned from Wisp Resort at Deer Creek Lake, we had some snow in Knoxville too! OK, it was not quite as much as we had experienced in western Maryland, but the kids went out to play in it just the same. Needless to say, they did not need their snow pants :)

Tubing at Wisp Resort

Despite the predicted cold temperatures (high was 18ºF on Saturday), we decided that we could stand anything for 2 hours and that tubing was worth it. So we headed over to Wisp to try it out.










And it turns out, it was :)









Although it was COLD, we had a great time and there was a nice little snack bar for warming up.

Deer Creek Lake

View of Deer Creek Lake as we drove in on Friday

Last summer, one of my roommates from vet school contacted me through Facebook and suggested a get-together with some of our other classmates. I immediately responded that I thought it would be a great idea (which I did). Shortly, though, I began to see that there were going to be some obstacles. First, I graduated from Virginia Tech, so most of my classmates live in the Virginia-Maryland area. A LONG way from Tennessee. Second, my daughter plays competitive softball which occupies a lot of our weekends making scheduling a challenge. During our discussions, my friend mentioned that her daughters play soccer so I knew we would have scheduling conflicts on both ends! And as we realized the date was going to have to be pushed back to the winter, there were the holidays to consider, and of course, the weather.


Theme of the weekend!

But it wasn't until a week before we left that several people expressed some reservations that I hadn't really considered. "You haven't seen these people in HOW LONG?" (More than 10 years.) "You're all staying in the SAME CONDO?" (We were.) "And HOW MANY PEOPLE all together will there be?" (13 including the children.) Now of the 4 adults who would be there besides David and me, one had been my roommate, another had sat next to me for 3 straight years, a third had dated my roommate (and sat in front of me), and all 4 graduated with me. (Yes, the other 2 couples were all in my same vet school class.) So I knew them all pretty well. But it had been 10 years. And we all were going to have to share a living space for the whole weekend. But it would be alright, wouldn't it? I mean, it was only a weekend, right?


Well, it really couldn't have gone better if we had been spending weekends together every month for the past decade. David (who married me during vet school and so knew everyone pretty well) got to talk Hokie sports (and other sports) with Jeff and Jim, the kids all got along great, and Brigette, Lisa and I got to relax and catch up.












We did have a little concern the first night (as it snowed and snowed and SNOWED) that it might be MORE than just the weekend, but although the roads were still snowy when we left on Sunday, we were able to make it out without incident.













We did have to park at the end of the road as the van just couldn't make it up the hill to park next to the condo.
The long trek back from the van











Other than being COLD, the weather was a rousing success. Megan and Nicholas were properly astounded at the "real snow" (which means it actually covers the grass) and immediately went out to play with the other kids upon arrival. (They were grateful for the snow pants which Megan had initially rejected as "ugly"). There was sledding and snow angels and eating snow.

















When the hypothermia finally set in, there were many fun indoor activities to keep us busy until we thawed out.


On Friday night, another vet school classmate, Jimmy, and his lovely wife and 3 great children came over for dinner. We all enjoyed the delicious baked ziti and olive bread, as well as some tasty pomegranate martinis!









After dinner, there was charades, foosball, chess, pictionary, the hot tub, the ubiquitous DS,


















and of course, just hanging out.









And that was only the beginning of the fun! The next day, we went tubing at Wisp Resort.

By Sunday, the snow had let up and we were, reluctantly, able to head south to Tennessee. Although the roads were still snow covered in Maryland, by the time we made it to Virginia, it was smooth sailing. I think we all hope we can make this a recurring event!

New Year's Eve

So New Year's Eve found us on the road to Maryland. Not a bad place to be considering we were on our way to visit old friends, but a little dissatisfying considering we were going to have to watch the long awaited matchup between Virginia Tech and Tennessee in the Chik-fil-A Bowl in a hotel room. David was incensed that we were not attending the game considering it included both of our alma maters AND was only 4 hours from our house. I pointed out that they were having torrential rains in Atlanta, he pointed out that the Georgia Dome, is, in fact, a dome and thus impervious to the weather. I reminded him of the last time we followed Virginia Tech to a bowl game (1999 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans): we weren't even able to score TICKETS to get into the game and had to watch from an alternate location and still the Hokies managed to lose the National Championship to the Seminoles.

I should explain here that David was pulling for VT in the VT vs. UT matchup for several reasons: he only went to graduate school at UT while I spent 7 long years at Virginia Tech; we lived in the Blacksburg area for several years when we were first married and he became a VT/Frank Beamer fan; VT is usually the underdog in a matchup like this and who doesn't love an underdog?; Lane Kiffen -- need I say more? David was not a fan from the get-go; and of course, there's marital harmony.

Anyway, after I reminded him of the 1999 loss, he stopped talking about going to the game and even vetoed my idea to make a detour to Blacksburg and watch the game in a sports bar there. So we found ourselves in Summersville, WV in a Hampton Inn watching the big game.

Well, some of us watched. Others played Nintendo DS until their eyes bled. I predicted early on that if we let Nicholas play his DS without restriction, he would be easily able to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year. Nicholas is usually an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy, even in a hotel room with lights and television on. He will often voluntarily come to us and ask to go to bed because he's tired.

However, I have seen the power of DS.




Clearly, the great and powerful DS triumphed. Nicholas made it to midnight and watched the ball drop. He even put the DS down long enough to tell us happy new year! Megan made it too, but this isn't her first year to stay up :)









Ultimately, the Hokies prevailed, but the big news of the night for Nicholas was the snow! It was snowing when we got there and snowed overnight even more. He couldn't wait to get out into it, even if it was only in the parking lot of our hotel. Little did he know this was only the beginning of the snow for the weekend!