I hope that all of you survived today's blizzard! How crazy was that? I had read on The Weather Channel earlier in the morning that "an inch" of snow would be falling out of a storm that was leaving Pittsburgh - I'd say we got a tad bit more than an inch!

We decided to get Chinese for dinner this evening. We all plodded through the snow drifts to the car and drove to Szechuan Garden. Mmmm, it was so yummy. Dave, Ryan and I had chicken with assorted vegetables ("wegetables" is what our waitress called them) in spicy brown sauce. Cam had his usual, chicken in brown sauce, no veggies/weggies :) Here's Dave's fortune:

We thought it was pretty funny that his fortune had "a happy ending". Very grown up of us, I know.

Thanks to my pal, State Champ, I spent most of last night (after I got home from tkd) and all spare moments that I managed to have today reading this book.

Actually, I FINISHED this book - in less than 24 hours. It's a sickness, I can't help it. "My name is Tami, and I love to read." (Everyone responds, "Hi, Tami.") Anyway, it was VERY good, and I'm not usually a mystery type of book reader. Apparently I haven't been reading the right mystery books! Thanks, SC!

Oh, here's a shot I just downloaded off my camera of my beauteous friend, Wendi, and her "special" companion. She is very nice to "special" people.

Tonight was a GREAT taekwondo night. Eaglescout taught and we sparred the whole time! You should have seen the totally bummed look on Ryan's face when I gave him that bit of info! There was no way he could have gone anyway, even if we had known - as he was voicing his displeasure over missing out on all of the fun, his left lung landed on the floor in a fit of coughing!

And now, since we all know how I feel about winter and cold and snow and ice and piercing subzero winds, I leave you with thoughts of summer. The hot sun sizzling the skin, blinding the eyes, sweat running down your back, swimming pools, splashing, and these lovely pictures that I came across:

Wendi was experiencing a "sot" moment the other night at the "Curt & Kim Black Belt Celebration Bash". She was trying to be so nice and helpful by putting some beverages on the porch to stay cold, and instead made a mess and got poor Emma the dog trashed on a Raspberry Smirnoff. And, I think I may have glass in my foot................

And here we have the yummy chocolate cake made by Lady Leslie. Check out that Songham Star! I still have some in my fridge. I think it's the part that says "him & Lurt" - you know, after Kim played with the icing for so long that she ripped off part of her "K", so, being the grown-up that she is, mutilated Curt's "C"!

My children are slowly recovering from whatever creeping crud that they managed to contract. They still aren't eating very much at all, but no one has a fever anymore. Now they are basically spending their time hacking up a lung.

For Kim - who is not one :)

SOT:

noun -

a chronic drinker (syn: drunkard)

a person stupefied by excessive drinking; an habitual drunkard

My foot is hurting like crazy today. I suppose all of the jumping around and standing on it over the past two days has attributed to that somewhat. I wanted to post a couple of pictures of Painter Jeff, Ryan, Camron and moi doing some synchronized taekwondo.

Look at the intense concentration/don't mess with me look on SC's face. I DARE you to try to take her State Champ patches Wendi!!!! :)

This picture had Big Sexy laughing hysterically last night when we downloaded the pics off of the camera. He wanted to know what, exactly, Kim was doing in this photo. We've come up with a few captions, in all of our maturity or incredible lack thereof. What say all of you?????

My mommy-heart is breaking into a million pieces. My child, the one who has the tenderest of feelings, the one who gets upset to the point of tears if all his spelling words aren't right on his test on Friday, didn't break his board tonight at testing. I would take it from him if I could. I would take the no-change in a minute so he wouldn't have to feel the way he's feeling right now. He is being beyond hard on himself. He knows he can break that board; he's never NOT done it in class; he was completely not worried about having to break it this evening. My hope for his evening and the next few days is that he can just let it go. Move on. Not keep beating himself up over it. I'm sad......................

"Belt Girl" would like to take this opportunity to wish a heartfelt "Congratulations" to Wendilouwho and adorable Benjy for demonstrating their amazing ninja-like-skills this evening and advancing to new belt levels! Way to go guys! "Belt Girl" also offers up kudos to her father, who will never read this blog or know that his name was even mentioned. And, finally, even though he gave me a hard time and I had thoughts of withholding his new belt from him............. Congratulations to Captain Tight Pants - I hope no one kicks your fingers tomorrow night :)

16 Random Things About Me

1. I'm not quite positive that I can come up with 16 things about me :)

2. I can't burp.

3. I require more novocaine than the average person to get numb for any type of dental procedure and I wear it off MUCH faster than the average person. Add to this my irrational fear of anything dentist-visit-related and you'll find that I'm a dentist's dream patient.

4. I can't dance - at all - no joke.

5. I used to watch Alias and tell Dave that I wanted to be able to kick a$$ like Sydney Bristow. That's why I joined tkd.

6. I HATE shopping for clothes.

7. I think that bras and nylons/tights are horrible inventions. (Although, I admit, that sometimes a bra is necessary - like for church :)

8. When I was little, I wanted to be a go-go girl when I grew up.

9. I can't paint my fingernails because then they feel heavy and I can't breathe.

10. I can't stand the sound styrofoam makes when it slides against a box or something. I don't really like touching it either.

11. I can, and do, spend HOURS researching to find the perfect curriculums for the boys for school.

12. I don't mind climbing up high things, but having to climb back down scares the crap out of me.

13. I say that ladybugs have a smell. Dave doesn't believe me, but Danielle agrees and that's good enough for me! (Plus, I researched it - and it's true - so THERE, Dave!!!!!)

14. When I was little I always had the same dream that someone was chasing me and a bunch of other kids around a garbage dump trying to rub a cluster of poison grapes under our chins (which would, of course, kill us.)

15. The first time I ever went through a car wash was in 1992. I was with my friend, Holly, and I laughed my butt off the entire time - she thought I was crazy! I led such a sheltered life back then!

16. I think the most boring store in the entire universe is Auto Supermarket.


And, just for fun, and so you realize what type of family I come from.... My sister, Danielle, is afraid of weedwackers. Seriously. Okay, you can stop laughing now. She also told me that if she were ever to have any "work" done on herself, she'd have fat injected into her ankles! When she was in high school, she'd wear two pairs of socks so her ankles didn't look so skinny!

So, we're one-third of the way through January and this is my first blog post of the year; how pathetic. I'm going to blame it on the fact that my life is pretty much a series of "groundhog" days - especially in the winter when I have no desire to venture forth from the relative warmth of my house into the subzero temperatures of the great outdoors. We seriously need a list or something to keep us going during crappy weather when I'm not taking pictures every second. Any ideas? Wendi?

Did any of you ever see the Spongebob episode where Spongebob and Patrick start using "sentence enhancers"? Well, let me just tell you that I thought Eaglescout was going to let a couple of those babies fly tonight when Bob M. kicked him square on the fingers during his first board break attempt. There were guttural sounds and half-formed syllables in the making, but no full-fledged cussing. Nice self-control ES :)

Cam had MORE teeth pulled last Friday. We got another one of these:

This little guy has two pearly-whites tucked away inside. Cam noticed that he didn't have this color treasure chest yet! This would be treasure chest number 8 - and it's not the only one that has multiple teeth inside. My child is a professional at having his teeth extracted!

I'm off to tuck in the cherubs! Have a great night everyone :)