New york and new art

Here you go Corine- a picture of me and dan for your fridge. If it doesn't print out well due to poor resolution or something just let me know and we will send you one by mail! Also, in person me and dan look much more glamorous.

Me and dan took the 'bolt bus' up to New York yesterday to visit the temple and be tourists for the day. The bolt bus is a great big ol' bus where you can buy a 26$ round trip ticket that will take you directly from philly to the big apple in less than two hours. Which is a really great price compared to just driving your own car if you factor in gas and tolls. So we left early Saturday morning and took the subway from madison square Gardens (where the bolt bus dropped us off) directly to the temple. We had planned to do some touristy stuff after but unfortunately it was monsoon like weather for the east coast yesterday. So we decided to go back to philly and enjoy the evening inside of a warm house. Dan was especially disapointed because before going back he wanted to go to the ESPN zone where there is apparently an amazing sampler platter. We went but they said there was a one hour wait, so suddenly cold cereal back at home sounded very appealing.

Dan has been on Spring break this whole week and has enjoyed his time off, but he says he feels lazy and wants to get back to school. This whole week Dan pretty much spent scrubbing, cleaning, gardening, laundering and I will miss having a maid do all my dirty work and coming home from work every day to a perfectly clean house!

To Dad and Mel: my poor art submissions.

So the first is my attempt at a John Lovett online tutorial, whose mixed media mostly watercolor art work i LOVE. At first i thought "oh, this will be waayyy easy" and before I was done I thought a 5 year old had gotten a hold of my brush. Here is a link to the tutorial in case you would like to try- hopefully you will have better results! http://splashingpaintblog.com/2009/07/29/river-paperbarks-katherine/

The next is just another one of my poster art copies, I'm not done with the boat, sails or water, seagul and actually i'm not really done at all but you can see where I'm going. Maybe I should stay away from the abstract (: I do much better at just copying.

We thought we should post pictures of the amazing snow man we made with the extra snow fall we recieved this morning. (Mostly daniel's work, I just added the eyes, ears, nose and appendages). We are hoping it is close to guiness world record size.

Snow #2

So we are reporting following another snow storm. This time we were given a little bit more time to prepare. For instance we did not park in the middle of our street. As you can see our street gets lots of snow and is not big enough for a snow plow. I am guessing from the last storm that it would be at least a week before we could get out. All we did was park at the end of the street so all we had to do was shovel the car and the short amount of street in front of us. As we were shoveling out the car we would throw the snow onto the sidewalk. After we had just about finished a man came out and started getting angry at us for throwing snow on his sidewalk. So we had to shovel of his sidewalk and place the snow carefully in a pile next to our car. Welcome to Philly where you get fined for not having your sidewalk cleared within six hours after the last snowfall. Later that evening I was shoveling out our neighbor's car. This time we did not throw the snow on the sidewalk because I had learned my lesson that it was a fine. We thought we could just throw it into the street for the snow plow to pick up (side note: He was parked on a larger street wher snow plows can fit, we tried to find a spot but they were all taken). A plolice officer showed up while in the process and yells at us that it is a $300 fine for throwing snow into the street. Welcome to Philly where if it snow's you can get fined for not moving and moving the snow. The lesson learned is to do it all when someone else is not watching. In the end we can now get out of both our house and our parking spot.

This is a picture of Brittan's new "vanity" she got for her birthday. Can you see her enjoyment?

This is just a couple hours after the previous photos. Notice my once nicely shoveled walkway, it has about 8-12 more inches. We were complaining how there are no nearby hills or anything to take advantage of our winter wonderland.

Side note on the movie below, wait a few seconds it is dark at first. I apologize

So we are a week away from returning home for Christmas and very excited. Yes we have been a part of the big east coast snow storm here are some pictures and a video. You can see we got a lot of snow and Brittan needed to go to the store to get some things. Well the Civic was not made for this type of weather so we hiked around south Philly to do our shopping. It was fun but chilly. Our neighbor let us barrow her shovel to take care of our walkway. Seems to us to be pretty ineffective since by the end we could do it all over again. Both of us also realized that in our major cutdown of what to bring in our car as we headed east we did not pack any snow gear. So it was all about blue jeans and layers for our outdoor adventures. As you can see we decided to get each other one large gift for Christmas instead of a small one. So a Double Shot it was. I was in the heart of all of my finals when it arrived so it was difficult to not set up right away. I did pump up a ball first, then came hooking the net up to the rim and then wouldn't you believe, it all went up soon after. We have enjoyed it and Brittan is determined to get to 80. We are excited for Christmas and anxious to be home for the holidays (If we don't get snowed in of course). Merry Christmas

Tis' Hallow's Eve

Me and Dan have been excited to celebrate halloween, hence, all the pumpkin carving. However, now that we are adults October 31st is sort of a anti-climactic holiday. Mostly because we can't go trick or treating with the ocean of south philly children out on the streets tonight. I had left around 4 o'clock to go grocery shopping, leaving daniel to fend for himself against the little scavengers with only a half empty bag of Now and Laters. I had missed his call of desperation an hour into my shopping trip that "WE NEED MORE CANDY!". Unfortunately while being immersed in the phsycotic craze that is 'shopping at shoprite', I had forgotten to get more candy. Upon returning home I found him being bludgened by the candy sacks of several 5 year olds. It took me a while to shew them- luckily daniel escaped unscathed (good thing because we don't have health insurance yet). I had some sugar free hard candies up in the cupboard, but there is nothing worse than being the people who pass out the 'lame candy', So Daniel ventured out amoung the herds of glucose thirsty savages to the local drugstore for some more substantial sweets. By the time he returned, a rain storm was passing through and there was not a tricker in sight. His trip, though in vain, left us with a large amount of chocolate. Luckily, two little princesses showed up on our doorstep. Amoung our candy offerings were a few toothbrushes Daniel had added (He has bought a few boxes of them at school for the sole purpose of replacing a brush- should it fall upon the floor or any other unclean surface- heaven forbid we actually try and wash it). The two cute magnates chose the tooth brushes! Daniel was ecstatic- I wish I had taken a picture of them (we rewarded this wise decision with some more candy!) All in all, it was a good halloween night- our first here in philly, which we will spend the remainder of listening to game 3 of the world series. GO PHILLIES!!!

So this is our first post iwth our new internet service. It has been about a month without service. I have spoken to a large amount of people on the phone that did not speak our language but we have eventually gotten it. These are the pumpkins that we have carved so far this season. We invited a friend from school and his wife to come over and carve pumpkins with us. We think we are good.