TONS of new good going!

My goodness. K and I have been so busy we haven't had time to update the blog recently. We'll try and be better about it.

So here is a list of things we've been up to in the last few weeks!

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• A baseball game for a friends birthday
• A visit from K's mom
• A visit from K's sister and her family
  
• A visit from a NY friend to see a local friend's concert
• A baseball game for K's birthday
  
• A trip to the zoo

Whew! That's a LOT of going, let me tell you!

A trip to Graeter's

K and I went to Graeter's Ice Cream who have the bestest ice cream on the planet. Since we are both watching what we eat, we shared a cup of strawberry chocolate chip ice cream which is the bestest flavor of the bestest ice cream on the planet. It was hard not to get another scoop but we prevailed!

Big kids!

We decided to take advantage of the snow and have some fun! Fortunately K made me call around before we headed out the door. We called ELEVEN stores before we found one that had sleds. When we got there it didn't look like they were going to have sleds for very long either. We picked up a couple of sleds and headed for the sledding hill at Scioto Park.

We got really lucky and found a parking spot right as we pulled in. We headed over to the hill and surveyed the scene. There were a ton of kids and parents all over the place. There are two sledding runs and a walkway up the hill in the center. Unfortunately, people were being stupid and not walking back up the walkway but back up the hill. So you were always running the chance of killing someone, including yourself, on your way down the hill.

After several runs alone and a couple of team runs we were done. Wet and tired and done. We headed back to the car and as we were getting close K decided she wanted to make snow angels. So we found some blank snow and made some snow angels. You have to see this photo. It's CLASSIC.

Snow Days!

All of the local news stations were feverishly talking about

a blizzard. As M and I pondered over the actual definition of blizzard, we realized it didn't matter ~ we were getting a lot of snow and the winds were really blowing. We got anywhere from 15-20 inches in two days and drifts up to 3 feet. We got on our gear and walked out of our neighborhood to the nearest major street just to see how things were going. There were a few SUVs driving around but it didn't look too bad. Of course, the snow wasn't going to stop for another few hours so more was coming.

My gear consisted of pulling out snow pants that I haven't worn in years. This losing weight thing has its advantages! Hat, mittens, scarf, long johns. We felt like kids again! I know some people hate snow but I love it and it was beautiful. Of course we had to take lots of pictures. One of my favorites is this one: snow covering the malibu lights along our front walkway. We took this right before we went to bed. The snow had stopped but the world seemed quiet and still.

Indoor Triathlon

M and I have been working hard to get in shape. We have been eating better and working out. So when our gym advertised an indoor triathlon, we decided to go for it. Well, I should say M really wanted to do it and it took some convincing to get me to do it. He called me at work and said he was going to register, did I want him to register me. I told him I didn't care. Honestly, I didn't want to be the one that made the decision. Needless to say, he registered us.

Since we were already running on a regular basis, we figured we didn't need to do much training for the running part. We had gone swimming and biking at least once ~ pathetic really ~ so we figured we could just tough it out.

Well, wow! We did it today! We swam our hardest, biked as hard as we could and then ran on the treadmill. I was so overwhelmed with how I felt about it. I am so proud of M and he has said he is so proud of me. There is no way that one year ago ~ shoot, six months ago ~ I would have ever thought we could do this. We won't know our results for a few days but I think we would tell you "we win!" That was some good going.

Nothing but the kitchen sink

We have been wanting to put in a new kitchen faucet for some time. I bought M a new Moen faucet for his birthday in October. Well, last weekend, the old contractor special white sink sprayer broke. When we turned on the sink, the water would leak from the sprayer. As long as we were at it, we hated the sink. It was only 5.5 inches deep - I don't think they even make sinks this shallow anymore! Just one more non-standard thing in our condo. It was also a sloped bottom so that when you set a glass in it, it would slide into the drain. So we bought a flat bottom 8 inch sink. Yeah! We also bought new pieces of all of the plumbing under the sink in case we broke anything or just didn't want to put the old stuff back.

Someone told us that for our first plumbing project it would take 3 trips to the hardware store - remember that fact for later. We started around 11am to make sure we would be able to finish it that day. Andrew Dan Jumbo (Take Home Handyman) estimated 3-4 hours for a new sink and faucet so I figured about 10 :) We started off by turning off the water and unhooking all of the plumbing. Some good going so far. We took the sink clips off and started prying the sink up. So far so good. There was a little extra caulking between the sink and backsplash that pulled up a tiny bit of the backsplash - oh well, it will give me a reason to do the countertops later. The sink came out - I was so proud! We started to assemble the new faucet to the new sink. Our first trip to the hardware store was to purchase nylon spacers as the faucet was designed to attach to both the sink and the countertop (somewhere between 1/2 and one inch) and not just the 1/20th of an inch sink. We were successful on our first trip. More good going. Continuing on! We got the faucet, the sprayer and the soap dispenser in. We worked the plumbers putty around the sink and placed in it! So far so good! We had some trouble with the clips but eventually got them in. Of course the garbage disposal had to be non-standard so we couldn't put the new clean drain in, we had to put the old one back, after some trouble getting it out of the old sink and some heavy duty scrubbing. We thought we had purchased everything we needed but we bought the wrong plastic pipe. Trip number 2 to the hardware store. OK, looks good. We got everything put together, the sink worked, the pipes didn't leak, the disposal worked but everything is much quieter than it used to be so that makes me a little nervous. I am leaving the dish pan underneath just in case ;)

In case you were counting, we only made 2 trips to the hardware store. I would call it a success!

Bodies

M bought us tickets to Bodies the Exhibition. It was very cool. I was a little nervous about whether or not I was going to think it was gross and wasn't sure if we should eat dinner before or after we went. We opted to eat first for time constraint reasons and it wasn't a problem. It was very interesting. It had a slightly gross quality to it but the interesting-ness of it out-weighed any grossness.

We took about an hour to walk through and got to see all of our internal organs etc. M and I are both very glad that we don't smoke and encourage anyone who does to take this opportunity to quit. They explained that for each pack of cigarettes that you smoke, you lose 2.5 hours of your life expectancy. They had a large glass box for people to discard their packs and there were lots of them lying in the bottom.

We were amazed by our veins and arteries as well as some of the ways they displayed the bodies to really give you a 3-D view into how we are put together. We saw an appendix and joked that I don't have one!

If you have a chance to go, I recommend it.
http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/