A day late...but we have a good excuse!

Alright, alright...so we're posting this a day late. (Though, did anyone actually "miss" us yesterday?). To explain, Kim was in St. Louis for work all weekend and didn't get home til just late last night.

Last week seems so long ago, but hopefully we can remember what (if anything!) we did. Kim launched two new web sites at work on Wednesday, and miraculously, both went live without a hitch - and everyone enjoyed the celebratory cupcakes.



On Friday, Kim's dad had us over for dinner, and we had a delicious beef enchilada casserole. (Shhh, don't tell anyone, but he's actually a good cook!). We snagged the recipe, and I'm sure we'll be making it at home in the near future.

While Kim was out of town, Eric lived the bachelor life - watching action/horror movies at the theatre and surviving on pizza. Unfortunately, he also caught the cold that's going around, so he didn't throw any wild parties (at least that he's 'fessed up to).

As for our funny story of the week: our neighbor delivered our Girl Scout cookie order over the weekend, and it was addressed to "Peanut's house". Guess we know who the important one is!

Current gas price: $1.78/gallon.

We are *clap, clap* UD!

The highlight of our week (okay, let's be serious, our year), was Wednesday night. What do you mean you don't know what's so important about Wednesday night? Clearly you weren't watching ESPN2 (or ESPN Classic or ESPN U, as the case may be). It's rivalry week! Which means the Xavier Muskies were playing our beloved Flyers.

Since this rivalry goes back to 1920 (and for those of you wondering, the Flyers won that game), you could say it's an intense match up. Add to the fact that we haven't beat Xavier at all in the past three years -- and we haven't beat them at XU since 1981 -- and well, we really wanted to win.

For those of you who've never been to our Arena, it seats 13,435, and it gets really, really loud. Whether fans are sitting in the nosebleeds or courtside, they cheer, clap, boo and stand up. And to make things even more fun, each seat was adorned a white towel for our waving pleasure.

As the Flyers were announced, every single person (really, we counted) in the Arena was on their feet and waving their white towels in the air. It was amazing to see everyone participating, and it also looked really cool on TV (yeah, we DVR'ed the game and watched it later...we're dedicated fans). Eight seconds into the game, Warren (our point guard who is insanely fast but also turnover-prone) drove to the basket for two points. Great way to start the game.

After that, the Flyers never looked back - we led the rest of the game. Of course, there were down moments. The officiating was the worst (well, at least one of the worst) we have ever seen. We definitely won the game in spite of the calls. Our "favorite" was when the refs weren't sure who was supposed to inbound the call, went to the video feed, then called a foul on us from the previous play. WHAT?! The boo'ing rocked the stadium, and even the commentators agreed it was a terrible call. Our other point guard, Lowery, also went down on a play and is now out for the season. The stadium held its collective breath as a stretcher was eventually wheeled on to the court, but Lowery eventually hopped off court on his own.

We were completely hoarse after the game, and also weren't able to fall asleep until after midnight. And to top it off, we also beat Richmond on Saturday, bringing our record to 24-3. Now we just have to keep it up and stay healthy for the next month!

In other, less exciting, news: we had a new water softener installed this week (your water hardness level should be a 1; ours was a 22) and had our carpet cleaned.

Current gas price: $1.91/gallon.

Heat wave

Wow - it's been a beautiful weekend! After weeks of temperatures in the single and double digits, we hit the upper 40s this weekend. Peanut enjoyed the long walks outside, and we enjoyed having all the ice and snow melt away!

Last night, we went to an Italian restaurant downtown that we hadn't tried before. The atmosphere was great, and there were only about 15 tables in the place. Even better, the food was delicious! Kim had a chicken carbonarra, and Eric had a spicy chicken fuisili. And for dessert? Melt-in-your-mouth raspberry cheesecake. I have a feeling we'll be back there for dinner again soon.

Today, we met Kim's dad for brunch and started our taxes (tis the season). We also finished phase one of a photo project we're working on.

The rest of our week was pretty boring. Unless you want to hear about our crazy work weeks, but we won't bore you with those details!

Gas price: $1.75/gallon

Strong, steady hands

That's the phrase of tonight. If you were watching the Super Bowl, you probably heard John Madden say it at least a dozen times. Which is why we declared it the official catch phrase of our Super Bowl party and slipped into casual conversation as much as possible. While we weren't thrilled with the outcome of the game (Eric's Super Bowl curse continues), we did have a good time with our friends, our smorgasbord of food and our nifty 3-D glasses (thanks to Stacy and BJ). Our favorite commercial? The Mr. Potato Head one.



It was a pretty eventful week around here. We had a huge winter storm blow in Tuesday night, and we ended up getting two inches of snow, followed by an inch and a half of ice, followed by five inches of snow. We were right on the freezing line of the storm for several hours, so the ice we got could have been an additional eight inches of snow. Not sure which was the better end of the deal! We did have a heck of a time clearing the driveway due to the all ice - here's a sample of how thick it was!



Due to the storm, Kim's work actually closed (you know it's bad with the university cancels), and Eric decided that meant the roads were bad enough he should work from home. Good idea. We spent the day huddled indoors, and still ended up having a slippery drive to work on Thursday.



Thursday night was a basketball game at the Arena, so we slowly made our way to the game and managed not to fall down in the parking lot. Fortunately, we were rewarded for our efforts with a win...though it was a close game and we definitely didn't play as well as we should have. The team certainly made up for it today, though. They played a great game and beat St. Joe's by 13. The Flyers are now 20-2, and we're hoping the wins continue through the post season!

Current gas price: $1.89/gallon.

Our dog, the bookworm

First and most importantly, we're so glad that Dad L's surgery was successful, and we're hoping he has a quick and full recovery.

Our "best" story of the week stars Peanut. Two of Kim's coworkers lent us travel books, and we had been looking through those at night. But we made sure to put them up on the kitchen table so Peanut couldn't get into trouble while we at work. Well, after eating dinner on Thursday night, we noticed something sticking out from under the wine cabinet. Strange. Upon further reflection, we find it's one of the travel books...and a huge chunk of the corner has been eaten! Also under the cabinet was a second book. Fortunately, this one had not been eaten (we're undecided as to whether the paper wasn't as tasty or he just didn't like the picture on the cover). At any rate, we then quickly went online to find a replacement book for the one that served as an afternoon snack. Needless to say, Peanut spent the rest of the night in doggy jail!

Last night we went to Laura's baptism (the daughter of our friends Barbi and Andy). The Mass was very nice, and Kim got to be the resident photographer for the evening. After the service, we headed to Barbi and Andy's for dinner and got to sample three very tasty chilis. Our favorite was the chicken enchilada one. We also enjoyed watching all the little kids steal cookies from the desert table. They thought they were soooo sneaky. ha.

As some of you probably noticed, it's once again snowy and cold in the midwest. For this we apologize - it's completely our fault. Since the temperatures finally hit the low 40s on Friday, we both took our cars to the car wash. They were clean for about 12 hours. *Sigh*.

Current gas price: $1.87/gallon

It's been a quiet week around here. Mostly because it's been too cold to make any noise. It's hard to believe we're dealing with global warming when we had air temperatures around -12 with windchills around -25. Thursday and Friday were days where even wearing multiple layers wasn't enough. Brrr.

And to top off the fun, our garage door decided to go on the fritz. We've always had problems with the sensors being finicky (there's a short in the wire somewhere), but you could always get it to work again if you jiggled the wire. Well, we headed out the door for work on Thursday morning and the garage went up fine...but wouldn't go down. Of course, Eric had left by this point, so Kim jumped out of the car to jiggle the wire. Nothing. Ten minutes later in the below-freezing-cold, and still nothing. So she put the door down manually and drove to work. We continued putting the door up and down manually until last night when it magically started working again. Thank goodness!

We got to see several of our friends this weekend. On Friday, we went to Dave & Busters with Danielle and had a lot of fun playing the basketball game and skee-ball. We also all managed to hit a jackpot on various games and won a total of 3,761 tickets. Wow! And no, we didn't get anything good with the points. haha.

Then last night we went to Mike and Katie's house to watch football. We had a great time hanging out and watching the game...even if we didn't like the outcome!

Current gas price: $1.87/gallon.

Who dun it?

The highlight of our week was our big mystery dinner party last night - it was like a live game of Clue. We spent all week prepping for the event, and ran around like crazy to get everything ready yesterday. The good news is that it was all worth it.

Basically, the story went like this: five years ago the owner of a winery disappeared, never to be found. Five years later, his family and friends (us) gathered together for the annual wine festival and new evidence appeared. Now we have to figure out "who dun it"...all while sharing secrets about the other characters!

For the party, each of us was assigned a character to play, and we all got really into it (as you can see!). And yes, our friend J.P. is wearing leiderhosen.



We had a really nice dinner to go along with the game, and we even broke out the nice china for the occasion. (It's not like you get to use it very often, and this seemed like the perfect excuse!).



Given that the party started at 6 p.m. and lasted past midnight, we'd say it was a success. We won't ruin the game for you by telling you who was guilty, but it was definitely a fun night!

Here's us in costume. Eric's a retired vineyard worker, and Kim is a Scottish tourist.



Current gas price: $1.94/gallon.