Ice Storm Weekend :)

It started raining Thursday morning, sleeting on Thursday afternoon/evening, and then it snowed all night and all day Friday. So we have a layer of ice covered by about a foot of snow right now...

On Friday, it was too dangerous to drive because the roads were icy and it was snowing/sleeting... so I couldn't get to my classes and Thomas couldn't get to work... so we just stayed home with the kitties! :)

Doing homework with Motor on my lap

Hanging out with Bagheera

Ice/snow storm

It snowed for at least 24 hours... my footprints going up to our door... it got even deeper than this

Our car!

Our neighbourhood/apartment complex place

This is our row

The field that you walk across to get to JBU

Making snow-cream (ice-cream made out of snow...)

You put some sweetened condensed milk in

And some vanilla essence... and then mix it all up

And test it on Thomas... who had just woken up from a nap :)

It was really good!

Today (Saturday) we had another fairly lazy day... went out for dinner (braved the icy roads)... and then we built a huge snow man tonight! 

We couldn't get anyone to come of their warm houses to help us... but we convinced Ben to come and take pictures of us :)

We used a mop-head for his hair, a carrot for his nose, sticks for his arms, and twigs for his eyes, mouth and buttons :)

Proud of our very first snowman! Neither of us had ever built one before.

Well, it's been a fun weekend so far... tomorrow we've really got to get down to work though!

Two furry guests!! :)

Motormouth and Bagheera are staying with us for a whole week! Matt and Haley are out of town so we are looking after them, and I am loving it! These are a few pictures of them and their various antics :)

This is Bagheera

And this is Motormouth (we just call him Motor)

Motor LOVES my purse... as soon as I get home and put it down he sits right next to it and tries to climb inside it.

Bagheera LOVES my feet... I can't figure it out

This is Motor's favorite place... on our bathroom counter. He only drinks water if it's coming out of a tap. So he likes to sit here until we turn it on for him :)

He also likes to sleep in the sink... he curls up in it and fills it up completely! (I'll try to get a picture of it sometime)

Bagheera likes to hang out in the bathtub. When someone gets out of the shower he dashes right in and licks up all the water droplets...

They both like to sleep on top of my homework. Sometimes I'll be doing homework and they climb right up and sit on top of it so I can't get to it. Which is fine by me.

They both love to sleep in our La-Z-Boy... this is Bagheera all stretched out in it

Mugshot... I promise Bagheera's eyes aren't actually this color... that's just what the camera did

Mugshot of Motor sticking his head between the bars of one of our dining room chairs

They like to play with the camera string while I'm trying to take pictures of them :)

Motor hiding behind his paw: "Stop taking pictures of me"

Needless to say, I just love having these kitties around :) I'm going to be so sad when they have to leave :( Thanks Matt and Haley for letting me keep them for the week! :)

Chinese dumplings

So last night we made chinese dumplings with Matt and Haley, and two other couples - Jim and Wendy, and Josh and Hallie. Chinese dumplings are a Boyd special - that's where we were introduced to them, so it was nice to have Matt and Haley here so we sort of knew what we were doing!
It was loads of fun - one of those meals where everyone is involved in the making, cooking and eating. I only took one picture - of us eating them, but I found some pictures of the making process that I will put up :)

Here's us stuffing our faces. We made a double recipe and even then we polished them all off!

Clockwise from the front: Jim, Wendy, Hallie, Josh, Matt, Haley, Sarah

This is what they look like raw. You put a ground meat (pork and beef) mixture (with chopped spinach, cabbage, garlic, and ginger) on to a wanton wrapper (kind of like a rolled out square of tortilla dough) and then wrap it up.

And cooked (you brown the bottoms in a frying pan and then add water and steam them)

We made a dipping sauce with soy sauce, vinegar, sesame oil, chopped garlic cloves, grated fresh ginger, and chopped jalapeno peppers... it was sooooo yummy!

Matt and Haley are out of town for the week, so they left their two cats, Motormouth and Bagheera, with us - I love having them around! :) I'll put pictures of them up.

Road Trip Days 5 & 6

Jan 10th - Sunday

We drove from Kingman, Arizona to Albuquerque, New Mexico. The original plan for the day was to see the Grand Canyon on the way, but the weather conditions were not conducive. The roads were icy and there was poor visibility [and we were all really tired from the previous 4 days of sight-seeing] so we decided to forgo the Grand Canyon. It's one of those places that we will definitely see at some point in our lives. We stopped in Flagstaff, Arizona up in the snowy mountains for some lunch, and then we stopped at the Petrified  Forest National Park (which was in New Mexico, I think).

Driving up into the snowy mountains in Arizona

We passed all the signs for the Grand Canyon but didn't go :(

The view from the main street of Flagstaff, Arizona... where we stopped for lunch

This is the "Painted Desert" in the Petrified Forest National Park.

Us and the painted desert

More desert... with snow

We saw some exciting wildlife... deer

Sunset in the Petrified Forest National Park. I'm not sure why it's still called a forest because there are no trees... but apparently a long time ago there were lots of trees, and they got petrified. When I think of the word 'petrified' I think 'scared to death'... so it is my opinion that all the trees got scared and shrunk into the little bushes that you can see in this picture :). Scientifically, however, 'petrified' means that the trees were hardened and compressed, and now look like rocks... but we could never decide if what we were looking at was a rock or a petrified tree.

Jan 11th - Monday

Our last day of the road trip was 14 hours on the road. We didn't stop anywhere exciting (unless you count gas stations and Subway sandwiches), and we took no pictures... we were pretty focussed on getting home!

We drove from Albuquerque, New Mexico all the way home to Siloam Springs, Arkansas and arrived home around 10pm.

Road Trip Day 4

Jan. 9th - Saturday

We got up early and drove from Santa Barbara to Malibu to go to the beach. The weather was warm but the water was icy so we just put our feet in it. From there we drove on to Los Angeles, had lunch at In 'n Out Burger (yummy), and kept driving on to Las Vegas, which we hit just as it got dark. The lights were pretty awesome, and we had a great time wandering around for a couple of hours.We kept driving for a couple more hours, stopping to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings (yummy!), and to see the Hoover Dam. I couldn't really tell what it really looked like since it was dark, but there were lights everywhere and it looked impressive. At least we can say we've been there :) We finally arrived in Kingman, Arizona around 1am, and spent the night at a Travelodge hotel.

On Malibu beach - Jordan, Sarah, Anna

Pretty waves

Me and Thomas

A couple pictures that Jordan took of us

Cute one of Anna :)

Malibu is one of those very wealthy areas of California, and this is one of the many mansions we drove by

Then we drove through LA... and saw the Hollywood sign in the distance (I circled it in red to make sure you could spot it :) )

Driving through the California and Nevada  rocky mountainous desert

"Zzyzx" road... we decided someone must have gotten really tired of making up road names

Most of the following pictures were taken by Jordan with his fancy camera so I borrowed some :) Our camera just didn't do the lights of Las Vegas justice.

The Las Vegas Strip

The Monte Carlo

The MGM Grand

The Bellagio, in the middle of a fountain display - the displays were amazing, the fountains and lights danced in time with the music. One of the ones we watched was done to the "Pink Panther" song.

There was a huge replica of the Eiffel Tower

There were the token street evangelists, and some of them even brought their children along (great picture, Jordan!)

The lights of Las Vegas were so bright that we could still see them when we had driven more the 100 miles away from it. We stopped and saw the Hoover Dam along the way, it was all lit up as well:

Day 4 of the trip definitely wiped us out because we drove so many hours and stopped to see so many things! We reached our stopping point around 1am and were soon fast asleep in our hotel room.