It's about 10 minutes till midnight so I ran downstairs real fast to wish everyone a happy new year!
It has been a very hectic week. I've been working the swing shift which makes it hard to get anything accomplished. I'm off for the next couple of days so hopefully I'll catch up on everything, including the blog.
In the mean time...I was looking through my favorite website and came across a thread that posed the question "what was the most memorable moment of 2008?" It ended up being a great exercise in remembering what has happened the last year. I went back and looked at every post on our blog for the last year and remembered some great moments.
What it boiled down to were three moments. 1) taking our vacation to Ohio, Indiana, and Texas and letting most of our family and friends meet the girls for the first time. 2) watching the girls grow up this year but specifically....watching them learn how to walk. What a treat it has been to see them make that huge milestone in their lives. 3) finally...and to end on a solemn note, having to deal with Madison very suddenly dying this year. Lisa and I still miss her daily. I honestly don't think a day has gone by where we didn't think about her and wish she was still around.
So sorry to bring everyone down a little bit there. It really has been a great year. We laughed and cried...but we laughed a lot more.
Makes us wonder what 2009 has in store for us. I hope everyone else had as much fun last year and celebrates the new year with as much anticipation as we do.
I can't post without a picture so here's another teaser of the Christmas pictures. This is actually my favorite picture from that morning. It's Katy being...beautiful. if that doesn't make you want to go out and buy a D90, I don't know what will!
...or they will be tomorrow. If there's anyone that would like to receive one that didn't get one last year, let me know. You can comment here or email me at agsinak@gmail.com
Update on Kevin, evidently the initial diagnosis was wrong. We were shocked to hear the pathology came back very different from the doctor's initial thoughts. We don't know all the details but it isn't nearly as positive as before. So continue to pray for Kevin and his family. This is a very difficult time for everyone involved.
We do have lots of pictures we need to share from this past week. I'll sit down over the weekend and catch up with the blog. Some exciting upcoming dates besides Christmas (which we are nowhere CLOSE to being ready for) is that Lisa and I will celebrate our 9th anniversary on Tuesday. Our anniversary was actually on Thursday but my schedule didn't allow us to go out and celebrate. Sam and Cindy are going to watch the girls so we can go out and have a nice romantic dinner on Tuesday.
Also, I'll be going snowboarding for the first time on Monday!! Looking forward to that. Pictures to come. Merry Christmas everyone and please pray for Kevin.
Tonight, I went to the hospital and waited with Kevin's parents, Ben and Lisa, and two other close friends while he was in surgery. All in all, I was there for about 4 hours but it had been a very long day for everyone else involved. At about 11:30pm, the doctor came out and told us the great news. Kevin had the absolute best diagnosis possible for a brain tumor. The doctor removed everything he could and believes Kevin will recover fully and only need to be monitored for regrowth of the tumor!
I have never been in a situation like this where I was in a waiting room, trying to ignore the fact that you are about to hear a life changing diagnosis for this family. I did my best to not think about all the different scenarios...but it was hard not to.
But when the doctor came in and gave us the news, we erupted in excitement. His parents asked for a group hug and he got a good one! It was an AMAZING feeling being apart of his family. Of all the people there, I probably know Kevin the least but I felt very close to his family tonight. I'm so glad I could have been there to show our support for him and his parents. It was an honor.
On a side note, I've had a good feeling about this all day. Today was the first sunny day we've had in weeks! I honestly can't remember the last time we saw so much sunshiine in one day. I really did think on several occasions that it was God telling everyone that it was going to be okay. Just like the morning I rushed home from work at 4am to take Lisa to the hospital and the Northern Lights appeared. It isn't coincidence, someone up there is really looking after us and giving us signs that we are all in His hands.
We don't know too many details but a friend of ours through Ben and Lisa suffered a seizure a couple of days ago. They found a mass on his brain that they will be removing and testing. He's going into surgery in a couple of hours. I'm going to go up there and show our support. Ben and Lisa flew up late last night from Boulder to be with him.
Please keep him in your prayers. Here's Kevin and Ben at the engagement party this summer.
Winter has returned and decorating for Christmas continues. We have the fake Christmas tree up where we want it. We're still deciding if we're going to put ornaments on it or not because it looks GREAT with just light and tinsel.
Lots of cute pictures and funny stories to share but I am exhausted tonight. I hope to make it out early in the morning and take some photos of the bright moon. I'm pretty tired already cause I got up this morning at 5am...so I'm going to call it a night without any additional photos or videos. Sorry.
I hope everyone is having a wonderful Monday morning. I'll catch up soon.
Well, everything is up. Well, almost. Lowe's has decided that the new carpet will not be installed until after Christmas so after setting up our fake tree downstairs last night, we have moved it all upstairs. Great fun....thanks Lowe's.
So tonight officially marked the beginning of Christmas spirit for us. It hit me like a wave. We've had snow on the ground for the better part of the last 2 months so the weather really doesn't dictate the holiday spirit for me. We shopped for a Christmas tree for the first time in our lives INDOORS!! That hurt. It's a bit sacrilegious but we had to get our first fake tree of our lives this year. Last year's tree was just way too dry after only a week...we couldn't imagine doing that again, especially how curious the girls are going to be. The needles falling off...ahhh, no thanks. So we went for the big fat fake tree this year. We looked at a couple places but if you're going to buy a fake tree, you gotta buy it from the ultimate fake tree provider....Sears!!!
So we went to Sears and found our dream fake Christmas tree lined up in the middle of a field of other fake Christmas trees. Our 500 pound Sears associate helped us choose the perfect one and rung me up in the comfort of 72 degrees with secular Christmas music blaring over the loudspeakers.
The whole experience was a little odd to both of us...so thank goodness, I brought the camera with us so we could share it with everyone! I mentioned that the temperatures have been a little on the "warm" side the last couple of days. Well mix that with a nice solid pack of snow on the roads and some wind...and you get a perfectly polished ice covered road. It looks like a zamboni drove down our streets and smoothed everything out. Without studded tires, it would be nearly impossible to drive on. And yes I took those pictures while driving. This last one is on my driveway. We got home and I wanted to show how slickery it is. Here is our fake tree on top of the car. Okay, we really didn't drive home with a fake tree on top of the car. But we really wanted to! I couldn't resist putting the tree up there and "faking" the picture once we got home.
More pictures of the actual decorating tomorrow. I hope all of you have gotten into the spirit because I certainly have!!!
...well, warm is a relative term. I'll define warm for my purposes as being above freezing. Above freezing in December = YUCK! What a mess! Roads thawed out and are approaching undrivable in the neighborhood. So far, the major roads are still okay but with colder air coming soon, it's going to be EXTRA slickery (that is Lisa's word) soon.
So what else have we been up to this week? Not too much. The girls are very active and itching to get outside. Before it got "warm", we took them out for a walk. We were a couple houses down the street when I turned around to see a moose walking through our yard. The girls were SO excited. We got lots of "wows" and "whoahs". We stayed there and watched the moose for 10 minutes or so until she walked away. The girls couldn't understand why we couldn't get closer. They got a little upset toward the end but now they are constantly going to the balcony window and signing moose and looking. It's too bad cause last night and tonight after they went to bed, there was a big bull that has been walking around.
This first picture is from last night when Lisa and I stayed up way too late to watch a movie and after the movie was over, this guy walks through our driveway and down the street to the neighbors house. Tonight on my way home, the same bull and a cow were hanging out about a block from the house. I grabbed the camera and got these couple of pictures of the bull. The last one you can see how big he is. Not nearly as big as the one I saw by the office but definitely a stud for the area. Bored with the moose photos/stories? Too bad! We love'em! But you probably want to hear more about the girls. I know I'm missing something but I can't remember anything exciting that's happened this week. These next photos were the girls looking through our photo albums. We have 10 photo albums...from back in the day before digital cameras...that the girls have access to and LOVE to look through. They usually are on the ground when they're flipping through but this day, we gave them the albums on the couch and....photo-op. I was going to narrow down which photos I shared but they are all great so you get to see them all. Here's a quick photo that I took when the lights were out. I know it looks pretty bright in the picture, it's the camera. It's just too good! And a pic from our bedroom window of the snow in our backyard. I think I took this picture at about 3:30pm if you're wondering. And for those of you lucky fans that are still with me. I have a couple videos to share. The first is the girls goofing off one morning. They love their music and LOVE to dance. Unfortunately, they lose interest as soon as they see the camera is out but in those first couple of seconds, you can see them shake their thing.
The second video is non-girl related...but still funny. I have to set it up a little. We were watching the Texans-Packers game (my favorite two teams) and not really listening to the game, the announcer caught my attention with some high-pitched screaching. I had to rewind to figure out what he was talking about. Ends up it's pretty hilarious.
The punter for the Texans on the play before thought he was going to get his punt blocked so he tucked the ball and started running upfield. Surprisinly, he was able to get a first down. The announcer is reliving that moment when he decided to tuck the ball and run. Hilarious. The video isn't really necessary, just listen to what the announcer is saying.
Later in the game, the same announcer said after a fumble "the devil lives at the bottom of that pile". If you know football, you'll understand that comment. I don't know who that guy was but he was pretty funny.
So happy Monday everyone. Christmas decorations will be going up on Tuesday so stay tuned!
I forgot that we had an earthquake last week too. It was our first in a while. I was at work when we started feeling the room shake, I had time to pick up the phone, call Lisa, and her answer and we could both still feel it going on. It was a 5.2 that was pretty far away from us but that's a pretty significant size earthquake so no wonder it lasted so long. No worries, it didn't wake up the girls.
I promised some videos and funny stories. Well, sorry on the funny stories. I am currently having trouble getting my new camera to copy pictures over...SAM!!! I need help!!!
In the mean time if you need a laugh, read Sam and Cindy's latest entry in their blog. If you are on the fence...it will explain why these two are our best friends. Well written Cindy. This is GOLD!!!
And now for some recent videos. The first is the night that it was snowing pretty good. The girls were amazed and kept going to the window and looking outsides and saying "Moh?" and "Woooow". Unfortunately I didn't get any of the mohs on video but I finally did get a wow from Alyssa.
The second one...well it's just Alyssa being funny. I have NO idea where they learned this from. I'm sure it was Lisa. Be sure to turn up the volume on this one....LOUD!!
Tonight we learned a lesson in the importance of a generator. We lost power at 6:45pm on the eve of the coldest night of the season. When we lost power, it was 6.7 degrees above zero. 8 HOURS LATER!!!! the power just came back on and it's 1.7 degrees outside. Inside, the temperature has dropped to 60.8 degrees.
The girls did pretty good initially but woke up about an hour and a half ago. We're still trying to get Alyssa back to sleep. At least it won't be as cold anymore.
What do these things have in common? It's the highlights from this past week.
We've been having some internet issues so I haven't been able to download any pictures until now. So let me do a quick recap of the week.
I've been working night shifts most of the week and it has been an active weather pattern. We had a couple of snow storms that dropped a couple inches each early in the week and then yesterday and today, we got another 7 inches at the house. The roads are totally covered now but not too slippery. The early season snowfalls are always the worst to drive on. At some point, I'm going to have to dig my Bronco out of the snow. I've been driving Lisa's truck for a couple of weeks now and haven't taken the time to wipe the snow off the Bronco. Yeah...that's gonna be a pain in my rear at some point.
The girls have been outside a couple times to walk on the 'moh'. They LOVE it. It will be getting real cold the next couple of days so it might be a while before they get to go out again. How cold is real cold? Depending on the cloud cover, we could go below zero at night with high temperatures only reaching the single digits.
Enough weather...Thanksgiving was GREAT! Working nightshifts and juggling babies, we weren't planning on doing anything big for dinner. Fortunately, we got a couple invites and ended up going next door to our neighbors. The girls next door (Hannah is the oldest at 11 and Andrea is 7) LOVE our girls and were happy to entertain them while the adults stuffed themselves silly. It was an awesome dinner. Andrea took Katy back to her room and brush her hair. It was all very cute. Katy loving on the bunny. Last night Lisa and I were getting our dinner ready. The girls had disappeared back to what we thought was either our bedroom or their bedroom. Ended up someone (most likely me) left the bathroom door open...and this was the result. Katy was unwinding the toilet paper while Alyssa flushed the toilet over and over. There isn't a good story about the moose. Lately, we've had quite the traffic jam of moose going through the neighborhood. No good pictures...gotta undertand we're down to only 6 hours of daylight a day. The sun rises at 9:45am and sets at 3:50pm and we're still losing almost 4 minutes a day of daylight.
I also had another funny story and a couple videos to share but ran out of time this evening before I had to leave for work. I'll get those posted Monday. Hope everyone had a great holiday. Time for Christmas decorating!!!
Can you believe I've posted 236 times in the last 2 years? That seems like a lot.
Well winter is in full effect here. We've had a couple light snow events the last two days and it has been pretty cold this last week. We hit our lowest temperature of the season so far, 3.4 degrees above zero. Yeah, that's pretty cold. The girls are still anxious to get outside as much as they can. We went out walking again with the girls the other day and I think the temperature was only about 10 degrees but that didn't slow them down at all. It takes us about 20 minutes to get them ready...so many layers go on that they can't really put down their arms.
So the other day while it was snowing, Lisa saw a moose walk down the street and kneel down in our neighbors driveway to eat some snow. Kinda interesting if you've never seen a moose kneel. Of course the girls had to get out on the balcony to see the moose with their own eyes. And later they wanted to see the pictures of the moose so this is me flipping through the camera to show them the pics. The rest of the pictures I was just messing with the camera. I'm learning all about the new toy and how to adjust the settings to take the best pictures in difficult light situations. The first one is Katy, then Alyssa, and the rest is Katy while she was laying down getting her diaper changed. She was watching a sign language dvd and completely interested in that and not me so I just kept taking pictures and playing around....and obviously zooming in a little more each time. AND A VIDEO!!! I took this yesterday while Lisa ran to the store. I took the video because there was a bit of a meltdown going on and I was thinking how we don't have enough videos like this. They (especially Alyssa right now) are throwing more mini-temper tantrums. Alyssa was heading in that direction when I got out the camera and turned on the video. It's funny to see their reaction when they realize I was taking a video. They both just look so pathetic.
So we just enjoyed a fun evening of the Office, 30 Rock, and Survivor. Nate, our new friend here in Anchorage, came over for the first time and was able to experience some of my less than stellar cold weather bbq'ing. I say less than stellar because I was a little too interested in the socializing rather than focusing on the food so I managed to slightly overcook the chicken. GRRRRRR. I'll get it next time. Anyway...we still managed to have a good time. The girls were extremely entertaining tonight too. They warmed up pretty fast to Nate and even started their evening shenanigans a little early.
On to the pictures, these are from just a couple of days ago. This is the day before it got pretty cold. We took the girls out and let them walk around the cul de sac. They LOVED it...especially Katy. Katy immediately took off so I had to follow her while Alyssa warmed up to the idea of walking on the "moh". It wasn't long before both were walking as fast as they could up the street. The girls checking each other out in their snow suits. You may have to click on this last one to get the full affect but it's the girls' footprint in the snow next to mine. We thought it was a pretty cool picture. I forgot to mention that these 9 pictures are ALL of the pictures I took that day. No deletes...no edits. We can't take a bad picture with this camera.
