Oil!

Finally, a nice weekend. Did you know that we got almost a foot of snow last weekend? So much snow that they pushed VT's class start time back to 10am on Monday. Well, that was not the case this weekend. We got up to 78F, and we got outside to take advantage of it. We didn't go hiking, like normal. Instead, we changed our own oil in our cars. How exciting. It was actually pretty easy work. I only got to take one picture before I got my hands too oily to touch the camera. We are also growing some tomato plants indoors right now. We are waiting patiently to get them outside for good, but we did manage to get them into some bigger pots this weekend and get them outside to "harden" a bit. So I'm reading this, going, "wow, boring". Sometimes we just aren't that exciting, and I'm okay with that. So I'll leave you with some pictures. Maybe next week we will have a little more for you thrill seekers out there.

Ian under the car. I got under there right afterwards, and got oil all over my hands, so no more pics of this activity. My bad.

Tomato plants waiting for nice weather. Me too, little guys.

And lastly...I finished up another knit project. Here is a littled knitted cat looking thing. Pretty cute, huh? (Yeah, I can't decide either)

Ski weekend!!

So one week later, here are our ski pictures. I am sorry it took so long. I had a really busy week. I didn't get any good pictures of us skiing or of our condo, so if you have good ones, email them to me and I'll post them ASAP.

The story is, we went to Timberline Ski Resort near Davis, West Virginia for Mom's birthday, even though she doesn't love to ski. Dad, Kalow, Klayton, Oscar and I have all been there once before, so we knew what we were getting ourselves into (Oscar wasn't there this time unfortunately). Mom actually went down the mountain a time or two, Molly turned out to be a natural, and I think Mandi may have at least put on one ski. I think we all had a pretty good time, even considering our hardships: an injured hip, a busted shin, a smash into a tree and a ride down on the first aid sled, a fall down the stairs, a wipe out on the hot tub deck, an hour plus fall fest down the Salamander...am I missing anything? Overall, I think we'd all do it again. Good trip, family.

Relaxing after the first day of skiing. Everyone look at me and smile!

Prepping for Klayton and Molly's big dinner

Real men don't get sunburn. Its...windburn.

I'm not sure why or how Kalow's boxers ended up out on the deck overnight, but...here is the aftermath

Molly wins best dressed on the mountain

Hey Kalow, would you like to wear this ski mask?
Why, yes i would!

Man-Skull-Deer is real!

Zombie Love

In response to Ian's Monster Truck Valentine's Day extravaganza, I decided to knit him something lovely in return. Since Ian loves zombies (especially Left 4 Dead, lately), and I love Ian, I made him this knitted zombie. Ain't love grand?

Monster Truck Valentine's Day

Oh my boyfriend is so romantic. Valentine's Day fell on Ian's weekend this year, and he chose....Monster Truck Jam. Only southwest Virginia's finest made it to this event. We had no idea what to expect. Well, its a lot of big trucks running over little cars and pretending to race each other very short distances. We decided once in a lifetime is probably plenty. Unfortunately, the lighting in the arena was not the best for pictures, so here are the non-blurry ones we got.

All the monster trucks

Crushing Cars!!! In the air!!!

Reaching for the Star

The weather was ideal this weekend and we had to get outside. I searched through a million websites trying to find an intermediate level hike that was less than 5 miles long. I was sold when I learned that we could hike to the top of Mill Mountain and see the Roanoke Star (here's the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mill_Mountain_Star). The Roanoke Star is this giant structure that sits atop a hill that looks over the city of Roanoke. It kind of reminds me of that Jesus statue that looks over Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, but a little less awesome. So we climbed to the top, took lots of pictures, and can't wait to share them with you.

My hand drawn map. Good to have just in case.

Our destination from kind of far away. Not a great pic, but hey, we were in the car. Give us a break

Ian excited to go hiking again. Can't you tell?

Half way there.

The Star!

The description!

The view!

An alternate view!

Ian city-gazing

A much deserved water break before we head back down

So hopefully the weather stays nice enough to keep up the outdoorsy stuff for a while. I will warn you that next weekend (valentine's day, remind you) is Ian's weekend, and he is talking up some Monster Truck Rally event. It may be a Valentine's Day to remember (or forget). See you then!

Bacon's Hydroponics

Remember that indoor growth system I got for Ian for Christmas? Well...it works awesome. We are growing basil, savory herb, and some stock flowers for starters. Tonight we harvested a little basil and made some pasta sauce with it. Delicious. I'm taking a crop physiology class this semester, and I always come home and try to identify different parts of the plants growing and what kinds of roots they have and blah blah...pretty lame I know. You can even grow tomatoes and jalapenos in this thing if you buy the right kit, I'm recommending it. Very cool at home activity. I'll leave you with a picture, of course.

Basil on the left, flowers in the back, savory on the right.

Busted plans

We knew that on Sunday of this weekend it was going to be nice, I'm talking like 60 degrees. So we planned on sitting around for most of the day on Saturday and catching a fancy orchestra trio show on Saturday night. We got all dolled up, cooked a fancy dinner and wine, headed to the show and....they were sold out. We were bummed but we went home and had a movie night and it turned out to be not so bad.

We had to get outside on Sunday because the weather was, as promised, about 60. We went to the good ol' Huckleberry Trail, as we often do, because we knew it would otherwise be muddy and gross anywhere else. Neit managed to stick his head in burrs immediately, but they were easy to remove, so no haircut this time. Neit was so excited and the trail was so crowded that it was difficult to contain him. He lunged at every dog we passed, and we passed a lot of dogs. I'm glad we got our outdoor adventure in before the weather got cold again. As of right now, its snowing here. Such is life.

Da Trail

Neits new burrs

Restraining Neit from pouncing on dogs

Gorge along the trail