5 year anniversary photo shoot

We are coming up on 5 years of marriage! Crazy! We haven't had any pictures done since our wedding so I thought now would be a great time to get some. I asked a friend with great photography skills if she would take them in exchange for us watching her kids sometime. She quickly agreed...a little too quickly! We had fun taking them and I love how they turned out!

Graduation day!

He's finished! He's finally finished! Husband completed his Master of Divinity and graduated! Oh happy, happy, happy, happy, happy, happy day!

With his happy graduation balloons and treats.

He got a really bad cold a couple days before graduation, which caused us to miss the church service on Friday night and the Commencement service Saturday morning. No worries, though: We watched the Commencement at home!

However, he got medicated enough to feel up to going to his actual degree presentation ceremony. Here he is getting congratulations from the director of the MDiv program.

The medal around his neck is for graduating with high distinction. The red, white, and blue cord is because he is a military grad.

With one of his professors, Dr. Roden. This is the professor who taught Husband the Hebrew alphabet song, which he then taught me. I hate them both!

Hooray for graduating!

I am so proud of Husband! He rocks!

Husband and our friend WVL, who graduated with her Bachelors degree! Way to go WVL! She was too lazy to get back into all her grad regalia.

He's pouting because now he has to get a job!

Perfect snow day

What you need for the perfect snow day:

1. A good snowfall

2. A good movie

3. Good company

4. Good soup

5. Good bread

6. A good book

Valentine's Cards: Pinterest Style

I love Pinterest! I have been a nanny for almost 10 years and I have no idea how I survived without it for so long. Ideas I would never have thought to search for now appear right before my eyes. All I have to do is login and voila: It's all right there! On the downside, it seems that every time I log in, time speeds up. After spending what I am sure is only a few minutes on Pinterest, I am always shocked to see that an hour (or two!) has passed. Must be a space-time continuum thing!

A few weeks ago, I saw these two idea for Valentine's cards and wanted to try them. The first one is what I am giving the kids I take care of (they are glow stick bracelets, in case you can't tell). The second picture is what the kids made for their parents and grandparents. I thought it was super cute when I saw it, and let me tell you, it is as cute in real life as it is on the internet. The kids loved making them. They were pretty easy to put together, although we learned the hard way that the puzzle pieces had to be coloured with markers rather than painted. The kids are very excited to give these valentine's to their loved ones.

Links to both ideas can be found here and here.


 

He's a keeper!

This is Husband, warming up and clearing off my car in the bitter cold on Saturday morning so I wouldn't have to do it. Best husband ever.

Snow Day

Last week, we finally got some snow here in Central Virginia and what a snow it was! Beautiful, large flakes of wet, wonderful snow. I can say that because I was home, cozy, warm and safe, when the snow started. Also, I did not have to go to work the next day (definitely one of the perks of working for a teacher!). From what the news said, it wasn't so wonderful for those who had to venture out during the snow, or even after. It had rained non-stop for 4 days leading up to the snow, so ice on the roads caused plenty of problems. Unlike last year's snow, this snow stuck around for a couple of days! I was so excited to wake up and see snow still on the ground.

Here are some pictures from a walk we took the morning after the snow. There is a path near us that follows a stream. It is pretty walk any time of year, but I think it is especially pretty covered in snow.

As I am posting this, it is snowing again (for the second time in 8 days!). That's more than it snowed all of last winter!

The great photo purge of 2013

See this blue storage tote? It holds years and years worth of printed pictures of my life. It has been moved from Canada to New York, from New York to Texas, and from Texas to Virginia. It is heavy: very, very heavy.

Every time we move, I say to myself "Self, you need to go through this tote and weed out those pictures!" but I never do it. Over Christmas break, I decided enough was enough. I dug the tote out from our small storage space -- okay, if I am being honest here, Husband dug it out; it weighs a million pounds --  and got to work. Well, if I am being completely honest again, the tote sat in our living room for a few days before I actually opened it. Over the course of a couple days, I went through every picture. Some pictures were from high school--trust me when I say that was a LONG time ago! I had copies of pictures that I had already put in scrapbooks. Why was I keeping those? I had about 25 pictures of Niagara Falls that looked pretty much the same. Who needs that many pictures of Niagara Falls? And, even though I have a deep and abiding love for the Mountains near my hometown, no one in the right mind needs as many mountain pictures as I had in my tote. Toss, toss, toss. At first it was difficult to put pictures in the toss pile, but once I realized that I do not, in fact, need 15 pictures of the Empire State Building, things got easier. When all was said and done, I think I tossed 250-300 pictures.

I still kept plenty of pictures, and maybe one day they will make it into a photo album. But for now they will sit in the tote, which a little lighter, but not by much.