Our first Virginia Ice Storm

On January 22nd we went outside to find our cars covered in ice. Matt's truck had almost a 1/2 inch of ice on the windshield, which he had to hit with the end of the scraper before being able to scrape it all off.
Cami's car wasn't as bad. The back windshield had the most, but it still wasn't as thick as the truck. It helps when you've driven the car all weekend, which left the truck to gather plenty of ice for Matt.

As a side note, people here in Richmond are very different when it comes to snow. At the sight of a few snowflakes they start planning what they need to do to get home and "hunker down" for the next few hours. At Cami's school, the teachers were asking each other if they needed to call the children's parents to come get their kids, after it had been snowing for 10 minutes. And at Matt's school they were making plans for a "snow day." About ten minutes later the sun came out, the snow melted, and all was well with the world again. Silly Richmond.

Richmond Metro Zoo

On Martin Luther King Day (aka Civil Rights Day), we decided to go to the Richmond Metro Zoo.





It is a privately owned zoo about 40 minutes from our apartment.








For being a family-owned zoo, they had a good variety of animals. They also had a sky-ride which we didn't ride (a little overpriced) and a carousel (also overpriced).







But the weather was great, cloudy but warm, and the animals were pretty active.




The funnest part was when we fed the giraffes.








The path goes up a hill while the giraffe exhibit stays lower, so you are face-to-face with them.





It was pretty cool, except for the slimey, blue tongue.
















We also noticed the zoo's love of small primates. They had more exhibits of these than any other type of animal.

So, that's how we spent our holiday.

New Couch!!

We have finally stepped up from the hand-me-down couch that we got so graciously from Matt's parents. If it weren't for them, we would have been sitting on the floor for the last three and a half years. So ... thanks. We have been looking at this couch for a while now and finally got the "money" to get it. We say "money" because we don't really have any money to call our own.

We are so happy to be more than 6 inches off the ground and not sinking into the springs. It does take up a lot more room than the last one. But we both agree we'd rather have less walking space than that couch.

The funny thing is we haven't figured out what to do with the old couch so it's been demoted to our bedroom. If one of us is sent to the couch for the night, we'll be in the same room still. Hee Hee. Well, that's the most exciting thing that's happened to us lately.

680 dollars later...

We got back and unpacked our things. Some of our friends were coming back from Phoenix on the 1st so we got the trunk of the car all cleaned out to go pick them, and their luggage, up from the airport. We got in the car only to find out that it would not start. Not even so much as a crank. So we quickly called Brian and Kimberly to see what they wanted to do. It had been raining and we didn't want their luggage to get wet in the back of the truck. They decided to risk it and Matt went to get them.

So now we had a car that wouldn't start. We had it towed to a mechanic who told us we needed a new starter (which we kind of figured) and a new valve in our EVAP system (which explains the check engine light coming on).

We had to share the truck for the next three days, which was more difficult since Cami's hasn't really learned how to drive it yet.

We did a few late night practicing at the church and going to the grocery store. But she still isn't comfortable with the hills. Hates them really.

We got our car back on Thursday and things are finally back to some kind of normal.

We made it back to Richmond...finally

We left the Salt Lake Airport, after an hour of security and checking bags, to Denver on-time. But not before taking some pictures of the snow-covered Ocquirrh Mountains.





We had about a two-hour lay-over so we had some lunch only to come back and hear that our flight was delayed an hour and a half. Which means we would miss our connecting flight to Cinncinnati. Since it was a mechanic problem, the airline made us new reservations on a flight at 12:55am to Atlanta. That means we get to richmond the next morning at 11:00am Monday morning, instead of 9:00pm Sunday morning. We had to stay in the Denver airport for almost 13 hours. Needless to say, neither of us want to see the Denver airport anytime soon. We made the most of it when we...

-found a quiet area on the second floor, away from most of the people and loud speakers,
-payed for the WiFi connection and downloaded some free arcade game demos,
-watched Harry Potter on the laptop,
-listened to the iPod,
-had some dinner with our free meal vouchers from the airline,
-got an iPod official handbook.















The airline gave everyone on our flight some noisemakers and we counted down to the end of the year. Happy New Year!!




The only good thing about being delayed was the fact that they moved us up to first class. Which, we have to admit, is better than coach. We slept most of the way to Atlanta where we spent another four hours waiting for our flight to Richmond.

We got in a cab and drove back to our apartment, not ready to go back to life yet. Luckily Matt had one more day to rest before going back to school

Burk Christmas

Christmas with the Burk's included:


Meeting Little Gracie Clark, who was only 2 weeks old...







Transplanting Corey's corals from Virginia...














Playing an exciting game of Utah Monopoly with Mom, Justin, Curt, and Brittany...














Christmas Eve:
dancing, sing-alongs, soup in bread bowls, opening presents, flying lessons with Curtis, experimenting with Jake's broken orange ball, new PJs for the grandkids, good family together time...














Grandkids' Day at Bouncin' off the walls:
- the big kids seeming to have more fun than the little ones
- having cake and rootbeer
- sittin' in the big red chair (Maya pretending to be Santa)
- bets made to eat the most frosting (Justin won MMmmm...)