Global Warming my @$$!

What ever individual suggested that the Earth is going through Global Warming obviously never lived in Buffalo! There has been snow and freezing temperatures at least once a week since Christmas. This is the view out our back door to our deck. When will it be Spring? The forecast is calling for another snow storm Monday night. Goodie, can't wait to shovel again! Our Florida vacation at the end of March can not come soon enough. If anyone, like y'all in the South, want some snow, let me know. You can come help yourself or I will ship it to you!!

On to more pleasant things. Last weekend we had surprise visitor, which we really enjoyed! It is always great to have visitors! Jenn, Sam, Gracie and Alex came for a visit. We enjoyed some time at the house and then went to lunch at Pearl St., which is one of our favorite spots to take visitors for a meal when in Buffalo.

Miss Gracie is getting so big. It is so hard to believe she will be three in April.

Mr. Alex is getting big too, he will be giving Uncle Timmy a run for his money on the football field and in the weight room.

Not much else is going on in Buffalo. We are doing little things here and there for Tator Tot's arrival. Today we cleaned out the soon to be nursery. All it needs now is paint, molding, lights, functioning closet doors, furniture and.....Oh, a baby!
We are starting to discuss some possible names for Tator Tot. We each come of with our idea of the perfect name, but usually that gets a big "NO!" from the other. I have come up with some good ones (I thought). Such as (in no particular order):

• Jordan (boy or girl)
• Chuck Norris
• Rocky
• Jorge Posada
• Hey You

I am not sure why Teresa does not like my name choices (yes, I know they are all boy names).
Teresa is feeling good. She has a healthy appetite these days, something that I have never seen in our 10+ years together.

Baby Update

By popular demand, here is a baby update for everyone!
We are 17 weeks pregnant now and the baby is the size of an outstretched hand according to my book. It's amazing how fast the time is flying now.
Baby Hall is doing very well, as is his momma. I definitely popped last week. My patients all started to ask if I am pregnant and I actually had my first stranger ask me as well, so I must be starting to show a little more. My days of buttons and zippers are starting to dwindle and I'm moving into more elastic waistbands.
I have started to feel some movement which is really neat. Tater tot seems to prefer my right side and always moves the most after I eat. Dennis keeps trying to feel it too, but I think the little one needs to kick a little harder before Daddy starts to feel it. I'm feeling pretty good in general, except I didn't realize how bad pregnancy affects immunity. I've had nothing but colds or the flu for the past 2 months. Oh well, tis the season I suppose. I am very hungry now too, which Dennis thinks is very funny for some reason.
We had a doctor's appointment last week and got to hear the heartbeat with the doppler (which was so cool!) The midwife was surprised at how easy it was to find and it was very loud. His/her heartbeat was in the 160's at my appointment. Next visit is the halfway point and the big ultrasound. Even though we're not finding out the sex, we will get to see the baby on the screen for quite awhile.

Ahhh Organization!

One of our New Years resolutions this year is to organize and get rid of the clutter in our house. It is so easy to accumulate things and start to throw them wherever. We kept saying "oh we should put shelving here," or we should get a tote for that stuff" but we never did it. Case in point: our soon to be nursery is a room full of junk. We are going to have to tackle that at some point. This weekend, we decided to start small with the pantry.This is the pantry before. There's a few issues going on here.
1. The big clunky wood shelves were taking up a lot of space themselves
2. The spacing of the shelves was not maximizing the space. We also couldn't stand up boxes of cereal, as you see on the top shelf.
3. The tallest shelf is the top, which was hard for me to reach
4. Our economical "Big Bag O'Dog Food" took up most of the space on the bottom
These may seem like trivial issues, but when you're in the pantry multiple times a day (which I have been more and more these days) it gets pretty annoying.So of course we ripped it all out! All the food got to live on the dining room table for a little while and we went to Home Depot to get new shelving. Here's my little handyman starting to install the new shelves.Here the end result. I am really happy with how it turned out. Here's the positives of this project:
1. More efficient use of space. This is the biggie. I put everything in and had plenty of room for after we go grocery shopping tomorrow.
2. It forced us to throw away all the old food that gets shoved to the back of the pantry. You know, like the half opened bag of tortilla ships from Halloween and the 2 year old lemonade mix.
3. It also forced me to organize my cookbooks and recipes. This was long overdue, as I had allrecipes.com papers strewn all over the pantry before.
4. I love the little baskets in the second picture. It nicely holds my pasta and our Luna/granola bars for easy access to snacks.
5. We put the dog food in a Rubber maid container on the bottom. This saved space, looks neater, and also keeps Miss Molly's chow fresher.

All in all, I think we had a good start to our organization. Of course we started with food, because that is very important to us. Now we just have the rest of the house to go!

2009 International Bowl

This past weekend we went to Toronto with a bunch of our fellow UB Alumni to watch the University at Buffalo Bulls play the University of Connecticut Huskies in the 2009 International Bowl, UB's first bowl game in school history. For those of you that follow UB athletics or went to school at UB know that the football team has been the laughing stock of Division I football since its inception in 1999.
When we were attending UB in the early part of the 2000s, many people only went to the football games to see the halftime show (Shaggy, Village People, Tony Hawk) or to see the other team (Syracuse, Rutgers). This year, fans were going to see the Bulls as Turner Gill has turned the UB Bulls from duds to studs. UB earned their spot to play in this game by pulling an upset over nationally ranked #12 Ball State for the MAC Championship. Finally, a sports team, other than the Bisons and Bandits, has won a championships for Buffalo. Maybe the Bills and Sabres should take some notes.

Anyways, two car loads of us drove up to Toronto on Saturday for the noon kickoff. When I purchased the tickets from the UB ticket office I had no idea where we would be sitting, since the tickets were general admission to the Buffalo Fan Section.

Well, our seats were not to bad......

Yes, that is the endzone over my left shoulder. We were front row. It was great! Everything happened in at this end of the field. Like UCONN turning over the ball 5 times in the first half with fumbled kickoff returns.Some of the crew that went up to the game with us. There is another row of friends behind us, but I could not get everyone in the picture.

This is UB junior tailback, James Stark, diving over the goal like to put UB up 20-10 in the 2nd quarter. UB went on to have a 20-17 lead going into halftime. Not bad for playing the school with Donald Brown, the #1 rusher in the nation.
Here UB QB Drew Willy takes on the snap.

After a questionable interception in the Buffalo endzone that was run back 100yds for a touchdown, Greg and Kristina were in disbelief along with a crowd of, an International Bowl record, 40,184 fans, of which roughly 30,000 were wearing the Royal Blue and White of the Bulls, just witnessed in the 4th quarter to put UCONN up 38-20. There picture was taken by a photographer and going to be in the paper the next day of local paper in Buffalo. These faces said it all:

After getting home. I immediately turned on the game that I had DVR'd from the live broadcast on ESPN2 to see the interception. The play was reviewed at the game, but a replay was never shown on the big screen. After watching the the play and seeing the TV replays, the interception was clean after the UB receiver could not hold on to the ball in his endzone. If you look closely at the game and knew where we were sitting, you would have been able see us during the game.

Unfortunately, UB lost to UCONN 38-20. But, being in the Rogers Centre, you won't have know that was the case. All the fans stayed until the last second of the game. This is something I have never seen...I could not believe that the fans were sticking around to the end to make sure they did not miss a second of the University at Buffalo’s magical 2008 season.

What a great season! Thank you Turner Gill for turning UB football into a respectable and competitive force.

Christmas 2008

We had another great Christmas this year. We were able to go to Horseheads for a long weekend this year, which was a very nice change. Normally, we're rushing around from place to place trying to get everything in. This year we could relax and take our time (somewhat.)

I don't know if our families were prepared for US to be there that long (j/k)

Christmas Eve we went to church and then met Sara, Kevin, and the kiddos back at Gammy and Gampy's house. The girls were very busy the next day so we celebrated Christmas a little early. It was nice being able to focus on the kids for the night. You can see all the presents behind Natalie and Kendall and assume that they did very well.

Nolan was much better at opening gifts this year. Sara only had to help him a little bit. He's getting to be a big boy now.

Speaking of big boys, here's Mr. Alex. Christmas morning we went over to Jenn and Sam's to watch their kids open presents.

Here's Gracie showing off her new backpack. She starts school very soon!

After the kids all opened, the adults got their turn. Dennis got some tools, clothes, a running watch, and a Yankees Christmas train. I got a remote car starter, maternity clothes, and makeup. We both also got money and gift cards, which we will definitely use.

My mom is surprised here by her bling-bling earrings. My dad was also surprised a few minutes later by his long-awaited snowblower.

After all the Christmas celebrations, we spent some time with family having fun. We had a dinner and Wii night with just the girls one night. We got pizza and raced each other at Mario Cart.

We had extra controllers, so 4 of us were able to play at a time and we all got in on the action.

We also got to see friends while we were home. One nice part about visiting during the holidays is that all the out-of towners converge in Horseheads. We went out for coffee and dessert with Riz and Tahera and got to catch up with them. After that, we went out in Hanover Square and it was a mini high school reunion. It was very strange to see all these people we hadn't seen in 9 years.

It was a mostly great Christmas, but there was a couple bad notes unfortunately. Dennis's grandma was in the hospital the whole weekend so she didn't get to enjoy the celebrations with everyone. We were able to visit and exchange gifts at the hospital, but it wasn't the same. She is home and feeling much better now. Our last day in Horseheads, I got ill myself and had a bad stomach flu. I had to miss a couple days of work but I am feeling better too.

We enjoyed our Christmas but couldn't help but think about how different next year is going to be...