Wordless Wednesday – Sally
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Mardi Gras – Mardi Paw
Today is Mardi Gras – or Fat Tuesday. It’s the day before Ash Wednesday; a day to enjoy feasts and frivolity before the seriousness of the Lenten season.
We actually celebrated Mardi Gras a little early at our favorite restaurant, Cafe Roux, where they hosted “Mardi Paw” with a local boutique pet store & bakery. Sunday morning found us outside the store with about 30 other dogs dressed in their best costumes for a parade led by a dixieland jazz quartet.
Sally picked up Third Place for her costume. This included some expensive dog treats and a gift card to Cafe Roux. Sally seemed to have a great time – and the cold weather didn’t seem to bother us that much because we were having fun, too.
Brunch with mimosas and Bloody Mary’s completed the morning. Despite the plan to attend church later in the day, it seemed completely wrong to be enjoying parades, good food, and alcoholic drinks on Sunday morning. Regardless, we had a lot of fun!
Happy Birthday, Emily
Emily celebrates another birthday. The celebration started several nights ago with dinner for her friends at Buca di Beppo, an Italian restaurant that serves family style platters of awesome pasta. The following morning found us at Cafe Roux for the Mardi Paws parade with Sally entered among many other dogs. Dressed in a tutu, angel wings, and Mardi Gras beads, she took 3rd place among the large dog competitors. We had brunch at the Cafe Roux with Grandma & Grandpa Maag.
Sunday afternoon found Emily at the store picking out a new phone – much to her surprise. Because of the restrictions on who she is allowed to text, she’s not reached the astronomic numbers that Anna achieved when she got her phone.
Happy Birthday, Emily. We love you so very much!!!
Happy Valentines Day
Happy Valentines Day to all of our friends and family.
We celebrated ours early the other night by taking the girls to see the Justin Bieber concert/movie “Never Say Never”.
Image from Getty Images
My trip to the Dominican Republic
Once again, the blog has been silent. However, this time I have a good excuse. I took a trip to the Dominican Republic with a group of friends from the on-line cigar community. I hooked up with CigarTourism.com to be guided through many cigar factories and fields and be taught about the production of premium handmade cigars.
This was technically a birthday gift from Linda for my 40th birthday – a great gift, indeed.
The weather was warm (80 degrees) and I didn’t need any sunscreen because we were mostly inside or in shade. It was a great getaway from work. More importantly, I missed the snow blizzard of the season that crippled much of the country.
To read about my visit – click on “D.R. Trip Pics” at the top of the page. This will take you to a collection of albums that are individually annotated.
Enjoy.
Wishing the Cats could play better basketball
So the Kansas State Wildcats started out ranked preseason nationally at number 3 and picked to win the Big XII. There’s been stumbling and bumbling and now they are out of the polls and 10th in the Big XII. Ouch.
We’ve never been huge basketball fans, but the improvement under Frank Martin over the past few years interested us and we’ve been hooked.
Jacob Pullen and Curtis Kelley had some off-court issues with some impermissible benefits at a Manhattan Dillards. In fact, their first suspended game was the game we attended here in Kansas City – a game we lost. We’ve lost several more since then. Unfortunately, there were many that doubted we deserved such high preseason rankings – seems like they may have been right.
Here’s hoping we can get better and start winning more games.
image from www.kstatessports.com
Blast from the way back past
That is Linda in the picture. Her mother was using her new Christmas present to convert slides into digital images and sent along the picture to remind Linda of just how cute she was.
Not only was she cute, but I think it’s important to note that she enjoyed camping at one time.
Snow days
So school was called off pretty quickly yesterday evening as the snow began to accumulate and cause lots of problems on the roads. After several snow days last week, it seems the girls are hardly back to school. However, it did give all the ladies of the house to catch up on “Cupcake Wars” and “Top Chef”. Staying up much later than usual, Emily and Sally used part of their snow day to catch up on sleep.
As predicted, I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk a total of six times before I went to bed at 2:30. Don’t think I was up all night shoveling – no, I was over at a friends house playing darts and enjoying a toasty warm garage. However, when I got home a little after 1:00, the snow had stopped. Cranking up the ipod, I shoveled several driveways (ours and some neighbors). I may not have been on the bike, but I definitely got my exercise in for the day.
Linda’s piano studio has been hit with cancellations due to snow and sickness, so the lessons have been fewer over the past few days. Make-up lessons loom on the horizon.
Wherever you are – stay warm and safe. Spring is just a few months away!
Here’s a view from our garage early on in the evening; only half of the snow had fallen by this time.
It’s that time of year again
The Girl Scout cookies have arrived – and most of them are actually delivered. The past 5 years I’ve had to haul the cookies in the back of my car back and forth to work because only a few people would be there each shift. Now that I have a usable office at the hospital, I am able to leave all the cookies there.
So proud of the girls for getting out in the neighborhood – selling and delivering cookies to our neighbors. I know that they’re a welcome sight each January (even if these darn cookies destroy most New Years resolutions).
Perfect end to a stretch of shifts
So, it’s 2:30 in the morning as I write this and I’m about to complete a long stretch of shifts in the ER. This was supposed to be my day off, but some scheduling problems led to me needing to fill in one more night shift. Too bad because I was supposed to go with the family to Manhattan to see the KSU Women’s basketball team play. Everyone went and the team won – I’m glad they got to go.
I’ve got a 24 hour reprieve before I’ll be back at it again. As the view out the front of my ER doors shown in the picture above, it looks as though I’ll be spending some of that time shoveling driveways and sidewalks when I get home.