Here is my blog from last week. Trying to catch up!

Well we certainly enjoyed the Superbowl on Sunday. Too bad it wasn't the Ravens playing. They came pretty close but we were embarassed to see them lose to the Steelers in their last game. Everyone here on the east coast said we should cheer for the Steelers in the superbowl since they are in our league, but it is hard to support such a dirty team. And since Tom's side of the family has a strong love for the Packers having lived in Wisconsin we just couldn't resist. Of course we served brats at our little party. And I don't think Christina A. should get off so lightly by messing up the National Anthem. Everyone, including Tom said she was nervous and it can happen. I mentioned that Allison and I sang the National Anthem with the girl scout choir at the Orioles baseball stadium and we did not screw up! We actually take the time to practice and we have to memorize songs all the time and sing in front of large crowds too(OK, maybe not as big as the superbowl crowd). But come on.

We almost had our own football faux pas. Tom had invited most all of the neighbors for a Superbowl football party last month but then he heard he was going to be traveling to LA that night. He had to go around and tell people that the party was cancelled. Except he didn't get to everyone. Then, amazingly at the last minute the meeting was cancelled! Something apparently had come up. Gee, can't imagine that one of the guys actually looked at the calendar and noticed that the Superbowl was scheduled for the very same night as their meeting. Anyway, there were still people that had not gotten the word that our party was cancelled and were planning on coming over. Tom did not feel like watching the big game with a bunch of kids running around our house, so he continued to uninvite the neighbors(at times with my email address!). I don't mind if the kids want to blame mom for something, but it is not ok when the husband does it! Anyway, we decided to just invite our neighbors Dan and Gloria and their two older kids as well as our friend John over for dinner and football. It made for a nice relaxing evening(except for the yelling). I hope we didn't disappoint anyone. We had tons of food since I overbought supplies just in case Tom missed someone and they came over anyway. Less grocery shopping for me during the week!

Not only was Tom's trip cancelled, but so was Allison's field hockey. They played last Sunday but were off this week. They even cancelled the 515 Sunday night mass(I bet if women were priests the mass would not have been cancelled!)

Speaking of mass, I was glad I rechecked the kids altar server schedule since they had to serve Sunday morning. Did you know that the word salary came from the word salt? In Jesus's time, salt was used as payment since it was very valuable. Hence the word salary. You just never know what you are going to learn in church!

We also had another busy scout weekend. Scott had his last cub scout meeting and we had a guest Scoutmaster come in and talk about the scouting program-the last requirement to advance to boy scouts. Afterwards we all went over to Shadowland for a few games of laser tag. I left Tom home to clean and I played with the parents against the kids. We are really terrible. We parents scored 2000 points total to the kids 22000! At least I did not suck the worst! I was 17th and then 11th out of 25. We had a lot of fun! Tom stayed home and decided to rearrange our play room. We can't agree on where the furniture should go. We needed someplace to move our wall unit. If you recall Tom bought a huge flatscreen tv that did not fit in the existing wall unit in our family room at Christmas. So we had to buy a new cabinet to set the tv on, which meant the old wall unit had to go. It is chock full of family photos, records and memorabilia, so I don't really want to get rid of the furniture. We just could not agree on where it should go. Tom thinks it blocks his corner fireplace on the large wall in the playroom just around the corner, so he pulled apart the kitchen cabinets and countertop he got from Matt and Di that was holding his first large screen tv. Instead he disassembled the cabinets and tried to fit the other wall unit in its space. But the wall unit is too long and did not fit so he had it spread around the room in pieces. It looked terrible and there was a jumble of cabinets, countertop and large screen tv with no place to go in the middle of the room. So then he moved the wall unit to the opposite wall, put the cabinets and countertop back in its original space and then had no place for his pinball machine. Now he has decided to sell the pinball machine and give away one of the tvs to our neighbor. I tried to convince him to allow me to have a design consultant come in and make recommendations on where to put the furniture. We have two neighbors with their own interior design consultants. Tom said he wouldn't listen to them either. This coming from the guy who painted my laundry room 'spongebob yellow'. And he decided the pinball machine is too high maintenance anyway. So I guess we are at a standstill for now since I can't rearrange the furniture myself(it is too heavy). He also cut down the cabinets and countertop and is using a wooden box that we had in college to stack the xbox and games on. I wanted to know if I should get out the milk crates too. At least it is just the playroom.

And speaking of playing, on Sunday afternoon I dropped Scott off to an afternoon of bowling with his entire school. This was the first year I did not volunteer! Boy did that feel good! I think we have plenty of volunteer hours. Tom spent all day Friday covering the info for the school science fair and I volunteered to help out at the teacher's luncheon by making dessert. We were celebrating catholic schools week. And our school was chosen to be a STEM school-a school that excels in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math programs for elementary kids. It was one of 7 Baltimore catholic schools chosen. I think it means more work for Tom!

Speaking of work, I survived my yearly review. No mention of snow and kids, although our new boss has been on a roll lately telling everyone their families are second place and get in the way of work. Especially the kids. (she has her own serious issues with kids by the way-they are just older). I was just happy to see a decent review. And as if I don't get enough of work, one of our coworkers just found out she has a broken foot(stress fracture) and will be off for two weeks so they were asking me to come in and help on Friday. I had a doctor appointment in the morning, so I went into work in the afternoon.

Of course while I was driving to work I got a call from the appliance repair office that my motherboard for my dishwasher had just arrived. It has taken over a month to get the part! So now I am scheduled for a repair next week. And I am sure they will ask me to come into work. But I like the extra hours since now that I am salaried for 32 hours, I get paid double time for any work over 32 hours(and I only have to work 4 hours!). Sweet!

The extra funds will come in handy if anything else decides to stop working around the house! And for Easter break. We just sat down and finalized our travel plans. Tom had a few free tickets from Southwest and if he doesn't use them he will lose them. We looked at returning to LA and traveling to Florida. We decided Florida had the best travel times. They block out many days when you cannot use the free tickets(of course). Since it usually takes about 2 1/2 days to drive down to Florida, we decided it would be better to spend our time flying and get more vacation time. It is only about a two hour flight to Tampa. And this way we can spend Easter Sunday with Tom's parents. See you both soon!

ON a sad note we lost one of our gerbils this weekend. Allison's gerbil Gwen finally went after a few weeks of struggling. Scott still has a very sweet gerbil named Yoshi. They were brother and sister.

And on a happier note, Happy 21st Birthday to Eric! What a nice way to spend your birthday weekend, watching the Packers win the superbowl. They have a lot of cool Superbowl merchandise to buy. And I sure hope that groundhog was right about spring being just around the corner.