White Christmas

Being in Wisconsin, you'd think that a white Christmas is a no-brainer, right? Well, on Christmas day Aaron sprung on me the following idea: that a truly white Christmas means that it actually snows on Christmas day. Now, I'm not sure whether I agree with this. After all, the only other time I've experienced anything remotely close to a white Christmas was in 1984: I was 10, living in Ridgecrest, CA, and it snowed on December 22nd or so. Snow in Ridgecrest is extremely rare, occurring every 4 years or so, and even then it usually shows up in February. Then it melts by 10 a.m.

That year we'd built a snowman in the front yard and not all of it had melted by Christmas. So for years I counted that as my (tongue-in-cheek, of course) white Christmas. I'll let you decide, based on the pictures below. After all, it snowed on Christmas Eve!

Here we are, touring one of the lighted parks near our home:
You can see our building in the background of this picture. Every time we come home we look to see if the kitties are hanging out in the windows. :)
And here's a sweet scene we saw on Christmas Eve. You can't really tell here, but if you click on the pic you can see that the guy had written "Will You Marry Me?" in the snow in red letters. I hope she said yes, but it was really funny because they were walking a dog, and he kept leading her back to the snow to admire his handiwork. It was all gone in a few hours -- the snow filled it in!

Cute Kitties

I have way too many cute pictures of my cats to post here -- I don't want this to become a cute cat blog! But I had to share these photos:

This is Taco, fascinated by the snow falling. Sometimes he tries to catch the flakes. Oh, that darn window always gets in the way!

Taco has always been a "window cat;" in San Diego he loved to sit by the window and watch the birds, or hang out on the balcony and watch (or attack) the birds. Our new apartment doesn't have a balcony and we were really worried he'd be too bored. But we haven't had much of a problem, and the snow helps! I wonder if he'll still be interested in spring?

No real story to accompany this one, I just love that our kitties are hanging out in their matching beds. Plus the look on Taco's face is priceless.

Vent

I hate it when you can only communicate with someone via email. Here's what happens:

Me: Hey, I'm really interested in doing this thing. You're in charge of assigning people, so let me know what I can do.

Her: Great! I think there's something coming up real soon. I'll check with the others people, but we may be good to go.

*silence for 1 week*

Me: Just wanted to check in, is that assignment available?

Her: I thought you were assigned.

Me: Um, no. At least, no one told me.

*silence*

Me: Hey there! Am I assigned?

Her: Hey, I'm attaching this document that will help you with your assignment.

Me: Thanks, that will be helpful. Once I actually have an assignment. Can you let me know when I'll be assigned?

*silence*

Me: sigh

Autumn Leaves

Autumn is my favorite season. It's a fairly short season in Wisconsin, but certainly beautiful. I managed to convince Aaron to put down his work for a few hours and check out the colors with me.

I think the orange leaves are my favorite.Aaron really got into the season after we hiked a bit -- here he is making leaf angels! It won't be long before he gets a chance to do this in snow!

Halloween Downtown

Just a little bit of Halloween spirit from our apartment. :)

Flashback: 5th Anniversary

We celebrated our anniversary in August this year even though the big date was June 28th. Why? Well, in preparation for moving, we basically had no time to celebrate such a big event. Of our final 8 weekends in San Diego, we were out of town visiting family for 6 or 7 of them. On our actual anniversary, Aaron was with his parents and brother, visiting his one surviving grandmother -- in fact, his sole surviving grandparent -- up in Washington state.

Of course, it was all worth it. And we got to go someplace new for our anniversary this year. I booked us a nice at a B&B in Door County, Wisconsin.
You say you've never heard of Door County? We hadn't either, but it's known as the Cap Cod of the Midwest. If you look at the state of Wisconsin, notice that it's shaped like a catcher's mit. Door County is the thumb. And it's beautiful. I can see why it's so popular for summer homes (and such expensive ones!).
The most important feature of the B&B was our isolated room with a whirlpool tub. The second most important feature was that they allowed pets in our room. We wanted to bring the cats because we'd only had Pickle for about 3 weeks at that point. And we have more fun when we're not worrying about them. We'd rather take pictures of them like this:
Here is a very contented Taco lounging over the fireplace.
Now, I haven't been to Cape Cod since I was ... 11? And I don't remember if they have all of the fun and bizarre sights that Door County does. Working dairies? A farm museum? Awesome pies and soft serve ice cream? Goats on the sod roof of a restaurant?
You read that right. Al Johnson's Swedish Restaurant in Sister Bay pastures goats on their sod roof from May to October. Apparently it started as a joke on Al's wedding day about 35 years ago, but it caused such a commotion and a rise in customers that Al kept them up! As you can see from this picture, the line for the restaurant is around the building.
In all, it was a wonderful anniversary. Thank you, Aaron, for making it so, and for making the past 5 years the happiest of my life! Let's go for 75 more!

Kitten Teeth!

Our kitten, Pickle, is about 4 months old and our vet told us that he's teething. At his last visit she noticed that he'd already lost two teeth. My friend Nikki found one of her kitten's teeth and she said that kittens usually just swallow their teeth so you usually never see one. So I was not prepared when I found this on my desk chair last night:


It was so big I thought he'd lost one of his claws! I put it on ol' Abe there for reference.

Don't worry, Pickle is fine. He doesn't seem to want a frozen toy or washcloth to chew on, and is still tearing around the house, chasing his favorite toys (which includes our other cat, Taco).