How many states can you name in 10 minutes?

So, it is after midnight.  I should be asleep.  I have to leave my house for work in less than 7 hours and what am I doing... testing my 5th grade knowledge.  Or is it 4th?  

Well, Brandon and I went to one of those sites...  and it times you as you name as many of the states that you can in ten minutes.  "Ten minutes is a long time" is what I'm sure you are all thinking- to name 50 little states.  Well, try it, you just think and think and can't remember that one or two (or 6 if your Brandon- love you hun!).  

I am happy, yet still frustrated to report that I only missed one...silly Oklahoma.  My victory in this little game earns me the treat of my choice at a store as long as it's under $3.  I'm so excited!!

It's kind of fun, if you want to try click here 

Prepare to be inspired

I saw this on a friends blog and laughed and loved it.  I thought I would share.

LOVE

I LOVE this baby!! 

At our apartment our windows are huge! We have high ceilings (12ish feet) and our windows are almost that big and it's pretty but also pretty freezing cold!!  This little baby has been awesome.  It almost instantly works and it's like a wave of heat and it uses less energy.

We have an electric stove which I really like, but one thing I can't really do anymore is roast marshmallows, so I thought our little friend could help...

Sadly, it didn't work so much, but with the help of a lighter I still got my roasted marshmallow.

Maryland fun

Well these pictures are mostly out of chronological order in the blog, but I have a few pictures my family has been waiting to see so...

I was the lucky one who got to drive the UHaul from Boston to Baltimore, it wasn't too horrible. Brand and I had a good walkie-talkie system where if I needed to change lanes and couldn't cause (I was a huge bus with little side mirrors to see behind me, and the highways by New York are super squishy filled with lots of other big trucks- why we didn't go around New York, I'm not sure...) well I'd walkie-talkie Brandon and he'd get behind me then change lanes and then slow down so I could get over.  We were a good team.  Then we got to the tiny streets where we live in downtown Baltimore, we barely got the UHaul down some of them but we obviously made it.

I wish I would have pulled out the camera when we got here but we were tired from driving cross country and packing up in Boston so we just started unloading and unloading, (Thank you again and again for your help Cole!) and we couldn't get our box springs up the stairs.  Really, three smart, strongish AND creative people and there really was no way to get it up.  So Brandon took out the hammer and started smashing it...literally.  Thinking back, we probably could have been more selective in what exactly we smashed.  Well, we did finally get it upstairs to our apartment, sadly it came up in pieces... this was the most in tact part.
So, we headed to Home Depot and bought a saw, and some wood (that someone didn't think we needed to measure), and nails and set up shop.  The sawing took place on the bathroom tile and the pounding parts together took place in our room.
This was scarily what we began doing.  Lovely huh?  Lucky for us it hasn't caved in on us and the creaking of new wood has quieted a bit. I swear we are more handy than that.
This is more of the fun... As we are putting together box springs, unpacking, and organizing this is how warm it is in our apartment... 87!!!  And we tried fans blowing on us, windows open, fans sucking our hot air in and blowing out the window, 87 degrees.
at midnight!!!  Way too hot!  for midnight!  or anytime when unpacking.
Well, yahoo for being done with that fun part of our adventure.  Now we try to wake up as ourselves and not as human popsicles.  

Next time we move I think we'll end up needing a new box springs, I don't think that it will live through another take-apart and put-back-together.

Madeline, Natalie, Benny

I got to see "my girls" and Ben while we were in Boston (these are the girls that I nannied in Boston for a year and a half in 06 and 07).  It is so weird to spend so much time every day for so long being a quasi-mom and then not see them for months. I know it's not the real thing but for a year and a half I was the one to make most meals, to give hugs when they fall, to be the bad guy and not give treats if meals aren't eaten, to have throw up and snot all over you most days, to clean or need to clean every few minutes, to be the one they want when they get scared or want to tell you the song they learned at preschool.  I love them so much.  Here's some pictures while I was there.

Here they are while I was there helping at nights (Oct 07-June 08) 

And now, they're so big!  Especially Ben, he's walking and talking now (he doesn't always have fun things in his hair but the girls had their fun girly Christmas hair things out). So fun!