I Call Shenanigans

So it FINALLY snows (thank you, Laura) and it's already a holiday! Shenanigans! It's ok though. If today had been a regular school day we would have gone in on time before the snow started, sat there all day on edge just waiting for the announcement that we're leaving early, and then finally at 2:10 we would go home at regular time in the mess that had resulted from it snowing all day long. I'm actually glad that today is a day I just get to stay in and do nothing. Especially since I'm now coming down with some kind of cold (Laura, I hope you didn't send that with the snow. I read about that one and I'm just not up for it).

Since I'm home today though I had the time to install my new camera software on my computer and finally download some of the pictures I've taken! I'm so excited. They won't look as fancy as Jenn's pictures ;) because I think she has far cooler editing software than I do, and these are just straight off the camera. But they are pictures I took at Josh's cousin's 1st birthday party on Saturday. It's actually his cousin's baby. At first I felt like kind of a nerd for hauling my camera bag in there (it's the size of a small suitcase) but I ended up taking 200 pictures (!) and other than myself one of the other kids there was taking pictures on a cell phone, and I think Josh's aunt (birthday girl's grandma) was having some lighting issues with her camera. So it worked otu for the best. Here are just a few shots to give you an idea. She's SUCH a cutie-pie...

-Allison's First Birthday-

A true "Gerber Baby" face if I've ever seen one!

Also [working backwards here] Friday night I went to a bridal show with Ben and Jenna, our moms, and my sister at Turf Valley. It was way more fun than it was intended to be, mostly because Amberly, Ben and I spent the night entertaining ourselves with our usual silly antics. My mom even had a hard time not laughing at us. You may have seen the photos on my sister's blog, but if not...

Everyone: Jenna, Deby, Ben, Me, Amberly, Mom

The cute little newlyweds-to-be :)

Aaaaaand this is how siblings entertain each other [at least in our family]

And last but not least [as weekend fun goes] last night was of course our big game. We went to Josh's uncle's house as we always do for away games. It was fun to be there rooting the team on even though the outcome wasn't what we had hoped for. In typical Stealers fashion there were totally bogus calls made, we had a score of injuries including one near-devastating hit taken by our running back Willis McGahee that had him taken off the field on a back board. By that point it was adding "injury to insult." People can argue that the Stealers [and I do spell it that way on purpose] are a better team because they have better numbers, but every time we played them this season they beat us by the slimmest of margins, and had any number of bogus calls gone the other way the outcome would have been different. So are they really that much better than us? I honestly don't think they are. They barely eek out wins over us because the NFL loves to hate Baltimore and loves to love the Stealers. So what can you do? You can't win against the refs. All I can say is it was a hard fought season that no one expected to last as long as it did for us. With a rookie coach, rookie quarterback, all the injuries, bogus calls [roughing the kicker in particular last night - that was pure shenanigans], and being on the road, I think we gave them a hell of a time out there last night. Baltimore has nothing to be disappointed about this season. We could have gone all the way if a few tiny things had been different. A good example being our 3rd stringer, Stone, who kindly cost us the lead by incuring an unneccesary roughness penalty when we were on the 40-yard line and down by only 2. But what's done is done and it is what it is. We have a lot to be excited about next season with Joe Flacco and our fearless leader, Coach John Harbaugh. Rock on, boys. Can't wait til August :)

Good game, Coach

Good game, Joe

Ok, and just one more thing before I go. Does anyone else fight with Blogger when it comes to pictures?!?! I really avoid uploading pictures because it's such a nerve-racking process. What's up with having to upload them in backwards order? Why do the always go to the top no matter where you want them in the blog?? Why does all of your formatting disappear when you cut and paste a paragraph?? Why, WHY does it automatically insert 100 line-spaces between your paragraphs every time you add a picture?!?! Is it easier to add all of your pictures FIRST and then compose your post around them? Or is it better to do pictures at the end? Or as you compose? I feel like the only one who has major problems with this. Maybe I'm just easy to annoy and no one else thinks any of this is a big deal....? Haha, if you have advice please pass it on. I feel like a blog-tard (or a pic-tard??) :)