Christmas 2008

The Pihlblad kids and their spouses. Look how tall everyone is compared to Dan (that's because everyone's stepping on their tiptoes to make him feel very short)
 
The favorite Christmas gift was the Nintendo Wii Dan's mom bought for his Dad. Dan and his dad get their tennis on.
 
These 2 go at it in a round of boxing. There is some really hilarious video footage of this fight, but unfortunately it's on the Pihlblad camera, not ours.
 
Chewy is so cute, but so smelly.
 

Over Thanksgiving Pooja got sucked into the I Love Lucy marathon on TV, and ever since she's been a big fan of the show. Turns out that Lucy was born in Dan's motherland and the town has a museum devoted to her shows. We scored free tickets to the museum thanks to Dan's mom and tried to sneak a few photos of the recreated set of the show, but "No Photos Allowed" signage and the video cameras freaked Pooja out and she didn't want to get kicked out. So unfortunately we don't have any photos except for the outside. We also drove past the house that Lucy grew up in.
 
Love the: "..trespassers will be violated."
 
Look closely at Elizabeth's chair to read what is written.
 
This is Pooja's all-time favorite photo of Daniel. He was so sweet sharing with his sister.
 

Steeler Game

Pooja got Dan Steelers tickets for his birthday, so we got to see their last regular season game against their biggest rival - the Cleveland Browns.

We got to Pittsburgh with plenty of time so we took a ride on one of the 2 inclines in the city.
 
Dan is so excited in his Steelers gear.
 
The view from the top of the incline. Gotta love that brown water.
 
 

Big Ben in warm ups. He later got carted off the field with yet another concussion. He needs to learn how to walk it off.
 
Coach Tomlin is amazingly calm in the pregame, just walking around the field.
 
 
Steelers getting ready to score one of their many touchdowns in their shutout.
 

We took a boat like this to the game.
 
 
 
 

Everytime the Steelers got into the Red Zone, the Heinz bottles on the Jumbotron would spill digital ketchup and the board would light up. We love our ketchup.
 

 

This is what happens when Pooja tries to snowboard on a sled. She blames the traction on the sled, because she is clearly skilled enough otherwise to stay upright.
 

We got lots of wind in addition to snow and ice. Look how high that snow is!
 
 
It is now a common sight to see cross country skiers in the streets.
 
We finally managed to find a hill in Woodstock Park to sled on. It was pretty small, but we had fun anyway.
 

Earlier in the week Dan complained about kids sledding into streets when he was driving on the road. Today, he was one of those annoying people sledding in the street.
 
 
 
Takin it easy on the sled...at least Pooja was.
 

Snow and Ice Storm

This week has been crazy. Dan had 3 snow days from school because of snow and ice, and then this weekend the real storm hit. There's about 9 inches of snow on the ground at our house now, but it's still snowing and more is expected. It might be kind of fun if we didn't have to get on a plane in 2 days. We'll hope for the best that we can get out town.

There's so much ice everywhere.

 

This is a really thick layer of ice on the car.
 
Our cars are buried!
 
 

Our poor little flowers and plants are not liking the ice.

 
 
 
We haven't had to shovel since we lived in the old country!