A Wordle.

Have you ever played with creating a Wordle? Go to http://www.wordle.net/ and click create. Then feed it a bunch of words or paste a URL of your blog or whatever. It creates a nice picture of the words that are contained in what you post and sizes the words based on frequency.

As an example, below is a link for one for our blog.


And here is an example of Moroni 10 from the Book of Mormon.

CODE RED!!!

So twice now since living here in Virginia we have experience what we like to call Code Red Days. When the weather gets bad the schools close and if it's really bad, or what they think is really bad, a Code Red is called for all the teachers. Meaning they don't have to come to school.

Our First Code Red

The first time this happened was after about 2 inches of snow fell during the day while the kids were in school. School was let out an hour early that day and then simply didn't open the next day. CODE RED! CODE RED! We can't help but snicker after shouting that.... Now, keep in mind the roads were clear that next day when the schools were closed. And by 11:00, there was no snow to see. Even then the sky was blue and clear. Drew ended up taking a half day off and we all went shopping.

CODE RED #2

Today was another CODE RED day. It started to snow last night....then some rain...then everything froze over night. Today could actually be considered a bad day. There was a thick layer of ice on everything. Our black driveway was white with ice. The back roads were still covered in ice and it was thick and frozen enough that the cars didn't break it up. Yet the main roads are just wet.

The kids love CODE RED days since they get a day off from school....and the weather is usually fine compared to Utah standards. Sure enough - by about noon is was all melted and everything was fine. So? Time for another trip.

Megan took off with some friends but the rest of us went out to lunch then to Skyline Caverns.

Not the cheapest caverns around but from the reviews we have read you need to see this one before you go see the larger caverns in Luray.

This thing looks like an eagle...can you see it?

And these crystals, called Anthodites, only exist in two other places in the world, but where discovered at this cave.

So in our house - CODE RED usually means let's go out and have some fun! It's not like the roads will be bad...ha ha ha.

Printers Chest Refinished

Drew's company normally takes the week off between Christmas and New Years. He needed to burn a few extra hours and ended up taking a few extra days prior to Christmas.

One of his projects was to refinish and old printers chest that his parents owned. He stripped it all down. Sanded out the rough spots then stained and finished it again. In the process he found a few odd things. First, while most of it appears to be made out of oak the bottom piece in the front appears to be poplar. Drew was tempted to remove it and replace it with a piece of Oak but decided against it. The back of this never looked very nice. Yet a coat of stain and lacquer did wonders and made it look really nice.

Sanding almost done and ready to be stained again. You can seethe bottom piece and how the grain doesn't come close to matching. Yet to preserve it the way he had it, Drew left this as is.

Only the top drawer has the separate spots for type. The remainder are simply big empty drawers.

Finished project. With dog posing in picture. We might just add a few legs to this. Nothing permanent mind you. What we are thinking is making a small tray with feet and simply rest the chest on top. Just to give it a bit more height.

This is a Hamilton Printer's Chest. Original hardware on the handles.

Ben's Chili and Norman Rockwell

So for the Christmas break our little Christina has been a bit sick. Yet the other day we decided to test out her stamina and run to DC for a quick trip. We started off a little late so we ended up eating lunch first. Over thanksgiving we saw something on the Food Network about Ben's Chili and decided to try it out. We actually missed the real Ben's Chili experience and ended up next door at Ben's Next Door. Same food, yet you get to sit down and relax...which is what Christina needed.

And their chili cheese fries were pretty good as well.

After lunch we jumped back on the metro and ran over to the Smithsonian American Art Museum for the Norman Rockwell exhibit which goes away January 2, 2011.

The museum is a large square building with a center courtyard. A few years ago they built a covering for the courtyard. This is actually where we spent about 30 minutes waiting in line just to get into the exhibit.

We couldn't take pictures inside of the artwork.....but here a few we gathered from the internet so you can see what we saw.

Afterwards we jumped back on the metro and headed home. Christina didn't make it very far before she was out cold.

The on the way home we stopped at one of our favorite yogurt places called Pinkberry. It's a nice replacement for our Utah yogurt stop SpoonMe that we miss.