Why, yes, I'm biased, but at least I was rooting for the classy side

Two weekends ago, K and I went to the Army-Navy game with friends. Two of K's close friends are Army grads, and one of them even played football while he was there. We made plans to go to the game together back in August, so we'd been looking forward to it for a long time!

Evidently so had the city of Philadelphia (where the game was held).

The game is one of the biggest rivalries in college football -- and some would even say it's the biggest rivalry. There are so many neat traditions involved in the game, so it was really cool to see them ...

... like how (similar to OU-texas) the fans are divided at the end zones, with one team on the left and the other on the right ...

... and watching the Cadets march onto the field. First Army ...

... and then Navy.

The West Point Cadets were very intimidating in how structured and serious they were. They chanted and sang in unison once they were all on the field.

Navy, on the other hand, was much more relaxed. They found ways to get little jabs into their portions of the ceremony. (As you can see, the Cadets on the front row had letters that spelled "BEAT ARMY" as they faced us. When they did an about face, the letters on their backs read "GO NAVY.")

The photo below was taken just before the game started. Navy had won the game the last 7 years in a row, so they were eager to rub in the past and their prediction for the day's result. As you can imagine, it got quite a cheer when they turned their backs to Navy's side. The second photo below shows the West Point Cadets staying classy, with nothing on their backs.

Instead of marching onto the field the way they marched off, the Naval Academy Cadets broke rank and ran.

Evidently another big tradition with this game is the game balls. There are two -- one from each school. Every year, the marathon team from both schools runs the ball from the school to the football field. It takes several days, and each member of the team completes a part of the run. Unfortunately, I didn't know about this tradition until game day, so we missed the running of the ball. The marathon team members were brought onto the field, though. I couldn't believe they had them run onto and off of the field. I'd be sick of running by that point!

One of the final big events (probably the biggest) before the game was having the Golden Knights land on the field. Very cool!

There was a flyover, of course.

Then, it was finally time for the game.

And unfortunately, we saw a lot of this.

West Point was leading 3-0 at the half. It was along first half, so we definitely didn't feel relieved, but it was nice to have the lead.

Halftime was a little different than what I was used to seeing. Navy's band was just a little bit smaller than the band I was in at OU (I'm pretty sure our clarinet section alone wasn't much smaller than this). What's funny is their band performed "Batman," which we did when I was in band at OU!

I couldn't believe it in the 4th quarter when the West Point male cheerleaders started benching the girl cheerleaders. Evidently that (like pretty much everything in this game) is tradition, too. Impressive!

Unfortunately, this silly mascot fight was the closest Army came to winning (well, aside from the coin toss).

When the game was over, Navy's bold pregame prediction proved true. A final tradition of the game involves each team standing behind the other as a sign of respect as both school's song is sung at the conclusion of the game. First, the winning team waits for the other to sing in front of their Cadets. Then, they all go to the other side of the field to sing to their Cadets. It was a display of sportsmanship that was really neat to see.

This may not have been the most interesting game I've been to sports-wise, but it was definitely one of the most memorable.

Feelin' that holiday frenzy

I have been a busy girl lately! It's finally my last week of work, and it couldn't come at a better time. Things have been sooooo slow. It's been maddening. I spend my days surfing the web for news stories, trying to find something to make the day go faster. I wind up spending more time on facebook than I care to, since I manage to work my way through the day's headlines pretty quickly. By the time I get home, I want nothing to do with the computer.

Anyway, I meant to do this a couple weeks ago, but I wanted to share our fun Christmas cards. We made two versions. It started out as a joke: Once we had selected our cards and chosen our photo to go on them, I asked K what he wanted them to say. He blurted out something silly, so I put it on the card to call him on his saracasm.















We thought it was so funny that we went ahead and ordered it! We got the minimum amount (12) and sent them to friends we knew wouldn't be offended or worried about having to hide it instead of putting it out with their other Christmas cards.

Everyone else got the standard well-wishing card.

We were very, very careful to make sure we sent the goofy card to the right people. I told K we'd never do the dual-card thing again, since I was worried we'd mess up.

The comments we got in response to the silly card, though, were pretty good. Maybe we will make it an annual thing!

You did NOT see this post

This has been a hectic week! K and I went to PA last weekend, and we chose this week to begin 5:30 a.m. workouts. It's been nice to have the evenings free to do nothing (without feeling like a bum for it), but it's also meant I've been a little more tired and haven't been on the computer so much. This too shall pass. :)

So we were in PA last weekend for a nice family tradition of K's. It was actually his first time to participate and mine.

K's grandmother came over from Italy as a teenager. She died when K was stationed in Korea in 2000 or 2001, so a few years before I came along. I've heard lots of stories about her, though, and most of them have been about how amazing of a cook she was. She did it all with her hands; she used no measuring cups or measuring spoons. Her food was authentic Italian, and its legend lives on in the family.

K's mom continued making her mother's recipes. The one she stuck with most was her mother's ravioli. When K's mom passed away in 2006, her sister and her husband (K's aunt & uncle) carried on the recipe. It was just the two of them the first year, but the next year, K's other aunt & uncle joined, along with K's dad. It's grown each year since. And so has the amount of ravioli they've made.

This was the first year K wasn't deployed during the ravioli fest, so we were excited to join in on the fun.

We made 1,124 individual raviolis.

The pictures I'm sharing now were met with quite a bit of protest from K's uncle. Since this is a family recipe, we have to make sure the secrets aren't compromised. I assured him that these photos wouldn't give away what goes into the composition of the ingredients. Only the assembly is shown here.

The most sauce I've ever seen at one time, and the biggest bowls and pots I've ever seen. They don't mess around!

Getting set up. We had two tables, with 4 people working at each. The other 2 people were cranking out dough as we turned it into ravioli.

Let the assembly begin!

The finished product! (Well, almost. We still had to cook it.) :)

We enjoyed homemade red wine while we made the ravioli. After a couple of glasses, I was feeling a bit tired and laid down. I wound up taking a quick nap, which meant I got teased quite a bit for falling down on the job. I assured the family that I was just using my time wisely while we were waiting on more dough. I told them I'd put so much energy and passion into the ravioli I'd made that I needed to rest to continue. Hopefully I didn't manage to get myself removed from future invitations!

After we had used up all the filling, we took a nice break to enjoy the snowfall that had started while we cooked. Piper had a blast playing in it with K's aunt & uncle's labradoodle!

Most of the ravioli went into bags and then to the freezer. After it froze, we divided up the bags among those of us who had made it so we can enjoy it throughout the year. (We already cooked some this week!)

But before we all left, of course we had to enjoy the fruits, er, pasta of our labor. Delicious!

So much for that attempt

I sent my cousin the muffins and some nice, quality reading in the form of Cosmo and US Weekly. I don't know if she reads either, but I figured there'd be nothing like some mindless, trashy reading to keep her mind off being in the hospital.

She's still there, and the baby still hasn't made his or her appearance yet. (Whew!) Unfortunately, neither has my package.

I sent it priority last Tuesday. It was supposed to take 2 or 3 days. When you factor in Thanksgiving, I figured it would get there Saturday at the latest. I had packed all the nice, homemade muffins (which took FOREVER to make, by the way!) in a cute little wintery tin. I didn't put them in an air-tight container or add the standard piece of bread to keep them moist, like I used to do when I'd ship them to K for the week-long trip they'd take to Iraq. I figured I wouldn't need that. The muffins would be fine for 2 or 3 days.

Who knows about 12, but I'm guessing it's not good. Bummer.

At least she'll still have the magazines -- if she ever gets them!

A photoshoot with Piper!

Sunday night after we put up our Christmas tree, I couldn't sleep well at all. I was stuck in that phase between sleep and awake, and for some reason I was really worried that our tree would topple over. How could a tiny stand with three stupid screws hold an 8-(plus-)foot tree up? As if that wasn't enough, we added lights. And tinsel. And decorations. We made it heavier. Idiots! Of course it's going to fall.

And if it didn't fall, it would catch on fire. I actually considered waking K to see if he thought the tree might catch fire. (What is it lately with all these weird dreams?!) Thank goodness, my fear vanished when I woke up Monday morning to a still-erect tree (*insert juvenile laughter) that showed no signs of having been on fire during the night.

On Monday, I put a picture of our tree on my computer desktop at work. I find myself minimizing all my open windows periodically so I can just look at it. It makes me happy.

Tonight K and I (and Piper!) did a quick photo session in front of the tree with my fabulous camera and the self-timer button. I managed to catch some fun pictures of Piper too.

I told K we'd have to put this last one in a frame for his dad, who adores Piper. (He's dog-sitting for us for New Year's. He's threatened to not give her back when he's done.)

I can't say I blame him.

Apologies to any male readers

Evidently sometime Monday, my face (skin only) decided to pretend it's 15 again. And it has yet to realize its error.

Nothing like a nice breakout to announce to the world, "I'm on my period!"

Ugh.

Our first Christmas tree!

On Sunday afternoon, K and I went got a start on decorating for Christmas. We visited a cute little Christmas store, where we bought quite a few nice ornaments, and then we headed to a tree farm to cut down our tree!

I've never had a real tree before. My dad is allergic, so it was never an option. K really wanted a real one, and I was excited to find a tree farm fairly close to us.

The tree farm was a quaint family-owned place. Since neither of us knew which type of tree we wanted, the workers were able to give us a few tips before they sent us out to survey the selection. They told us that people come out as early as the weekend after Halloween to begin staking their claims on trees! Some people had interesting ways of showing a tree was taken.

We couldn't believe how big some of the trees were!

I don't know if a lot of the average-sized trees were already taken, but it seemed that the trees were either 8 ft tall or 3 ft tall. I was glad we have tall ceilings in our living room! I had read an article that recommended buying a tree that's 6" to 12" from your ceiling. An 8-footer wouldn't quite be that height, but I figured it would be sufficient.

We found a tree that we were pleased with. It was a Leyland cypress, nice and full. There was one random stray branch on the side, but we could easily put that part at the back. The tree's height was good, and the top of it was really pretty. We found an employee who could cut the tree down for us. After he stood up from cutting down our tree, he bent over to pick up his saw from the ground ... and farted! I actually thought to myself, "It's a sign we found the right tree." (Hey, remember one of the biggest surprises I had once I got to live with K?)

When we got the tree home and inside the house, we were very glad that we hadn't gotten a tree any taller. I guess the stand (which isn't tall) added more than we'd bargained for. Thank goodness our neighbors had some good clippers! We trimmed the top of the tree and shaped it to hide our little alteration.

We put on Elf as we decorated the tree. As the movie was finishing up, so were we. K made us a couple mugs of hot chocolate, which we enjoyed during the final scenes of the movie. When we turned off the TV, we snuggled on the couch and surveyed our work on the tree with fresh eyes. We were pretty pleased with ourselves. K actually got a little teary-eyed, since after 4.5 years of being together, we were finally able to decorate our tree together. This will also be the first time we've been together for Christmas.

This is the most gorgeous tree I've ever had. I love that many of the ornaments are meaningful to us in some way, and I love that a lot of the decorations are new things we picked out last weekend. But the things about it I love most is that we chose it and decorated it together.

Thank God time marches on!

(This would have been more timely a few days ago, but hey, the holidays get busy!)

Last Friday (Nov. 27) marked two years from the day K deployed to Iraq (for the second time). K had the day off, but I had to work a half-day. As I sat at my desk, bored to tears with nothing to do since hardly anyone else was working, it was weird to think that two years earlier, I was just beginning the toughest year (and then some) of my life. In fact, until a couple weeks ago, just seeing that date on the calendar would always make my eyes well up with tears. (The date came up at work a good 5 or 6 times a day for the last couple weeks, so I built up an immunity.)

Needless to say, it was great to spend this November 27 with K for the first time since 2005 (remember, on that date in 2006, he was just about to come home from Afghanistan). And unlike the last three November 27ths, I was glad that I spent only a couple hours of this one counting the hours until I could be with my husband again.