We got home earlier this afternoon and had a great time watching the Super Bowl. Yeah Saints!! I’m not a usual New Orleans Saints fan. It’s that I love to see the underdog win.

I enjoyed many of the Super Bowl commercials. Several of them were hilarious, this one in particular

This Snickers ad made me, well, snicker:

As usual, Budweiser had a good ad:

You can see more 2010 Super Bowl ads here.

As you all know by now the eastern part of our country got hammered with snow. Maryland was walloped with 40 inches! Can you imagine waking up one morning and seeing more than three feet of snow on the ground? Well, we’re going to get our own little snow storm of sorts here in southeast Michigan. It’s going to start snowing Monday night and by the time it’s all done Wednesday afternoon we’ll have about eleven inches, at least according to Accuweather. We’ll actually be able to do a little sledding.

Of all the photos I’ve taken of the falls this weekend, this is by far my favorite. I even put  my name on it and turned it into my laptop’s desktop background (click image to enlarge).

I look at it and am amazed that I actually took this picture with my little $149 Fuji FinePix. I uploaded it into Picnik, hit Autofix and it was done.

I went back to the falls today to get some video. I apologize for all the moving of the camera but it was freezing cold and I did my best to keep my little camcorder still. You can hear the wind in the audio.

I took more images of Niagara Falls today only this time . Not only was it cold but mist rained down on us as I took the photos. But that didn’t make it any less beautiful. Here’s Horseshoe Falls (click the images to enlarge):

Here’s a view of the American Falls.

In this picture I was standing on the overlook beside the falls.

The spots on the lens were from the mist that rose up from the falls. It was perpetually rainy next to the falls but dry a few hundred yards away. Unfortunately, my video camera’s battery was dead so I couldn’t get video of the falls, but it’s charging as I write this and we’re heading back tomorrow.

One of Steve’s Christmas gifts to me was a weekend away to Niagara Falls. We left home yesterday afternoon when my parents arrived at our house to watch the kids and arrived at our hotel around 6:20pm. We’re staying on the Canadian side because there are more activities, casinos, bars, etc. on this side. But our hotel has an amazing view of the American Falls. I took a few photos of the view that we have right outside our window (click to enlarge).

Isn’t that beautiful? We’re far enough away that we can’t hear the falls, but they’ve got to be deafening. This is the view we have of the Canadian falls (click to enlarge).

The view of  Horseshoe Falls limited, but we will get a better view of it once we get out and about today.  One thing we want to do is take a ride up into the Skylon, which looks like this (click to enlarge):

The falls you see behind it is Horseshoe Falls. What an amazing view and there’s a restaurant at the top. We’re hoping to have dinner there either tonight or tomorrow night.

Stay tuned, I’ll have more pictures later.

The more active Little Miss Throwsafit becomes, the more we get to know her and what interests she has. We know she loves to play with her dinosaurs and make them eat each other. She’s picking up the concept of the food chain a little too well, I’m afraid.  Now I’m learning she loves to play catch with Littlest One’s baseball mitt ball.  The baseball mitt has velcro on its fingers and the baseball is made of fabric so when it comes into contact with the mitt it sticks. Little Miss Throwsafit loves to throw the ball back and forth with me.  It brings back a lot of memories of my dad playing catch with me when I was a kid. I was a real tomboy and I can see a lot of that in her, too.

LMT has improved so much over the past year. She walks on her own almost everywhere now. She walks so fast that she’s almost at a run. As hard as she works, though, she can’t yet fully run, jump, or skip and her balance is still a bit shaky. Making things more difficult is that she will have to wear DAFOs (Dynamic Ankle Foot Orthoses) for many years to come to help support her ankles and arches. As the years go by and she grows stronger and advances physically I hope she will be able to climb trees and fences and participate in sports in some way like I did because I can tell she’s a tomboy trapped in a special needs body.

I really enjoy watching my kids figure out ways to solve a problem. It’s common for Little Miss Throwsafit and Littlest One to fight over toys.  One toy in particular that they have a difficult time sharing is LMT’s doll stroller. LMT loves to push her babies around in it and LO loves to run into things with it. When I hear the two of them fighting, ususally it’s about this little stroller.

Well, the other afternoon, I heard the usual bickering and knew right away what it was about. I sighed and resigned myself to being the umpire once again. I gave it a few seconds before heading into the kitchen where the argument was taking place.  Before I got out of my chair, though, the fighting stopped. By then I was curious to see why they weren’t yelling any more, so I went into the kitchen and found that they had solved their problem:

Isn’t that hilarious! I’m surprised the stroller didn’t collapse under Littlest One’s weight, but at least they weren’t arguing anymore. One more problem solved. Sadly, it didn’t last long.  Once they were done playing with the stroller, they starting fighting over who was going to play with the toy dinosaurs.

You can’t win them all, I guess.

My mother in law took photos on Christmas Eve and just gave me this one last week. When I looked at it I laughed out loud. Little Miss Throwsafit’s cousin Maddie is posing in a very elegant and lady-like manner and there’s LMT with her big personality for all to see.

The acorn doesn’t fall far from the tree. If you knew both Meredith, Maddie’s mom, and me you’d know that this picture is a good representation of our personalities. I’m am extroverted, loud, and a bit of a goof ball while Meredith is sweet and much more refined. I’ve always wanted to be more like Meredith but as hard as I try to be quieter and more polished eventually my personality always finds its way to the surface. I’m afraid I’m a lost cause.

Do you have any quirks in your personality that you wish you could change?

It fights fat:

Coffee contains caffeine, which helps speed up your heart rate and thus helps you burn more calories.

Little Miss Throwsafit loves to play with her dolls and My Little Ponies but she also has a real interest in dinosaurs, which I’m sure she picked up from her big brother.  When she plays with the toy dinosaurs, though, she loves to make the big ones eat the littler ones, like this (click to enlarge):

Right now I can hear her in the family room making screaming noises that a dinosaur might make if it were being eaten. Hmm. Maybe she’s seen Jurassic Park a few too many times.

At least she’s getting the idea behind the food chain, right?