Treasured Locks Milestone

Our traffic has been steadily increasing. I've been watching anxiously as we approached the 1 million page view mark. Yahoo's running graph shows the last 120 days of page views and as we've edged up, I wondered if, after the holidays, we'd creep over the 1M mark or fall back down. Well, a couple of days ago, we made it. 1 Million pages viewed on Treasured Locks in the past 4 months.

Pic of Ty and Kayla

I just like this shot. Got a few more at the game that are pretty good, too.

Shayna's Basketball

The 2008 season has begun. Shayna's team is 2-0. They've had two very competitive games. The level of play is way above what it was last year. They've started to call traveling, double dribble and three seconds more strictly. So, the girls are getting a better feel for the game. The ref this last week though did something nice (and different). When he called an infraction on a team, he would stop them, explain what they did wrong and give them the ball back. I really like that idea for a learning league. By stopping them, he was giving them incentive to improve. But, the game would be full of turnovers (discouraging the girls) if they actually turned the ball over every time.

Shayna has scored 4 points in each game. She's not as aggressive on the court as we would expect her to be, on offense that is. On defense, she shuts her man down. But, she's just getting comfortable with handling the ball.

Lots of shots at her from the game on Flickr. Here's one:

Hazel & Tango

Kayla has been begging for a guinea pig for two or three years now. Every spare moment has been spent on the internet researching guinea pigs. She's checked out books from the library. We've gently but firmly said "not now" for the last couple of years. But, she would not give up.

Finally, a couple of "free" guinea pigs became available from a friend of a friend who breeds them. The girls spotted their opportunity. They agreed to pay for the initial costs (cage, water bottle, etc.) if we'd agree to the on-going maintenance of the guinea pigs (see where this is going?). So, with each of them committing to forego their allowance for the next couple of months we headed over to the pet store to get the needed supplies. $45 for a cage, $10 for food, $6 for a bowl. The "free" guinea pigs cost us a mere $110 out the door.

We were told that guinea pigs are social creatures. So, getting two would be better than getting one. The older guinea pig (Hazel) had a daughter (Tango).

After we got all the stuff home, the girls were ready to go pick up the pigs. When they got there, the friend told them she was getting out of the business. Suddenly, their $70 investment dropped to a mere $20. So, Shayna was already paid up with leftover birthday money. The girls have agreed to all of the care of the guinea pigs. We'll see...

Shayna's Actual Birthday

We don't have birth days. We have birth weekends or birth weeks. Shayna's celebration started out with friends over on Friday night. Then it was Red Robin for the free birthday burger on Saturday. Finally, it wrapped up with the actual day today (Sunday, January 13th). Shayna insisted all day long that she was not yet 8 since she wasn't born until almost 11pm. I tried to wake her up at 10:45 to tell her she was 8. But, she was zonked.

Unfortunately, she did not get a birthday dinner on the day of her birthday. After having pizza on Friday night and a cheeseburger on Saturday, we decided to return to some sanity and we had a chicken thigh concoction I whipped up on her birthday. But, she did have some sparkling apple cider in a champagne glass.

Shayna's Birthday Party

Last night Shayna had her 8th birthday party. For some reason, she was content with keeping it small only inviting three friends over and she opted out of having a sleepover. They played Wii and foosball. Unfortunately, Shayna hasn't learned to take it easy on people in Wii yet (she has said so herself) and she is the best in the house at it. So, she pretty much killed her friends at Golf, Tennis, etc. but they had a great time. Kayla slept over at Megan's. So, Shayna was sad when she was leaving (she hates to be here without Kayla).

Spring in January

Yesterday, the temperature hit a record high of 69 or 70 degrees. It was partly sunny and just absolutely beautiful. It was so warm I just had to pull out the grill and fire it up for a good thick steak. I only like steaks grilled and since we don't have a hood, we can't grill inside. I had some ribeyes I picked up a couple of months ago. Mine must have been about 3 inches thick. I got the grill as hot as possible and cooked it for exactly 3 minutes per side. Perfection! It was a great prelude to a not-so-great Ohio State game.



This one I took without a flash, just to see what it would look like.