The Best of Times

Things are looking up!  Despite it being cold, dark, and ugly here in Rhode Island, we have had some good things happen lately. 
First of all, it finally warmed up to a balmy 32 degrees, a solid forty degrees warmer than what we were used to.  Naturally the boys released their energy from two weeks of indoor recess {their poor teachers} and jumped on the trampoline.
Then, our computer crashed.  Again.  This was bad but stay with me.  It got better.  Much better.  Macs do not crash but we have had nothing but problems since we took it in for a minor repair back in Seattle.  Long story short, they fried our computer, lied about it, and we lost everything.  We paid over a thousand dollars to recover our photos and hard drive.  It still makes my blood boil just thinking about it.  Well, on Saturday we took our Mac in due to its recent crash, this time with everything backed up.  We had low expectations of what could be done and debated to end our support for all things Apple.  But things turned around fast.  The Apple guy turned on our computer and what should have been a white screen with an apple on it was instead pink and white striped.  He quickly called a bunch of other Apple guys over and they had a mini conference in the back room, reading over the pages and pages of work history done on our computer.  They came back and told us they were giving us a new computer, threw in a discount for some additional stuff, and did everything they could to "make things right."  Hooray!  Now we have a brand new 27-inch screen computer with a 3-year warranty and our faith has been restored in Apple products.
We finished off the weekend with a great Super Bowl party.  For the record, I couldn't care less about the game.  For me, it's all about getting together with friends {or family if we had any nearby} and eating good food.  We shifted the furniture around, brought in an extra couch, and had a great time watching the game.  Marcus and his friends watched the entire thing so I guess my days of not caring about the game are over now that we have a sports enthusiast in the house.  We turned off the half-time show hoping we wouldn't expose our children to anything inappropriate, and played a few rounds of Telestrations.  It's a great party game and we laughed so hard we cried. 

I threatened the kids with their lives if they took food onto the carpet so here they are lining the edge of the family room

Randy grilled up some ribs to go with the IBC Root Beer, and other deliciousness

 

Our half-time entertainment