Hanging out with the Charvats...

Dave and Dar are staying a few miles away down in Myrtle Beach this week, so they drove up our way this afternoon. Dave had been looking forward to a ride in my car, so we went for a quick little jaunt down the highway.

The video below is Dave squeezing into the sardine can. He actually did pretty good getting in. Climbing out was a bit more challenging (Anna wasn't there to take a video of that). On a side note, I had a co-worker try to get in the driver's side one day (without asking me as he was checking out the car). He wasn't able to contort himself and fit in between the steering wheel and door-sill, and ended up getting stuck to the point where I literally had to pull him out... this is a guy who drives a Honda S2000, which is a small sports car in it's own right. He was quite shocked when he found out first-hand the difference between getting into this and his S2000. The look on his face after getting stuck was priceless.

Off we go...

"Can you move your elbow, please?"...

Later on we had a little Mexican food feast and made it a game night. Catch Phrase was first and provided plenty of laughs, as usual (at one point, Dave almost died from choking on his own laughter). Dar came up with the most memorable word of the game... "HUH??????" After that, Dave showed us his first time chops on Guitar Hero. After being booed off the stage his first time out, he rebounded and rocked it out. We finished game-night with Wii bowling. This was their 1st time Wii bowling, but you would've never guessed. Dar tore us all up and scored a 200 her first game! How do you bowl a 200 your first time!?!?!? Crazy.

"Barrel of fun?"... "Huh???"...

In the zone...

"I already told you, the second word is a contraction."...

"Pro bowling tour, here I come."...

"Don'tcha wish your slippers were hot like mine? Don'tcha?"...

Merry Christmas!

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas! Kirby and I didn't travel anywhere this year (we went to Maryland last year), but we were busy hanging out with friends on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. On Christmas Eve, what we thought was going to be a quiet dinner tradition for 2 ended up being a fun/crazy dinner for 14. We had dinner with some of our school friends and family. Kirby taught the kids how to make a paper airplane and the kids provided us with Christmas carols. :)











(here are the lyrics of Braydon's Christmas carol)

Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas Tree
Why do you smell so badly? (giggle, giggle)
I thought you smelled goodly. (more giggles)
You smell like poopy!



On Christmas morning, I felt like I was still a kid. I woke up at about 7:00 and couldn't fall back asleep. I got out of bed and came out to scope out the gifts under the tree. This year Kirby and I gave each other a chunk of money to spend on whatever we wanted (which was a clothes shopping spree for me & some clothes and car stuff for Kirby). In addition to that, we set ourselves a limit of $10 for under the Christmas tree. Here is what we got.



box #1



box #2



box #3 & gift- Michael Jackson DVD




1 of my 2 gifts- a bubble gum machine for my classroom



After we opened our gifts, I was ready to run to Walmart and get what I needed to cook Christmas dinner. Unfortunately, I didn't plan ahead and found out Walmart is closed on Christmas along with all other grocery stores (can you believe that!!). We found ourselves using a gift card Kirby received from a student LAST Christmas at ANOTHER Italian restaurant. Afterwards, we went to the Baeli's for dessert, games & toys.


Everyone joined in with K'NEX




Braydon & I's final product- a castle



The boys' final project- a truck

hustle and bustle

Luckily we haven't been hit with the 2009 winter snow storm that went up the east coast this past weekend. However, we do have the cold temperatures. We have been bundling up the past few days with the mornings starting in the 30's, but getting up into the low 50's by afternoon.

Kirby and I have been busy with Christmas activities around town. Friday was our last day off of school, so we've been enjoying our break together. Here are some pictures & videos of what we've been up to.


NMB Middle School's band performance-

The Annual Christmas ornament exchange at Jill's house.

We can't wait for our guests to get into town either! My Aunt Crissy and cousin Megan are coming from Charleston tomorrow and our friends Dave and Darlene from Maryland are coming after Christmas.

Kirby and I hope all our friends and family reading this have a wonderful holiday!

Tis' the season

Just as everyone else, Kirby and I have been busy enjoying the Christmas season. Last night we went to the NMB Christmas parade on Main Street. It was probably one of the coldest nights this this winter and we were frozen when we got home. It was nice to see some of our students and friends though. Small town NMB has good parades!

We decided to buy our Christmas tree a little earlier this year. Last year, we had trouble finding a place that had trees available the week before Christmas so we ended up with a "charlie brown" tree...

Here we are getting into the holiday spirit with a bigger and better tree this year.

We had a great time decorating it together! Each year we have more to put on or around it to decorate- and so we started in daylight, but finished decorating and taking pictures (of course) when the sun was long gone.

Anna the Coordinator...

Last night was the North Myrtle Beach Primary School's Christmas party. As you may have read in the last blog post, Anna is the chairperson of her school's social committee. She was going to write this blog entry, but I told her I wanted to so I could brag about her efforts. Being in charge of everything, she did an amazing job, as did the other members of the social committee, along with their principal, Ms. Fowler. In my 12-years of teaching, this was, by far, the best school Christmas party I've attended. In all, about 115 people showed up and all seemed to be having a great time. Some of the evening's highlights included lots of gift giving/receiving, "Dressing With the Stars", a limbo contest, best holiday attire contest, busting balloons with darts for gifts, dancing, and the best part of all (for me), chicken marsala catered from Carrabbas.

We're still here...

It's been a fairly uneventful month or so, but I thought I'd jump on here anyway. Work is keeping us both busy. Anna is continuing to have a great school year and is doing awesome with her class. We spend probably a good hour every day when we get home from work talking about each others' day. Usually starts in the kitchen, then we make our way to the couch to see who has the most interesting stories. This year Anna is the chairperson of her school's Social Committee, so she's also been busy planning and organizing the Christmas party. After work on Friday, she (along with the school principal and a few other teachers) went shopping for gifts for the party...

Of course, we've been playing a bit of Guitar Hero. When we purchased Guitar Hero 5, it came with the not-yet-released Van Halen edition (had to wait for it to come by mail, though). We are not "gamers" by any means (this is pretty much the only game we'll play on occasion), but if you like GH, you gotta get the Van Halen edition. Just for kicks, I even took our standard guitar controller and painted it like Eddie's famous "Frankenstrat" guitar. Yep, my wife thought I was nuts.

Anna blazing up and down the fretboard...

Me...

Here's my favorite move of Anna's. The must-do move of all rock gods/goddesses. The "shake-the-head-to-the-left-and-right-when-you-mess-up" move...

What it looked like before...

During...

After...

One of Eddie's real guitars...

The Rock Goddess, herself...

And for my busted-knuckle, gear-head readers out there, here's a little car project I just got finished with. Overall, I was happy with the factory exhaust tone, but was wanting something a little bit deeper. I ended up settling on a system from a company in England called Larini (only about 2,000 Elises get exported to the U.S. each year, so there aren't many aftermarket exhaust makers to choose from). The tone is exactly what I was after...

The old...

The new...