Side Note for Matt

We can't keep talking about Andrew every post, right?  Someone's gonna get jealous.  This time it's Matt.
Matt had a chance to head to D.C. for a quick 36 hours to give a presentation.  What was an added bonus is when he realized his brother Dan would be in D.C. at the same time attending meetings for work.  They haven't seen each other in about 2 1/2 years.  Sweet!

 

Hi Dan!  They went to some awesome Mexican restaurant, Oyamel.  He talked about it for several days.

Here's one of Matt's tacos--a grasshopper taco.  Gross.  He was reliving his days in Mexico but I don't know if he'd do it again.  Next time he'll stick with the chicken.

Our Harry Potter World Getaway!

So Matt had a conference in Orlando the weekend after New Years.  Hotel, airfare, food all paid for.  We toyed with the idea of me going down too but it seemed too crazy.  Then I found super cheap plane tickets and had a graciously willing sister and bro-in-law who offered to come watch the kids.  It was a perfect Christmas surprise for Matt (and his present was my present too!  I've gotta do that more often.)

My time in Orlando was just 2 days but, oh, we had so much fun.


Eating lunch OUTSIDE in January.  Delicious.
We went to the movies to see Les Mis--wonderful.

Our big plans were to head to Universal, specifically Harry Potter World.  I've never been to any big amusement park, just Six Flags.  We were in for a treat. 

So of course, it rained.  Here's Matt waiting for the bus that morning.  It was an umbrella and sweatshirt kind of day.  Not surprising though.  Matt and I had lots of time to reminisce about our times with bad weather.  Let's recap
wedding day--thunderstorms and brief power outage
trip to San Diego before kids--rain
1 day in Uruguay during our time in Argentina--rain
getaway trip to Newport, RI without kids--rain
Yes, we're noticing a theme here.  Fortunately it was just light showers all day and we had no one else to worry about but ourselves.

And here's what we had been waiting for.

Look how beautiful this place is.  I think I could move to Hogsmeade.  It was unbelievable.

The big Harry Potter's Magical World ride went all through the Hogwart's castle.  We spent a lot of time in line enjoying the view.

 

Our one shot together and Matt wasn't looking.  The lady behind us took several pictures but Matt spent the whole time looking at the lady behind her who was so ticked off that we were stalling the line.  I guess she didn't realize that stopping and waiting 1 minute for us there was no different than moving forward 20 feet and waiting more.  I didn't even see her...I was trying to get a picture with my husband.  I guess we're different that way. :) Ha!

Here is a shot that does NO justice to the craziness of the lines.  We waited about 1 hour and then were able to do the single rider line for future rides.  Several times during the day, different wait times were up to 2 hours.  We tended to avoid those. :)

In front of Dumbledore's office

Awesome moving portraits.

The sorting hat talks to you about how you are going to get on the ride. 

 

 

Butterbeer---aka DELICIOUS!  We waited in line 10-15 minutes just for this tasty drink.  When we got home we read some cool articles about how they created butterbeer and how much the park sells.  1 million cups sold in less than 7 months.  Just under 5000 cups a day.  Unreal.  It is actually the highlight for most people who come to the park--more of a highlight than the rides.  Crazy.

 

just making posing interesting
There were actually other areas of the park besides Harry Potter World...it was just our favorite and the most photo friendly.  I don't need lots of pictures of comic book stars. 

Brought home t-shirts and some Fizzing Whisbees candy for the kids from Honeydukes (chocolates with pop rocks inside--crazy good).

And then I woke up early the next morning and was on a plane and Matt was spending a full day in meetings.  Reality again.  But now it's reality coupled with some really great memories with Matt.  Grateful to his work for paying for most all of it and for the conference deciding to be held in such a fun place.

Hurricane Sandy

                  Meant to post these earlier but in my excitement to post Halloween pictures, I forgot.

Hurricane Sandy didn't effect us too much.  We had 24 hours with no power, missed 3 days of school and then life got back to normal.  We felt very prepared for the storm that wasn't.

This is the main road that our street is off of.  Our normal way out was blocked by this big tree.  2 of our other ways out were blocked too but all was clear after about 1 1/2 days.

Oh and our pumpkins.  We carved them while we still had power--the kids were happy with how they turned out.  Fun stuff

Unfortunately the Hurricane messed up the lives of a lot of people that aren't too far from us.  About 2 weeks after the storm, Matt and 2 friends headed down to New York to join with Mormon Helping Hands down there.  They boarded busses in Brooklyn and the drove to the Rockaways in Queens to help homeowners there.

Matt is pointing out the waterline on this garage at a home he helped at.

Matt and 2 other guys he ended up spending most of his day working with.  A good work day and he was glad he had a chance to go help out before his semester turned too crazy and he wasn't able to help.  Really gives you a reality check and makes you feel grateful for the things that matter most.

Bringing Home my Baby Bumblebee

We had a bee incident 2 weeks back. An 'it turned out better than it could have' type of incident but still gave Matt an opportunity to wear a beekeeper suit.

Monday evening during dinner we had to kill like 8 or 10 bees in the kitchen. Matt went outside to see where they were coming from and saw them coming in and out of the oven hood vent outside the house. I quickly taped up a big trashbag blocking the oven vent in the house and we called our beekeeping friend. We actually have 3 beekeeping friends--I love knowing people with cool skills.

So Tuesday evening, the Hughes came over and John let Matt wear his bee suit. Matt had previously sprayed a bunch of Raid in the vent so when he finally opened the vent it was mostly dead bees but still a massive amount of hive that he had to remove. Grossa-rossa!

Youth Conference

At the end of June, Matt and I got to help out at Youth Conference. We were a 'ma and pa' to a group of 10 kids and we went up to Palmyra, NY to check out the church history sites there. Megan came and watched the kids and Matt and I had a mini-vacation, you know, the kind where you sleep in separate dorm rooms and are responsible for 10 teenagers. :) It really was a lot of fun!!!

On top of the Hill Cumorah

Our family (minus 1--he was in the pageant and had to come and go between things). This picture reminds me that I'm grateful to still be taller than all of our children. What a wierd day it will be when I'm not!

Arabian Nights

Let's backtrack a few months. Matt found out about a conference in Doha, Qatar where everything was paid for that seemed to fit in enough with his research interests, so he submitted a proposal. I didn't really think anything of it anymore until a random morning in November when Matt came running into our room after checking his email and said "I AM GOING TO QATAR! I don't even know how to pronounce it!" Thus the excitement began.

The trip was last week, Friday thru Wednesday. Not a lot of pictures b/c there were a lot of meetings and a lot of darkness when not in meetings. The flight was 12+ hours there and 14+ hours back. The time zone difference was 8 hours. We have learned that Matt does much better traveling to South American where the time zone difference is never more than an hour. 4 nights in the hotel = 2 nights of actual sleep. He transitioned to home pretty easily, but I think that was just because his body never figured it out over there. Kind of funny.

Part of Matt's room at the RITZ CARLTON--yes, he had a special little table with fruits and chocolates on it. At night they came around and delivered cookies. Did I mention RITZ CARLTON--$500 a night. The pool was apparently gorgeous, waterfall and all. He even got to go to the dock and take a dip in the Persian Gulf.

Here he is in front of the mosque at night. That's really all I have to say about that.
A waterfront shot. Matt walked all the way down and saw all those buildings. Funny part was that they were still all under construction--it was like a ginormous construction zone. A bit disappointing, I think (but pretty). They were in a newly developing part of Doha so there really wasn't much to see but definitely lots being built.
I think this is my favorite picture. He didn't get any shots of people b/c he felt awkward taking pictures of people in their cool robes and headdresses. Instead, he just took a picture of a sign of a person, but you get the idea. He really wanted a picture of the men in their white robes driving big SUVs and the girls in their black hijabs texting on their cell phones. A view looking down on the fountain inside the Museum of Islamic Art. All Islamic art is pretty much people-less, and mainly geometric in style. Hence the artistic fountain. My geometry side would have been lovin' this!
Outside the museum. Notice how geometrical the building is. Cool beans!

STOP! I like this picture too, especially b/c of the man picture right below the sign.

Dunkin Donuts, anyone? It was like he never left CT.

These old rickety fishing boats are actually used for tourist cruises. They are all lit up and pretty at nighttime. He also saw some honkin' yachts. Qatar definitely has money (though you probably can't tell it by the picture of the rickety old boats).

The mosque at day time. Notice the geometric designs.

And that's a wrap. Since Matt probably won't toot his own horn, I'll have to do it for him. He was told there were a lot of proposals but only 6 American proposals were accepted. Most all of the other presenters were from the Middle East.

A once in a lifetime trip. We're glad it went so well and we're glad he's home. Though I got some major progress made on 2 comforters I am making for Whit and Annie and watched too many movies, so that was fun!

Up On The Roof

Up on the roof. Matt has spent way more time there these days than I believe he ever has in his entire life. Not just our roof...many roofs. That's the story of this storm--everyone is shoveling snow off the roof. We even had snow day #10 on Friday b/c there was an unsafe amount of snow on the school roofs and they had to bring crew and the National Guard in to clean them off before we get more snow this coming week.

Matt's trip up to our roof was a forced one. We woke up to a small pool of water in the kitchen and the basement right under the kitchen (and seriously...that is nothing compared to what other people are dealing with). Matt's plans changed and he spent the entire day on the roof

Hard to tell, but the ice actually is packed about 6 or 7 inches above the gutter.

Notice the nasty brown streak. It makes me nervous. It's right below there that we had our leak. When Matt removed the snow behind the ice wall of a gutter, there was about 1 1/2 inches of standing water there. No wonder.
It required hammer and a chisel to break away the ice enough to let the water drain over the gutter. Matt probably shoveled for 4 hours and ice hammered for 2.

Practically done. The snow on the roof came up just above his knees. He hauled a lot of snow. We do have basement windows somewhere under all that snow.

I love this swing set picture. Ridiculous!!!!

This is our 'castle' that has a slide and climbing wall. The swing set behind them is the neighbors--there should be a fence behind them too but it has disappeared.

Whit is sitting right next to the steps heading up to the front door. I am horrible at getting a good perspective of how much snow there is.

Crawling up the back hill. Annie makes the smallest little divet in the snow. There are some places that I don't make much of a hole but other places that I step and the snow comes up to the top of my legs. They could easily get anywhere in the yard by crawling.

Happy Happy Birthday....AGAIN

We've been on a birthday roll here at the Singer house. Last week, Matt had his big day. I think it was a fun day for all.

I think Matt will forever be stuck with an M&M themed cake.

Excited kids wishing they could blow out the candles. . .
...and wanting to open his presents for him.

Matt always grills on his birthday. This year it was in the rain--the girls didn't mind exploring the backyard with their umbrella one bit.

Happy Birthday Matt. I'm glad you don't feel as old as we are getting. :)