Is that a Gopher I hear?!?

Every now and then we hear a beeping that sounds like a smoke detector when the battery is low, but it's not consistent and we can't figure out where it's coming from. It has beeped again the past two mornings and today I get the following email from John...

Oh and we still have some stupid detector chirping at home as of this morning. I took about 15 minutes before work trying to figure out which was doing it. I was standing in the kitchen facing the coffee maker and heard the chirp 4-5 times about once every 30 seconds behind me. Presuming it was coming from the hall or my office/the cat’s room, I stood in the hall for about 2 minutes. I didn’t hear a chirp. ~_~

Went on my way and heard it again… sounded like it was coming from by the back door. I then decided it was the carbon detector by the back door. I grabbed a battery and was in the middle of getting on the ladder to replace it, a chirp came from behind me…

That didn’t make sense as I replaced the battery in the one outside our bedroom last night. The one inside our bedroom didn’t make a noise. I just waited again for about 5 minutes, didn’t hear another chirp.

As I was going out the front door… something chirped again.


I swear, we have a gopher in our ceiling.

Olive You!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!


John got me some beautiful Tulips for Valentine's Day.






I got him some yummy chocolate covered strawberries.


I have had a cold the past few days, so I wasn't in much of a Valentine's mood, but we had a nice quiet day at home and watched some movies. John's parents stopped by to see us also, it was good to see them again. We'll probably go out to eat sometime this next week to celebrate more!

Green Thumb

For Christmas, my Boss - Elaine, gave me a plant bulb that she assured me even I could grow! Low and behold - it has blossomed! It is a beautiful red Amaryllis. I took some pictures this weekend during the afternoon before the flowers had opened and just a few hours later that night two of the buds had magically opened all the way!

And The Winner Is...

Thursday night we were invited to the Circle of Excellence awards presentation from Dell. The awards were for some of the Customer Service Teams, and they gave out quite a few awards. However, the only person to receive the SILVER award was none other than Mr. John McTarnahan! YEAH! I'm told this is a very prestigious award to get and we are all very excited and proud that John got it. Way to go John, You Rock at work too!

Gingerbread Family

At the same time we made the Heartbreak Cake (see below) John made some gingerbread man cookies from a mix we have had for quite some time. John managed to make them with out any disasters. He even made a few "other" gingerbread figures... see if you can tell what they are!

Heartbreak Cake

A few nights ago I decided John and I needed to do something fun, so I decided we would make our own rendition of Boston Cream Pie. We had a white cake mix, and cool whip for the center, and baking chocolate for the top. Now, don't get ahead of me and decide that this wasn't really a good idea! We mixed up the cake mix and got it in the oven in two heart shaped pans.

I read a tip that you can whip canned frosting in a mixer to make it fluffier and more expansive, so I decided this might work with cool whip too. (again, don't get ahead of me!) To start with, the cool whip was frozen, so I ended up beating around a big hard blob for a while. Finally it melted and broke up enough to be mixed, and I added some red food coloring since we were making a heart shaped cake. Needless to say, cool whip cannot be mixed and made fluffier, but it was a nice shade of pink now.

While I was wrangling the cool whip, John decided he better do some thing to keep from just watching and laughing hysterically, so he worked on melting the chocolate. The cakes finished baking so we took them out and cut the top off one layer to make it flat for the bottom, then put my pink cool whip on it... I must have forgot that it melts in heat... and the pink cool whip mostly ran off the edges or kind of soaked in to the cake =( At that point I started referring to it as the Disaster Cake. We put the top layer of cake on and further squished out the Cream in my supposed Boston Cream Pie. Them we put the chocolate on and the top piece of cake cracked at the top. Just lovely. I was so exhausted from this whole process we didn't even eat any the same night. We did have some the next night, and beside the fact that the only chocolate stuff we had in the house was baking chocolate, and is pretty bitter to eat by itself, the cake actually isn't that bad tasting. I'd imagine we'll finish it and not have to put it in the trash! Many lessons learned.
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Catching Up

One of my Co-Workers (Teri) got me a fun little growing Christmas tree. It starts out as some sort of cardboard, and you put "Magic Water" on it and it does Magically grow!! It was really amazing, it grew so much it covered up the little red decorations they send with it. My other co-worker, Steve, got one too and immediately said he was going to re-gift his to his nephew... I think he missed out, it was great fun!