Christmas in Vansant!!!

This year's Christmas was a little (or a lot different actually) for us. This was our very first Christmas without family. Luckily, though Damon's parents were able to come and visit a week before Christmas for about 5 days. Their stay was a lot of fun, but always ends too quickly.

We got our power/water back on Dec 23rd, so I spent most of Christmas Eve cleaning out the fridge, grocery shopping, and getting Christmas dinner ready. We had a very low key Christmas Day, but it was nice just to relax and not have an agenda. We opened gifts, watched the movie "Four Christmases", and ate a ham dinner. I made my first every homemade apple pie, which was actually a success. We hope everyone had a great holiday - we miss you all.

Crazy Winter Storm

On December 18th, the Southwestern part of Virginia was hit with a major snow storm. I was so excited to see the snow since it was the first of the season. It came around 1:00 and the snow flakes were huge. I kept commenting to my patient's how this was "nothing in terms of MT storms". Well, I ate my words. I soon came to learn that east coast storms are much different that Montana ones. Damon and I had bought tickets to go to the Griz championship game in Chatanooga, TN, but because of the roads we weren't able to go. :( The snow was so wet and came so fast that tree branches snapped and whole trees were uprooted. We found out later that some people had to drive for 11 hours to get just 60 miles!!! The road I take to get from home to work is a very windy coal mining road that is known for a lot of car wrecks. This picture is of my drive home that night. Cars were just abandoned in the middle of the road and all over in the ditch. I traveled 4 mph for at least 1 hour behind a little old lady that wasn't gutsy enough to even give her car the momentum that it needed to get around the curves without sliding.

The worst part of this whole storm is that we lost power and water for 6 days. We were watching the Griz game on TV when the power officially went off when the game clock said :00. Thank gosh for Damon!!! He knew to go and fill the bathtub with water when the power was flickering on and off so we could use it in the future when we didn't have enough water to flush the toilets. We thought this power outage might last a day or so, but it actually lasted 6 days!!! We stayed in our house fro 3 nights at 42 degrees, then couldn't stand it any longer and went and stayed at our friend's Joey and Mollie's house. I'm not sure which is worse...no water or no power. Damon actually had to go 7 days without a shower. He did however take 2 baby wipe baths. Let's just say that Christmas came early to the Curry-Martin household when we got our power back on Dec. 23 and our water on Dec. 24!!!!!!

Star Wars Concert

The day after Damon finished his finals (he is now 1/2 way through law school!) we traveled to Nashville to see his sisters and go to the Star Wars Concert. Damon is a big fan of Star Wars, but I myself have not actually watched any of the movies. Well, that was until a month before the concert...I was able to finish 2 of the 6 movies. It usually takes me 3-4 tries to finish a whole movie because I always fall asleep during them. Damon's parents flew in for the weekend as well and traveled with us to Nashville. It had been a year since we had seen his parents so it was great to catch up!

We arrived early at the concert to walk through their traveling museum of Star Wars figures and characters. It was really cool seeing real life Storm Troopers, an R2D2, and Princess Leia. The concert consisted of symphony music put to clips from the movies telling the Star Wars story and high lighting main points. At times, you would follow the clips on the big screen and forget that you were hearing the symphony music there live. I'll be the first to say that although I was a bit skeptical of the concert and thought that I would fall asleep, it was an awesome experience and amazing music.