Farm girls in the city

My Christmas present to Shelly was a ticket to see the Joffrey Ballet perform the Nutcracker up in Chicago; because she'd never been to a ballet... and because I wanted to go. :D

It was kind of rainy, and I was glad I didn't have to drive up in ice and snow. But then someone left the umbrella in the car... so we were kind of damp all day... since we were walking... in the rain...

We ate lunch at Italian village, which was excellent as always.


This is Shelly making a face because I was taking her picture... and because she was wet because she forgot her umbrella. Check out the skyscrapers and the El in the background. :)


We had some time before the Ballet started so we wandered around Millennium park. In the rain. There were lots of sightseers taking shelter under that bean thing...


Here's Shelly in her second row seat at the ballet. (I'm pretty much the greatest sister...) Second row, right side of the stage. It was fabulous. We could see and hear everything.


Here are two bedraggled farm girls on the way back to the car after the ballet. I was glad it wasn't cold.

Wet streets...

So I wouldn't want to live in the city. It's fun to visit though!

Blessings.

Christmas time is here

We got a garden catalog in the mail yesterday... can it be spring now please? :)

It was a pretty busy weekend. Abby came on wednesday... and the K-berger boys showed up late friday night... and then Austin and Clayton stayed with us on Saturday night... good times.

Vicki's caroling was great. Cold, but lots of fun. And there were lots of cookies. Wendi came which was good because there weren't many yg girls there. I was in a really weird mood by the end of the night so I should not be held responsible for anything I might have said. *grin*

The Wyss Christmas was on Saturday. Everybody was there, so that was cool. It's such a long day though, and I was sooo tired. And I was not in the mood to listen to all the children perform. I did get to escape part of it and went to Lindy's to buy some Dr. Pepper for the masses. (it was necessary) Our power was out that night when we got home... we were all sitting in the living room listening to Ned play amazing piano music in the dark while Dad and the boys were hooking up the generator. He's working on "Un Suspiro" by Franz Liszt, which I love...

Sunday after church we played Clue and I lost badly. I should stick to playing Guess Who? with Cailer. And then of course we all had to get together and eat again. :)

It's snowing again- it looks so pretty in the cemetery across the road with the icy trees and the big snowflakes. One more day and then Christmas! Yay!

Blessings.

blessed

So I've gotten to spend time with good friends twice this week, which I love. :)

Monday evening the girls-I-hung-out-with-in bible-class-plus-heather got together. Erin made some really good lasagna and showed us the cool old house where she lives. It's a lot like 709, only in much better shape. :) We went caroling for some of her neighbors... it was freezing and only one family let us in... haha. Good times, good cookies, and so good to see those girls again!

Wednesday was my birthday... woot woot. It was a fun day. My coworkers decorated my desk with streamers and plastic spiders (apparently that is the only thing I have expressed a strong opinion about. hmm... maybe I should have waxed eloquent about chocolate or something). They aren't scary spiders though, they're multicolored and squishy. :) We all went to Avanti's for lunch then we had cake and ice cream for desert. I might not have gotten much work done...


Wednesday night I invited people to washington and then to our house for cake and ice cream. Kind of a random group, but all really cool people. :) I am blessed with good friends. Abby came and ended up spending the night, which was great. Although I really didn't get to see much of her since I had to get up and go to work this morning.


So Matt said it is lame to throw yourself a birthday party but I don't really care. He wasn't going to do it for me.

So this is the gift I got from "Bro. Damon." I was maybe a little bit embarrassed... (But I must confess I think it's super cool)

And these are some of the people who came... good times.

Vicki's caroling is tomorrow!! yay! and then our Christmas stuff starts on Saturday! Woot.
Blessings.

pictures from babysitting night

Sorry they are all blurry and grainy like every other picture ever taken in a gym...

Watching the skits... the quietest they were all night.

Queen Esther

Basketball

Matt and Troy "supervising"

Limbo!

Mass Chaos

Ellie and Isaac

Baby Sitting Night

Is over for another year. It went really, really well. This year we rented a gym instead of having it at church... and you never know how it will work until it's done... I might have been a little bit stressed about it all. :)

My favorite part of the night was picking up the pizza. Layne came with me, which was fun. The Little Caesar's Pizza is in the Kmart in W-ton, and when we got there they already had our 25 pizzas on a cart/dolly thing ready to go to the car. It made a lot of people's night watching us push all that pizza back through Kmart and out to my car. Pretty much filled the backseat and Layne's lap and now my car smells like peperoni.

We only had 3 left over.

But yeah, the kids had fun and they got to be a lot more crazy in the gym. The gym has a stocked equipment closet that we could use which was awesome. We did bag skits and sang some songs and let them be as wild as they wanted to be as long as they stayed in the gym. I sat out in the hallway a lot guarding the cookies and directing people to the water fountain and bathroom.

Blessings.

assembly line

Last night I lined up four bowls, four recipes, and 5 pounds of butter. Then I went down the line with cookie ingredients.... and made a huge mess.

I didn't realize that we were out of molasses until I was ready to add it to the gingerbread. Dad said, "How can you have mo'lasses if you ain't got no'lasses..." I rolled my eyes and called Mom to bring some home to avert the crisis.

Soo... hopefully everything that needed to go in each batch went in and nothing extra got put in by mistake. We'll find out when we bake them!

I didn't really use all 5 pounds of butter. I made flour footprints all over the kitchen floor. The Schwann's man got to see my 'mother gledhill' apron. *grin*

Babysitting night is in two days and I'm already worried we'll run out of food...

Christmas light twister

Another busy and Christmasy weekend. Friday night the yg sang Christmas carols at WCV. It was interesting because we didn't bring carol books and the HOZ's didn't get brought either. O well, it still sounded pretty good and the old people don't care if you mess up a little bit. :)

Mom and I took a rather roundabout way through Morton to get our Christmas tree on Saturday. It's sooo pretty. When we got it home it seemed to have shrunk a little bit so we set it on some boxes. (for the sake of those with delicate sensibilities we won't mention what those boxes originally contained...) And then we played Christmas light twister trying to get three strands of lights untangled.

Saturday night was the YG Christmas party... they made us mix it up a little bit at supper so conversation was a little stilted, but good. Haha... so what kind of chocolate do you prefer? We were supposed to bring a grab gift labeled with a bible verse that reflected the contents of the package; lots of "ye are the light of the world," flashlights and candles... the best was a verse in Job about smelling bad and the gift was deodorant and mints. I finally played settlers with Wendi-with-an-i afterwards. I lost.

Church caroling was after church on Sunday. The group I was in went to some places in Peoria. One of the little old ladies we visited totally reminded me of Gab in 70 years... *grin* Supper was barbeque sandwiches. Which I hate.... and it's not good after-Christmas-caroling food. I think we should have soup. And hot ham and cheese sandwiches. At least they make real hot chocolate for the occasion! (and no, I do not want to be put on the kitchen committee!)

Blessings.

9 days til my birthday, 17 days til christmas!

musing

At the end of "The Count of Monte Cristo," one of my favorite books of all time, Edmund Dantes says, "...until the day God deigns to reveal the future to man, the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope."



curious what my faithful blog readers think... do you agree with Dumas?



Blessings.

stuck

I tried to go to work three times this morning. The first time was around 7am when I usually leave- I made it about 1/8 of a mile and hit a drift (at least one foot deep across the road) and dad had to bring the truck down and pull me out.

Then after my uncle drove through it and matt and the mail man made it I decided I would try to follow Jake and drive in his blazer tracks... and I got 1/8th of a mile plus 10ft. *grin* Poor dad. He had to bring the tractor I was so stuck. In the middle of the road! It was so disheartening- I could see all the cars on the Dee-Mack slowly driving past and I was so close and just...couldn't...make it.

So I gave up until the snow plow came at stinkin 10am... (seriously what were they doing all night? w-ton township has let me down!) All of the roads in the area were clear except ours. Maybe they forgot us. Maybe I should bake the township commissioner a pie.

I went through three pairs of socks too...

On the bright side, my sweet grand prix has a trailer hitch and it was super easy to hook up a chain. *grin*