Chocolates and Wishes

My good friend, Sarah, brought back some special advent calendars from England on her last trip there. If you have never experienced European chocolate...then you just don't know how good chocolate really can be. Today is December 1st, so the kids dug in right after breakfast.Sarah even bought one for Brian and I to share...but Brian wouldn't let me take a picture of him eating his chocolate this morning. haha

Austin and Madison just discovered that the wish bone from our Thanksgiving turkey was finally dried enough to break in half. Here we go...grab a side...pull!!!!

Can you guess who got the bigger side? She realized after celebrating that she never made a wish beforehand. It was sad to see how the expression on her face changed so quickly. Of course, Austin had a smile on his face.

That's it?

I've stayed home sick the past couple days from work. Our family has really had bad luck with our health so far this fall/winter season. H1N1, strep, pink eye...you name it, we've had it! Anyway, I decided to gather up enough energy today to post a blog about our Thanksgiving. When I downloaded all the photos from my camera onto the computer, I realized I didn't take even one "family" photo. Or anything, for that matter, besides dogs. Yup, that's right. Spend a wonderful Thanksgiving with my parents and sister's family from Ohio...and all I have to prove it is pictures of their dogs. Oddly enough, there were about 20 pics to choose from, so I chose my favorite of Molly (Sheila's dog above) and Sophie (Parents' dog below) I am, however, thankful for much more than just cute snuggly dogs.
This is as close as it gets to any human in a picture. Of course, the picture was only taken because of how cute sophie was being at the time.

I was trying to clip Sophie's hair out of her eyes. It didn't last too long.

Might as well add some photos of our Christmas decorations. My snowman collection on top of my fireplace keeps growing a little every year. I realized that I forgot to turn the fireplace on before taking this picture. Brian and the kids are always complaining about how hot it is in the house because I always want to have the fireplace going at night while we are spending time in the family room.

I just love Christmas trees! As soon as it is dark enough every night I run to turn on my lights and just sit in the living room to admire it. (It's been up since November 21st)

Bulls Game

The game started off REALLY bad. At half time the Bulls had only scored 29 points. You can tell they had quite a pep talk in the locker room during half time, because they came back to win it 83-81 by the end of the game.
Madi was obsessed with getting on the jumbo tron that night. Our friend Ben, that works at the United Center, got us the tickets and told us he'd try to get us on the fan cam that night since he was working. We finally were on the fancam towards the end of the game when it was getting really loud and fun in there! Thanks Ben!

We had planned to get Austin a Derrick Rose jersey for Christmas. We decided to get him it early since we were going to the Bulls game.

Our seats were great...3rd row from the court. We sat next to a guy that has owned 2 season tickets seats since Jordan's rookie year. Pretty cool!

Trick or Treat

Madi was dressed as a baby and Austin was a skeleton. You can't tell in this photo, but Sophie is wearing a pumpkin costume.
We stopped by to visit Grandma Shirley before trick or treating.

Brian was feeling brave to dress up as Minnie Mouse for our costume/poker party friday night. He won first prize.

My costume was my Dad's worst nightmare.

Jack o Lanterns!

Girly Fun

Don't you love Madison's new artwork my friend Melinda made for her room??
Madi with her 2 friends warming up before gymnastics class.

Too cute!

11 Years

It's strange how fast 11 years of marriage go by! We celebrated together by going to a new restaurant in Cedar Lake called The Lighthouse! The food and atmosphere was wonderful!! We didn't even mind the hour and a half wait since we were enjoying just having time alone. Mom and dad watched the kids so we could have the night to ourselves. Can you believe we didn't even mention the kids' names for the whole evening??? Wow, what an accomplishment for us.

First Day of School

Madison and Austin are going to different schools this year since Austin is now...in...gulp...middle school!!! I was able to get a picture of them together before they went their separate ways.
Is she the best brown noser on the first day, or what?? Really we went to the flower shop to get one daisy to give to her teacher, but my friend was working there that day and put together this elaborate bouquet instead. Oh well, never too early to chalk up some brownie points. :)

Madison walks to school with several kids everyday, including her best friend Taylor!

Girls Weekend

These are 2 off my BFF's from way back in high school. I feel so lucky to still have both of them in my life. As much as phones, e-mails, blogs and facebook help us keep in contact these days, we all decided we needed some face to face quality girl time. Melanie flew in from Texas to meet Melinda and I down in Indy for a fun filled weekend together. Tiffany also met up with us on Saturday. (we missed you Alice, Sumera, Laverne and Jaci)Our first stop was a super healthy dinner at the Indiana State Fair. If you've ever eaten at a fair, you know that it is pretty much impossible to eat healthy food at the fair. I think we started off with deep fried candy bars and cookies. Between six of us we consumed: shish-ka-bobs, BBQ pork, corn dogs, fried taters, ice cream, root bear floats, elephant ears and a couple rounds of fried candy bars. Did I miss anything girls?? Then we were off to the Kelly Clarkson concert right there at the fair. Our seats were great and I was super excited about that because I'm a HUGE fan of Kelly Clarkson. I was actually able to sing along to EVERY song she performed because I love her music.The next day Tiffany met up with us and we visited...er...Melinda's...um...aunt's condo right on a lake that has a nice pool. Ok, so really it is a condo that Melinda is in the process of designing right now and happened to have the key for, so we had access to a pool that made for a great girls afternoon of relaxation and bonding time. Then we spruced ourselves up for dinner at St. Elmo's in the city. Good thing Melinda had a $100 gift card because our total bill was $190 for the 4 of us ~YIKES!!! I must say it was the best Filet Mignon I've ever had. We all had a good sinus clearing too with their famous shrimp cocktail appetizer. When they said fiery cocktail sauce...they weren't kidding!

Our last stop together was catching a showing of "The Time Traveler's Wife" our friend Melanie is a HUGE movie buff. She writes movie reviews on her blog so we told her we wanted to see a movie with her so we could be a part of her blog for this movie. :) You'll have to check it out to see how we rated this movie. (Mel's behind on blogging, so don't check anytime soon)


Anyway, I had a great weekend with my friends and wish it didn't go by so quickly! Love you girls!!!!
xxx

Da Bears Camp!!!!!

We took Brian to Chicago Bears Training Camp for his birthday this year.

Before~After

I tried to talk her out of it, but Madison decided she wanted bangs. She looks cute no matter what!

Stop #2 on our Stadium Tour

Turner Field in Atlanta, GA was a really nice stadium to visit. We were part of the biggest crowd they had there all season. The number was somewhere around 51,000. I was happy our seats were in the shade because it was super hot that day.

I liked being a brave fan for a day. They unfortunately lost the game...but since it wasn't the Cubs I guess I didn't really care too much.

There was a free concert right after the game that we stayed for. All American Rejects aren't exactly a family friendly group, so we didn't stay for the whole concert. Madi kept asking me why that guy was so weird.

More Fun

We stayed in Kissimmee for a few days when we first arrived in Florida. It's a very tourist type town with tons of stuff for families to do. Our hotel was right next door to a big carnival. So we spent one night there riding go carts and riding the rides. I even enjoyed a funnel cake or two...or three....I don't know, I think I lost count. It was too tempting when it was right outside your hotel door. My friend Karen met us there one night since she lives in the Orlando area.

The go kart tracks were pretty cool.

We spent one day at the John F. Kennedy Space Center. Look closely behind the kids and you will see the sight of one of the launch pads located there.

I learned a lot that day about our history in space. Pretty cool stuff!

Weekend Getaway

Awhile ago I saw that Rascal Flatts was coming in to concert in Chicago at Wrigley Field. We were both pretty excited about it until we realized that the day they were in Chicago was the exact day we were leaving town for our road trip. We eventually figured out that they would be in concert in West Palm Beach while we were in Florida. Brian's mom and sister offered to watch the kids for us so we could have a weekend getaway.

It was an outdoor theater so we were hot...but had SO MUCH FUN!

The concert was better than I expected. Rascal Flatts is, by far, my favorite country group. Darius Rucker opened for them and we liked him a lot too. Didn't realize how many of his songs I actually knew.

The next morning we packed up and went to the beach for some snorkeling. I'm not the best swimmer and have a bit of a fear of deep ocean water. Brian held my hand to get me out to the snorkeling area. WOW...it was AMAZING! Some of the best snorkeling I've ever done. I just felt like I was in a different world when I was under the water.