fun in o-hi-yer

of course you can't be in Cleve*land without a visit to the Q... to see the Lake Erie Monsters

And of course we need a bowling birthday:

which is never complete, btw, without white Russians, a la Big Lebowski

and of course, birthday boy Bill in drag. ;)

Then, we must celebrate New Years, and of course we celebrate on the 27th at 9:00 p.m.

But you can't just celebrate New Years, it needs to have a totally unrelated theme.
Like the Olympics.

(or "wearing stuff from your collegiate years." We're not picky.)

We dress up as athletes from assorted countries (Germany, France, and Germany again)

Sweden (please note our medals. it was a big year for Sweden)

Doesn't everyone make a fake ball drop at 9:00,

then run to the end of the street to see how many cars you can stop by pressing the crosswalk button?

And it's totally normal to cap off the night by posing for a family picture with the panda
(since the Olympics were in China)

Merry Christmas!

fun with gingerbread

it all started with a harmless request to make gingerbread houses...

constructing and icing...

girls working hard

A wasn't so thrilled with how hers came out, so she decided to go a little crazy...


Here's Ju's. Check out that slam dunk!

K and her house
Mine (sort of an odd angle)

eating our hard work

what a fun family we have! I have no idea why we were wearing hats, it just happened. ;)

feels like Christmas!

it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

a new way of decorating cookies... I'm now obsessed with pastry bags and tips. Just the first step in my dream: becoming the next Duff.

I love my sister

So this week has kind of sucked (I am THRILLED that it is FRIDAY!!!), and my sweet sister sent an email, procrastinating during finals, that immediately lifted my spirits! I've seen this before (and even did it last year), but it was never this funny before:

CHECK IT OUT

...something about seeing your parents and brother (for some reason M and I aren't so funny to me...) disco dance is HILARIOUS!!!

Thanks, sis. I needed that!

oh yeah, and...

... I went to see Twilight with Miss Mary, K and Sarah and became mildly obsessed with the books-- I saw the movie opening weekend (Saturday), only going for some girl time, and by that following Wednesday, I was almost done with the third book. I've had to slow down a bit, but just finished the fourth book tonight. FAN. FREAKING. TASTIC.

I know they're for 12 year old girls, but 12 year old girls don't make books hit the top of the best-seller lists. They're awesome. Read them! But consider yourself warned-- if you start, you won't be able to stop!!!!!

:)

for my momma

Hi.

Yep, I'm back. :) It's been a little busy lately. And I love blogging, but the crap-ass laptop I currently have makes it take a good hour and a half to post. And when I get to use J's desktop (technically it's "ours"), I have pressing things to accomplish before he steals it back. Something about "papers" and "grading papers" and "doing well in school," or something like that. The nerve. ;) (really, he offers it up all the time, but I don't want to keep him from that stuff.)

All 2 of you can thank my mother for saying at Thanksgiving: "Why don't you update your blog anymore? I keep going to read it and there's nothing. I really liked reading it!" Leave it to good old mom-guilt. ;)

So, here's the bullet rundown of our life since, oh, like September or so (save the one election post):

• lots of school. J's doing great-- presented at a couple of conferences this fall, and we have REALLY REALLY exciting conferences to go to next year. THRILLED.
  
• still loving my new(er) job. (It's been 6 months, so not so new anymore.) a little scared about the economy, but my company has never had layoffs before. let's pray now isn't when they decide to start. for now, all is very very well.
• Rosie gets in trouble every 5 minutes, but we love her and couldn't imagine life without her. She recently got spayed and scared the crap out of all of us when she ate a starfish. She's doing okay now, though, so no harm no foul. That girl sure knows how to get into trouble, but she's equally good at being a sweet little lump of love. It's hard to stay mad at her for long.
• Bailey is great, loving having a sister, still getting lots of love without her jumping in his face. He's such a sweetie.
• I traveled all over in October and November: the lake to shop with mom + sis, Chicago for J's conference and spend time with the sibs, Chicago for an IKEA run! with the ine/ene/eens, to the west coast for work, to OH-IO for turkey day weekend (after actual turkey day with my family). That was a whole lot of running.
• J turned 29. pictures will follow. he hates that I like to remind him he's in his 30th year. :)
• tree is up, lights going up this weekend, planning an all-day shopping blitz to start/finish our shopping tomorrow.
  
• Thrilled about all-day shopping tomorrow b/c after the lake + downtown Chicago shopping + IKEA... well. Any of you that know me can guess that was a bit much. So I've been shopping free for about a month. I'm ready to go all-out tomorrow, all for other people. :) SO FUN!!!

That's all I've got for now... I'll try to do a big picture post soon to catch up...
J