I Don't Get It

I'm still not sure why Ryan wants to get a fake tree for Christmas next year. What could be better than picking out a tree, the fresh Christmas-y smell when you get home from work and throwing out the tree year-after-year over our balcony?

Maybe, maybe it is the thousands of needles that we could hear falling from the tree on a daily basis, or the amount of needles that we are continuing to find around our house.

No matter how our tree ends up (see example), I still love getting a live tree every year. Maybe next year we'll try buying one from a tree farm rather than a parking lot.

Merry Merry!

As I downloaded my photos from Christmas in Jacksonville, I noticed 95% of them were of Mya ;) How can I not take that many pictures when she is this cute! Our hearts melted each time she yelled "Auntie", or tried out "Mabolls" (Marbles) and "Uncle". And we all laughed every time she said "Cockle-doodle-do" and "Up! Up!".

Now we just have to figure out to post her Christmas card with her on Santa's lap.

Simon Family Christmas

Our Christmas celebration came early this year with the Simons. With -25 degree temps outside, it was nice to be able to sit by their Christmas tree and eat some delicious Chili's. If only we could celebrate every year with Chili's.

While there, we got to open gifts, put together puzzles and watch the boys tumble around. It is pretty unbelievable that Ethan and Lucas are walking and are already toddlers! And we still get to giggle at the different things that Emily says like "Accidents happen" and " I get to crawl into my mommy and daddy's bed because there are monsters in my room."

We got to open our gifts from the McDaniels as well and we got our NEW LIGHT! Yeah! Can't wait to see Ryan put it up in our dining room! Oh, and of course, to have it displayed will be nice as well.

Christmas Vacation

Now all we have to do is wrap the mountain of gifts that is in our guestroom. I wish we would have had a camera as Ryan and I walked home with our tree today through the snow. We found it a little more difficult to get a tree home now that we don't have an SUV. Luckily it wasn't too cold. Again, Ryan did a great job negotiating the price of our tree!

Dr. Seuss Would Be Proud

Although we didn't win any awards at the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Halloween party we were at, we did have "the most original costumes" according to a couple of guys standing outside the Belmont El-stop.

In my eyes, that's a better first-place than the party - the guys must have seen atleast 1,000 costumes pass by that night, right?

David Blaine is a Hack

Well, I've managed to fool Laura yet again. Obviously, my first and most important illusion (GOB would be proud) was to trick her into marrying me. My latest ruse was even more important...convincing her to STAY married to me for an entire year. You might be asking yourself - how did I manage to pull off such an impressive feat? By distracting her with a trip to beautiful San Diego, of course!

Our trip out west to celebrate our anniversary was quite a success. Other than a few complaints about the ballpark (as you can see on the right), we saw an exciting Mets-Padres game and feasted on a couple foot longs to kick off the weekend. The next day, we did what any sensible married couple looking for romance would do...went to the zoo. The San Diego Zoo was quite impressive...we both got to spend some time with the panda bears, and Laura got to check out the koala bears that I'd already seen in Australia (no big deal). That night we had a great Mexican meal, at a place where some nice old ladies prepare your tortillas from scratch. We took advantage of the great weather by spending our last day checking out a surf competition at Mission Beach (no Laird Hamilton sightings) and dining outside at a nice Italian place. I'm already looking forward to our next anniversary trip - I hear downtown Detroit is beautiful in June.

It's been long enough since our last post that we've had some other good stuff to report. We spent a great 4th of July weekend at the beach in Michigan. We fattened up on some Redamak's, watched a hellacious display of illegal fireworks (now I know what Brad Gardner's version of heaven looks like), and got to spend some quality time with the family. I challenge any of our thousands of readers to tell me a better way of celebrating the birth of our great nation.

And finally, the Cubs just traded for Rich Harden. Sure it's a big if, but if Rich can stay healthy, he and Big Z will be quite the tandem when October rolls around. Then I can use my powers of mind control on Laura for my most daring stunt yet...to convince her that we should buy World Series tickets.

And then the dryer broke

Are you serious?! Have you seen a cuter smile? This was definitely one of our most fun holidays because we got to spend it with Mya! Who knew that seeing someone scream every time MiMi entered the room would be so entertaining.

Despite our fun times in J'ville, there was no warning that this Easter was going to be our most unlucky. After getting stuck in our garage with Ashley & Byron on our way to the train station (because someone had crashed into the garage door due to the SNOWY! conditions) we managed to have a semi-truck back into our car, get a flat tire, and finally come home to a broken dryer. Sheesh! Good thing we had Mya around to cheer us up!

We're Old

We went to the South Side Parade today, which was an interesting experience but served as one of those semi-frequent reminders that things have changed a lot since our zany college days. Back then, we could drink green beer all day, scarf down a couple slices of Bonnie Jean's pizza, and wake up the next day feeling as refreshed as a newborn babe. Now we have a hard time believing that we used to party as hard as the young whippersnappers we saw today. The two sweethearts passionately making out while standing in a puddle of vomit in the port-o-potty line...the three gentlemen who covertly urinated on the leg of their oblivious buddy...the kids posing for pictures on top of an overturned port-o-john. It's fun to think that we were way to cool for these kinds of amateur stunts, but who are we kidding? The best we can hope for now is that the hooligans in question were high school kids, because they looked really young to us. If they were collegians, we're in big trouble because we're even older than we think.

Some other random stuff:

- A couple good things about Bill Foster's win in the special election for Denny Hastert's old spot in Congress. First, Jim Oberweis is a weenie and it's nice that his sleazy fear-mongering attack ads backfired on him. Second, and most importantly, we will no longer be subjected to the nonstop advertising blitz that has been on our TV for about a month now.

- The summer, and everything that goes with it (including baseball), can't get here soon enough. I can't tell you how happy it makes me that this dude is no longer in the Cubs dugout. Nice to have a grown up in the dugout.