#10 - monopoly deal

for christmas alex gave me an awesome new game - monopoly deal! for those of you that like monopoly but don't have 7 hours and more than two people, this game is the best. alex and i played a bunch last sunday and i beat him like 25 games to 2. we played again this weekend and although he exacted his revenge (he beat me 5 games to 3), i still think this game is awesome. you can play with more people, but we haven't tried it yet...i'm sure that'll be awesome too!

#9 - giant icicles

right now in chicago, there is a big "thaw", meaning the sun is out and temperatures are in the 30s - whoo hoo! that also means houses are covered in icicles, which are one of winter's more beautiful features. and when i say icicles, i mean big ones - the one i knocked off my house on saturday was almost 4 feet long! it was awesome, but i think i might have killed a bush in the process...only spring will tell!

#8 - when popular TV trumps politics

maybe you heard this but maybe you didn't - there was a chance that the State of the Union address this year was going to bump the LOST premier to a whole week later! for those of us die-hard LOST fans who have been waiting like 18 years for the new season, this would have been upsetting. well, worry no more because today it was announced here that LOST will begin Feb. 2, on time and on schedule, and that is an awesome thing!

awesome things 1 - 7

1 - holiday compromises: for those of you that have dealt with splitting holiday time between your family and your significant other's family, you know how tough it can be to keep everyone happy. well this year, alex and i dealt with that for the first time and we struck an awesome compromise! we moved "Christmas morning" with my family to Christmas Eve morning, went to church with my family, and then on Christmas Day, we drove 11 hours to PA to have Christmas dinner with his family. we spent the next 5 days with them, and then it was off to Indianapolis, where we spent New Year's with my extended family. we got quality time with everyone and no one felt left out!

2 - outrunning a snow storm: on Christmas Day, the forecast had called for an big ice storm in the midwest, so we'd be praying all week that the traffic wouldn't be bad on our drive to PA. well, lucky for us, the storm hit after we already left and we didn't hit any traffic at all! it was awesome!

3 - long down coats: for Christmas, i asked my parents for a new coat - a long, down northface to keep me warm while walking the dog, scraping off my car, etc. well, they were great enough to get one for me and it is awesome! it keeps me so toasty, it has a hood, and it reverse-zips (unzips from the bottom) so i can sit down in the car without feeling restricted.

4 - wii canoeing: for a Christmas present, my brother, alex, and i all chipped in and got my parents a wii, which is awesome, but what's even MORE awesome is the wii resrot sports game that my aunt and uncle got them to go with it. you can do all sorts of things, but my favorite to watch and play is canoeing. you hold the remote and paddle side to side just like you would with a real canoe paddle. my mom even loves it! i have never laughed so hard as when i watched my mom and dad race each other in canoeing, paddling their hearts out in front of the tv, and talking smack to each other. awesome AND hilarious.

5 - daily calendars: alex knows how much i love calendars (he does too), so for Christmas he got me a daily calendar of quotes from the office! i have to say, there is something incredibly satisfying about ripping off a new page every day and having the restraint not to read days ahead. it's awesome because it gives me something to look forward to every morning at work. he also got one for my brother that's got entries from the blog "stuff white people like", which is also awesome.

6 - family pot lucks: this is one of my favorite things about alex's family get-togethers - everyone brings food and everyone's food is delicious! this time the unintentional theme was meatballs...alex's mom, grandmother, and uncle all brought fresh homemade meatballs and the all had different sauces! it was really fun to sample all of the different kinds, and believe me, they were all awesome.

7 - fresh snow: today chicago is getting a fresh snow, about 12 inches or so. when i walked the dog this morning, everything was so peaceful and clean and quiet. the snow was fluffy and coated the trees and the plows hadn't been through yet, so there wasn't a speck of brown, dirty snow in sight. it was awesome. when we talk about God making our hearts as white as snow, that is what i think of - clean, beautiful, and peaceful, just like the morning after a fresh snowfall.

the power of positive thinking

recently i found out about the blog called 1000 awesome things. it's pretty self-explanatory - every day they put up a blog about an awesome thing, and they're doing it until they reach 1000 (almost 3 years). it's nothing super deep, but so far they've been amusing and true. now, i'm not going to try to achieve something that remarkable, but i am going to try to come up with an awesome thing that happens every day for the month of january.

here's why. first, i'm not a great blogger and hopefully this will motivate me to be more consistent. second, it'll be a fun way to fill you in on things that happen in my life. third, in a year where there is a lot going on in my life that can get stressful, this will be a way to focus on something awesome that happened that day.

now, i know i'm late in starting this for january, so my next post is going to be 7 awesome things that happened over the Christmas/New Year break, and that will catch me up (and catch you up too!). feel free to join me in the quest for finding the awesome things every day, or just leave thoughts/comments when they come to you :)

caught in the act...

while alex and i were christmas shopping last week, he needed a pit stop, so we ran inside to find a bathroom. unfortunately, the men's room was out of order, but since the woman's room was just one stall, i guarded the door while he went in...i caught a picture on the way out for proof, haha :)

coach heacock's first meet!

this is LONG overdue, but at the beginning of december, alex had his first track meet as a college coach! the meet was at illinois state university, which is located in Normal, IL...that's right, Normal is the name of the town...not totally sure what makes it any more normal than the rest of illinois, but there you have it, haha.

anyways, because it is december in illinois, the meet was indoors at the field house. i had never been to an indoor meet before, and i was totally impressed by how much they pack into this place! the running track obviously goes around the outside, and that includes sprints, distance, hurdles, relays, etc. inside of the track, there is a long jump pit, a high jump area, a pole vault area, and the throwing area.

at indoor meets, only the shot put and a modified hammer (called a weight) is thrown, so no javelin, discus, or real hammer. they throw from within a cage and there is sector with lines showing the distances, just like an outdoor meet (except no grass of course). it was really neat to see alex coaching something outside of his comfort zone, and i even got to meet some of his athletes (who were hilarious). it was a lot of fun to see alex doing something he clearly cares a lot about, and he looked totally official in all of his coaching gear :)

here's a view of the whole meet.


here is alex hard at work, demonstrating something to one of his athletes for his next throw.


this is the throwing area, with the cage and everything!