Weekend Plans

It is almost 4:00 on Friday, and I am ready to get on with the weekend! It's going to be a good one - I can feel it :)

Tonight, we are picking out our Christmas tree! It's supposed to rainy tomorrow morning, and there's nothing worse than bringing a wet tree into the house, so we're going tonight instead.

Which means tomorrow, when it's rainy outside, we'll get out to do some Christmas shopping! Then tomorrow night, we're headed downtown for Stephanie's cookie exchange Christmas party - we're bringing two dozen monster cookies and two dozen black forest chocolate cookies. I'm sure we'll come home fat and happy :)

Sunday at noon we'll face off for some serious football family rivalry - Bears vs. Chiefs! Both teams are without their starting quarterbacks, but I'm saying the Bears will take the win - between the hometown crowd and a newly revived Julius Peppers attacking the Chiefs' unseasoned quarterback, I think we can pull of the W.

Now if only it was time to leave work...

Good for many laughs

Check out this hilarious article about the 90's icons that our children will never understand or appreciate. I laughed. A lot.

FB Debates

There are a lot of serious issues being debated in our country right now - Should Joe Paterno have been fired? Will Italy become the next Greece in Europe? Is Herman Cain a good guy or...not? Very important issues and passionate parties on both sides, and all of which have been debated via FB.

Check out this funny (and very accurate) description of a generic FB debate. I have read FB debates that went exactly like this.

Notary Public, at your service

Today I received my commission as a Notary Public from the great state of Illinois. I became a notary for work, but perhaps it will come in handy in other ways.

A few facts about notary publics:

• A notary public (according to the source of all truth - Wikipedia) is "a public officer constituted by law to serve the public in non-contentious matters usually concerned with estates, deeds, powers-of-attorney, and foreign and international business." My primary function is to "witness and authenticate" signatures and other documents.
• In some states, notary publics can do lots of other things. For example, in Maine, Florida, and South Carolina, they can perform marriage ceremonies.
• A a notary public is not the same thing as a notary - being a notary means you have some kind of legal training.
• The office of a notary can be traced back to the ancient Roman legal system, where they were referred to as "notarius". Originally, they were trained writing shorthand notes.
  

The whole fam-damily

Just got this from my cousin Alyssa - a photo of the whole family from Brown County. What a good looking bunch!



Just got this from my cousin Alyssa - a photo of the whole family from our Brown County trip - so I thought I'd share. What a good looking bunch :)

Brown County

This weekend Alex and I ventured south to Brown County, Indiana to spend some time with my family, including some of the extended crew - my aunt and uncle, cousins Sam and Alyssa, their boys Jacob, Noah, and Harry, and cousins Annie and Ben.

Brown County is the second most-visited park east of the Mississippi River (fact credit goes to Jim, my mom's brother, who is his father's son) and absolutely beautiful this time of year. I think the fall is an amazing display of God's creativity - taking trees that are preparing for winter and turning their leaves into vibrant colors.

Thanks to the generosity of a family friend, we all got to stay together in one giant "cabin" in the woods - all 14 of us under one roof. The house is really cool - porch swings everywhere, a great big yard, a giant "great room" to gather in, and a basement full of games.

Alex and I spent the weekend playing with the kiddos, relaxing outside, and catching up with family we hadn't seen in awhile.

These are the boys - Jacob and Noah are twins and just turned six years old. Here they are eating pigs-in-a-blanket for lunch - yum.

This is Noah - we drew pictures, played tag and air hockey, and went down the water slide together (the park has a cool indoor water park/pool).

This is Jacob - he and Alex played football, shot Sam's BB gun, and played four square with us. Together we all went on a hike through the woods around the house.

This is Harry - he's 18 months old and already has a great personality! He's so sweet, and so much fun to play with - he kept everyone entertained all weekend.

We had a great weekend together with family and can't wait to do it again next year!

The Little Turtle

Yesterday we picked out Leonidas' new Halloween costume. He's going to be a turtle. As you can see, he's really psyched about it. We debated between this and a banana - I think he should count his blessings :)

Also, if it's of interest to you, I edited this photo using picnik.com - a free photo editing site. Now, I know nothing about photo editing, but just playing with the exposure and color saturation made a big difference - as in, now you can see the dog. Originally, the photo looked like this: