Ha, Ha, Ha, Finally Pictures!

At the airport waiting for the plane to whisk Bela off to sunshine and beaches -

What we watched as we waited...

Passing time while we wait longer...

Saying SEE YA through the glass between the terminal and us

Watching as she boards the plane

The last glimpse of her backpack as she boards the plane.

Our February bike ride.

Showing off my bright new spring outfit...trying to tease the Spring weather to come play

Tigger shows Chris all the different ways to use the wii fit board -

As a bed...

As a table...

or as a pillow...

Rachel had her first competition outside of the Palmer civic center at the University of Illinois.

Kristina thinks she's cute, but one day, I'll get her back.

Rachel with the flowers Chris and I bought for her.

Makenna found a better way to play with the wii tennis racket, use it like a real one!

Looking Fly in Uncle Chris' sunglasses.

And being adorable as our waitress..

Chris drives the train at the Engineering Open House

Makenna decides to show him how the kids are driving these days.

Here is when we met up with the girls and friends at Winter Park for a little geocaching.

We found a snake right at the start of our first hunt.

Rachel and the girls climbed a few trees.

Hey, hey - this was our second find of the day.

Then Chris and I found one in MC a few days later.

Going to Austin's Birthday Party!

Where he shows off his briefcase, and stamp collection.

There is a scavenger hunt for prize filled eggs! Ashley helps Devon.

Looks like the Austin and Friends are really enjoying the pinata that Uncle Chris and I got him for his birthday gift.

Casi just about gets knocked to the ground when Ally pulls the right string!

Devon looks happy with everything that he got!

Going inside the kids look at all the cool stuff they got in their eggs, and from the pinata.

The pinata and eggs had some sticky men in them, and once they started sticking to the ceiling, the kids started looking for someone to get them down...

And they found their sucker.. Actually Chris and Casi were in suckered into pulling men off the ceiling.

This is what I started with

But I worked real hard...

This was my result!

Chris spent the entire weekend fixing my blower, I had to drive with my glove compartment gone for a few days.

The simple lamp from hobby Lobby,

transformed into my one of a kind lamp!


Bed Room Wall Decor ~

Wall Decor~

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I'd just like to say that I was adult and did not play with my napkin.

Can't take him no where...

Rachel

Ashley

Good Friday In Chicago!

Good Friday, was Goooood to us! Hahaha... and it all happened by circumstance that we would both get it off. I had asked if it would be possible to get this day off for a leadership conference at one of the colleges in the area. Because it was sort of left as a "We'll see, but don't count on it," I figured I better not register and waste my money. Well, turns out I got it scheduled off anyway for the leadership conference that I was no longer planning to attend. Chris got is off as one of the mandatory "days with out pay". So that is how we both ended up with the Friday off.

The day before Kristina says they are planning to go to Chicago to get some American Girl Dolls, and do some "Geo-ing". So I ask Chris if he wants to do some "geo-ing" in Chicago, and he says yes. So it's Friday morning and we're excited about going to Chicago. I call Kristina about 8:15ish and wake her up... oops, sorry.... I thought they were leaving early. Looking at the finances, I think hmm.... let's see about Blue Man Group! I have been dieing to see them again, and Chris REALLY wanted to see them. So, I asked what he thought, and he was all for it. I thought there would be only back row seats left, if any at all for that afternoon. Low and behold - PONCHO SECTION SEATS! ROCK ON! So we bought them and got two free tickets to the Sears Sky Deck, which we will use another trip.

Now we walk to the train stop, and jump on the South Shore to Chicago. We walk to our favorite eating spot Chipotle Mexican Grill. Then we call Kristina because they had arrived at the doll store. Chris and I decided we will meet them at the doll shop. Using the map on his phone, we walk 45 minutes up the PACKED street, then another 15 minutes down another street only to find the map took us to the OLD American Doll Place! And the new one is the other direction, way past where we started at. So we walk to the nearest purple line CTA stop, and buy our transit pass. We decide there is not really a whole lot of time left to meet up with the girls and go geocaching. We go to the theater, doors don't open till 3:30, so we dunk in dunkin' donuts and get some fruit blasts and sit for an hour. We watched the BOOT get locked on some cars in the parking lot, and got to see one lady return and throw a fit. (Free Entertainment, love it)

Then we enjoyed the Blue Man Group, it was awesome! We even got a picture after the show, and I had him "sign" my playbill. (blue man signature: a Kiss,) so I'll put that one with the one I got when I went with the drama club in high school. If you ever get a chance to check out the Blue Man Group out, you should! We rushed to the CTA to take us back to the loop. We had a short walk to the south shore station where we had about 10 minutes to spare, so we got some pizza and ate on the train. Where we were very good citizens and gave up our seats on the VERY packed train, to a mom carrying a baby seat and holding the hand of her 2 year old daughter. We stood for about 45 minutes before seats finally started opening up in our train car.

The South Shore has gotten fancy and upgraded to Double Decker trains!

Us with one of the BLUEMANGROUP! Kinda scary, right?

Yes, the beloved Public Transit system! Saved us a lot of walking!

And we got to see bits of the city that we normally don't see.

Shopping Spree... but Not what you think!

Oh My, Oh My! After class this morning, I went over to Save-A-Lot to do some grocery shopping. This is my favorite place to shop when I have not made a list of dinners, or even a grocery list for the week. It's small and easy to get around in, plus there is not so much that you find yourself buying a ridiculous amount of food, spending a ridiculous amount of money, and then find you have no complete meal to cook! (Man I hate when that happens)

Anyway - I went on a great day! I got so much freakin' food, we're stocked for the next two, maybe three, weeks, seriously! I may have to go back only to get more milk or sandwich meats. Everything was on sale it seemed. Chicken Leg quarters, Country Ribs, Pork Chops, Beef Steaks, and Cutlets! I just piled it all in the cart, came home divided it up in portion baggies and tossed them in the freezer. I did no fancy recipes this week, no RR or Paula Dean, no steps to follow, just my own mix of spices and flavors, keeping it simple, keeping it real in the West kitchen this week.

Girls' Recital

Here the vids that my mom loaded on to youtube. They are very fuzzy. Hopefully the coach will put clear ones on youtube later. The first is Rachel's solo, then it is both parts of Ashley's performance, and then Rachel's trio performance. In the trio, Rachel starts in the middle and is wearing the white skirt. It's so hard to explain where Ashley is because there are so many people, but I'll try. She comes out near the end of the middle and is wearing purple shirt with blue jeans she is right behind the girl in pink. She ends in the back row and is second from the end. As you will see, they both did an amazing job! We're so proud of them both!

Group Projects Suck! (Lara's Rant)

Group Projects for speech classes should be banned! Last week my speech class decided on the topic of Lowering the Drinking Age. I'm in the group that does not want the drinking age lowered. So last week we thought of all the different categories we needed to discuss, and people chose which they wanted to do their part of the speech on. So... I signed up to discredit any possible reasons the other group would have for lowering the drinking age. We called this the Rebuttals, though it is not a debate forum.

I spent the week working on my speech for this category, and getting my sources all lined up, and only used the most credible. (While MADD has a lot of good information, I didn't think that was the most reliable source for credible statistics - not that they make things up, but you know...) So I got my information together, wrote my speech and went to class.

Rod decided he is going to lead the "meeting of the minds" we're having and starts going through the information that he found. He had little bits of everything, and other people who brought stuff had little bits of everything, most had nothing, and I had my one topic. Rod Says, "I want to do the rebuttals," I say "I've already done the rebuttals." We banter this about for a few minutes, when we all agree to get our outlined made up. Rod starts doing an outline, he wants to put the entire speech together right there. Everyone else is lost and confused and getting frustrated, but he claims he knows exactly what he's doing and again states that he's doing rebuttals, though last week, he wanted to do the brain development of young adults.

So after about an hour and half of not getting anywhere with Rod leading, I start assigning people topics to cover again. Rod's persistent that he's doing Rebuttals, so I take my neatly organized research, staple it in order toss it across the table and say, "There you go, I've done all the research for you." Then I tear my speech out of my notebook and slide it across the table and say, "Oh, yeah, I've already written the speech for you too." So now I'm writing another speech for the conclusion, and probably on brain development too since the girl I assigned that to, insisted on doing her section on fetal alcohol syndrome ??? I told her she needs to find stats on teenage mothers and drinking, and she wants to know why because alcohol has an effect on all babies no matter the mom's age.

So I tried to hide my obvious frustration by as kindly as I could explaining to her that we are trying to persuade our audience to not vote to lower the drinking age, and pregnant women above the age 21 having alcohol in no way supported not lowering the drinking age. She didn't get it. The instructor found it very amusing, he finally said we could be dismissed, and we dismissed. grr.... it's really not that hard.

And just to note how lazy some people are, we assigned one guy to be in charge of creating a PowerPoint. And a couple girls thought all they had to do was find the information and email it to him and he would write the speech on the PowerPoint. It is a speech class people, you have to give a part of the speech.

Hanging In There

Chris' employer laid of 125 people here in MC yesterday. Thankfully he still has a job, however all employees are loosing an additional 2 weeks pay along with the previous one week salary loss in February. Which for me means....drum role please.... Lara gets to find a night job to make up the difference in pay and will not be striving to graduate in Spring 2010! But like I said, we're thankful he still has a job- though he finds out today how the reorganization will effect him this morning- a little disappointing, but not too disastrous. I guess you could say - We're hanging in there.