December Festivities

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we worked hard to get into the Christmas spirit!

After the floors got done, I was quick to get the Christmas tree up!   We did an artificial one again this year, so it was easy.  This year I was able to expand my "ear" ornaments and am now up to six.   Next year I'm considering an all-Disney themed tree, so I still have more shopping to do/vacations to plan!

 

John got the outdoor lights up earlier - taking advantage of the decent weather in November before our first snow storm hit the first weekend in December. . ..and the second snow storm hit the second weekend in December!   Our neighbor added more items to his growing display.  Those giant candy canes were a beacon to lead me home each evening!

 

The second snowy weekend, we enjoyed some sledding with William's friend, Zac, and then worked on a snowman for our front yard!  I only got a picture of Zac sledding, since I was doing video of William before my battery died.   Zac has a "Flat C.J." (ala Flat Stanley) of his 20-year old brother who is in the army, so I got a picture of the two of them on their run.   I also took a few runs down the sledding hill.  I'm still trying to talk the guys into a trip to one of the Wisconsin area ski resorts to go snow tubing.  I tried skiing once 20 years ago and that is probably sufficient.

 

The snow makes everything look beautiful, but the bitterly cold temperatures that followed made for a miserable commute.  I took photos along the Chicago River two days in a row to show how the snow was frozen against the railing.  In the second photo, I was trying to capture the swirling steam vapors rolling over the river.  The underground trains were blowing the air out over the freezing river.

Other fun activities to round out December included a Rogue One viewing the weekend it came out; making Christmas cookies; and a Cub Scout pack get together for games and snacks.

New Floors

When we moved into our house 7 1/2 years ago everything looked perfectly, generically lovely, which was perfect with a 3 week old baby in tow!    Now that we've lived in it awhile, it's time to do updates.  Our first project was to update the kitchen cabinets and counters.  This fall we tore down the half wall dividing our kitchen and family room and had dark wood floors installed throughout the entire first floor.  This spring we will have the fireplace brick paneled over, walls repainted and new baseboards installed.   A work in progress, but we love the new floors!

 Step one:  kitchen cabinets

 

Step two: remove wall, tile and carpeting

 

Step three:  wood floors installed

Step four:  put furniture back and enjoy

 

 

 

 

 

Thanksgiving & John's 40th Birthday

Not much happened between Halloween and Thanksgiving, since William was recovering from his sickness and then I got sick with pneumonia.   The week of Thanksgiving ended up being a real challenge.  I had already been home sick for a week - not moving except maybe from bed to couch - when we needed to vacate our house as part of the prep work for installing wood floors.  We hired out the demo of our tile floors (and the two layers of linoleum underneath).   We stayed in a Hilton Garden Inn for two nights.  I was expecting it to be a lot of fun with William and I swimming at the pool, etc, but I was stuck in bed (in the bedroom) the whole time watching hours and hours of Food Network when I couldn't sleep due to all the coughing, and John and William shared the pull out sleeper sofa in the living room. 

 

We returned home to finish preparations for Thanksgiving travel and to get our house ready for the wood floor installers coming the following week.  Mostly I still laid around.  William played video games on the little island of undisturbed family room.  And John tore out the baseboards and carpet and pad in all the rooms that didn't have tile.   Turns out half our family in Indiana was also sick with cold/flu/crud, so we postponed our travels one day.   That was good to help me get healthy.  But it was bad because we didn't have any appliances at our house except a microwave, since the rest were moved for the floor installers.   A wonderful friend ended up delivering us Thanksgiving dinner. . . .bringing over this gorgeous platter still hot as she was getting ready to serve her own family!  It was one of the first meals I had eaten in a week and it was the best Thanksgiving food I have ever had!  I need to get her recipe for those stuffing muffins.  Yum! 

We powered through at home until Friday morning then loaded up ourselves (and our laundry. .. another casualty of the flooring project) and drove to Indianapolis.  My meds finally kicked in on Saturday in time to enjoy John's 40th birthday celebration.   We went out with his siblings for an amazing steak dinner.  It was so nice to put on real clothes and make up after nearly two weeks of pajamas!  We had a great dinner and had fun catching up with everyone.

 

Conferences and Star Day

We met William's teacher recently to see how the semester had been going.  We thought pretty well since we hadn't heard from her before, and because he had been recommended for a rotation in the talent acceleration program.   She had really wonderful things to say about his academic skills.   In math, she often relies on him to explain to the class the logic behind solving problems, and that his vocabulary and story comprehension really bring up his reading skills.  But the nicest thing to hear was how helpful he is in the classroom.  She said there was a substitute art teacher who told her how helpful he was with his classmates getting a project done.  We are so proud of the kind soul of this child.

He had his "Star Week" and put together a newspaper style poster of his favorite things.   Although he has done that in each grade, apparently unique to 2nd grade is that all of your classmates write you a star about what makes you special.   My heart burst with all the lovely things the kids wrote about him being a good friend, being kind to everyone, being smart and good at math; being fun and funny.   Makes a mom proud!

 

 

iFly

For John's birthday present, we went to iFly Indoor Skydiving.  I was probably the most excited about it (after all; it was my idea and I bought the Groupons!); William was most scared (he thought he'd go up to the top of the tube like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory); and John was most indifferent (after real sky diving, I think he doubted the experience).  But we had an absolute blast!  It was a fun family time!  We each did two, one-minute flights.  And for the last 20-30 seconds of the second flight, we did "high flight" where the instructors spins with you up into the higher section of the tube.  We followed the evening up with school fundraiser night at Buffalo Wild Wings where we ran into several neighbors.   We also ran into one of William's classmates and her family at iFly; her brother was flying for his 12th birthday, and the rest of the family was there to watch.  

  

 

 

 

PPMD Meeting

The only good part about retiring early on Halloween is being well rested for my 6:30 a.m. Tuesday flight to Las Vegas for the Deloitte PPMD meeting.   All the partners and managing directors with school aged kids took super early Tuesday flights.  Those without kids at home or at least ones not of trick or treating age took leisurely travel options on Monday.   It was great to see all of the PPMDs from various cities and our tremendous line up of speakers.  Over 6,000 people were there, so you had to be intentional about finding people.   Oh, and I got to watch the Cub win the World Series surrounded by all of my Chicago partners at the Delano Sports Book.   The best was seeing the joy as one of our soon to retire partners called his son - and then his dad - in tears over the fact that the Cubs had won the World Series in his lifetime!  What a week of celebration.   Except for that sick kiddo at home and the cancelled vacation. . . .but Southwest made it easy enough to change my flight to head home instead of my original plan to meet the guys in LA.   We all enjoyed a relaxing weekend at home after that.

 

 

 

 

I ran into a lot of people from Kansas City, including Jana (Reichenberger) Souder, my college sorority sister and bridesmaid who is an audit managing director!  I don't think I've seen her in at least 10 years.

In our tax breakout the last morning, they had screens of everyone who had been admitted to the partnership or promoted to managing director in the two years since the last meeting.  And thus concludes my year of celebrations as a new partner!  I'll be the old one next round.

 

Halloween

We had a fun Halloween planned with neighbors who have boys in William's class.  After the school party, we were meeting up for trick-or-treating and then collect for dinner/movie night.  Unfortunately, William woke up sick that morning.  He went to school but was a wreck when I got there for the party.   I took him home at 3:30 and he went right to bed.  He got up around 5 to put on his costume (last year's Boba Fett costume with new jet pack and arm shooters).   We hit a few houses with the neighbor crew but he couldn't keep up with the kids.  Less than 30 minutes in, he called it a night and we went home.   He ended up missing the entire week of school due to fever and fatigue.   And then there was a long weekend for fall break, so he was home for 8 straight days!  We had planned a Los Angeles and Universal Studios Hollywood vacation for the school break but had to cancel it.   Poor guy was so sick, he never even asked if we were going to Harry Potter World like we had been talking and planning for weeks.