Bored beading.

I was a little bored on this snowy night so I whipped up this little bangle.

A five strand woven, glass pearl bracelet.

Our Chicago trip

SO....Josh and I got to go away this weekend to chicago. We stayed with friends Justin and Mark. They both work at University of Chicago, Justin is an administrator and Mark is a Bio professor. They live in an amazing victorian that they are remodeling in Hydge Park, they live a few blocks from the Obama's. They neighborhood is awesome, so much pride and just good vibes. We had this amazing bread from a bakery called Medici's where the workers proudly sport shirts that says "Obama eats our bread"! Very cool!

So we took the train in on friday afternoon where mark greeted us at the platform with smiles and hugs, a quick walk to their house where we were welcomed with an amazing dinner. Justin grows and can's much of their food to ensure chemical free, we had homemade tomato soup which was divine, a great salad with pomigran. seeds, a cheesey noodle cassarole with sun dried tomato's that was beyond amazing, green beans and red wine, it was fantastic. There home has this wonderful classic dining room that is lovely. For desert Mark made this great citrus pound cake with strawberries and sauce, to die for. We sat around, which led to me playing the piano and some great conversation, around 11:30 we all headed to bed since we had an amazing day planned for saturday.

SO saturday started out with another amazing meal, Mark and josh walked to the bakery and bought some "obama bread" which we ate with Homemade Peach Butter, Pear Butter and tomato jam, yes tomato jam, Justin Lived in South Africa for a while and it's quite popular, would never know it's tomato, tastes like apple butter really. Along with that we had a dill and feta fritata, SO GOOD. Then we hopped on the Metra and went downtown to Marshall fields, we got some chocolates from Godiva and looked around a bit, but way to busy for our taste. We checked out a few other stores down on State and then we walked, yes we WALKED all the way up michigan to the mag mile to go to the Apple Store where mark and I had appointments with the Genius Bar folks. We went to a bunch of stores.

Josh and I had a seat in the entry to linens and things and Marshalls while Justin and Mark finished their shopping. This gentleman (I'm being nice) comes up to josh and ask's to shine his shoe's, we tell him no thanks and he's like oh come on and what not, now josh hates confrontation, so I tell the guy we're not interested, Well he just bends down and squirts stuff on josh's shoe's, then bends down and starts saying "don't kick me in the face..." and proceeds to do his shoes, about 45 seconds on each shoe, I mean they were covered in goop. Then I stand up and say 'josh we're leaving' and this guy starts saying it's eight dollars a shoe and he wants a tip, over and over again, Mark and Justin come up the elevator and are like telling us to go and the guy won't leave us alone and he starts yelling it at us over and over again then 3 of these other shoe shine guys come in and surround us and are saying "come on big guy pay up gotta feed the family'' I tell them we don't have any money, all josh has on him is 20's and 50's, so he pulls out a 20 and the guy grabs it and runs, I was so angry, I wish he would have let me handle it, I don't care about confrontation with people like that. Oh well

So then we went out for Persian food at Reza's, It was amazing, we all loved it! We did some more shopping, grabbed a cab and went back to the house, it was COLD!! Then we walked up to the Local bakery around 5ish bought some bread to take home with us. Then we went to a few local shops in Hyde Park, found an awesome free trade place! We found a small Italian deli that had Cannoli's and Teramisu, SO GOOD. I got cannoli's to take home and Mark bought 4 Teremisu's to take home for desert. So we went back the house for a rest and then we headed out for some Deep Dish Pizza at Edwardo's SO SO GOOD!! Then home for good times with friends.

We got up early this morning and caught the train back to SOuth Bend, about 3 min after we left 57th st the train broke down so we sat on the tracks for 2 hours untill the brought us another train, when we got into south bend it was 40 below zero with the wind, our car doors wouldn't close because it was so cold, crazy. it took us 2 hours to make a 40 mile drive, and it was the last 15 miles that took 1.5 hours.

We Got home around 4 to our amazing babies who had been with our parents! I missed them SO SO SO SO much but needed the break, it was FANTASTIC.

I'm going to go enjoy a cannoli

Jos

it's here....

The cold of winter, and by 'Cold of winter' I do not mean the frost on the windows and seasonal chill that makes me long for fuzzy socks, no I am referring to the god awful infection that has settled in my lower resp. system. Oh god It's awful. It's not so much the runny nose or congestion, it's the massive feeling of pain with every breath. owe. Should have been actress ( I need an oscar for that bit of literary drama)

So Maddie is for sure coming down with a bit of a cold, but I think it's something other then what I have thank god~knocking on wood.

In all of my sickness we went to Target this morning for some much needed shopping. I picked the kids up each a long sleeved tee and also a sweatshirt and 2 pairs of jeans. I forgot what cute and reasonable priced toddler clothes target has!! While shopping I noticed a trend in toddler girl clothes that I don't like. I keep finding adult fashions for little girls, for instance, a wide WIDE low square neckline with giant rhinestones attached all around or maybe the satin v-neck cami and black cardigan set!!!??? It gets me a little because I want my Maddie to be wearing "little girl" clothes as long as possible!! Ok stepping of the soapbox.

We bought a new set of flatware seeing as ours have been vanishing as of late, Nothing fancy, but nice none the less.


OOHH and Maddie shoplifted!! LOL we were looking in the halloween sale aisle and she must of grabbed them, but we wound up with a set of fake eyelashes (the sparkle ones wink wink) that she had obviously tucked under her coat which was next to her in the cart. When we were loading up the car I noticed them and freaked out and ran and gave them to one of the cart boys who actually said, "if you got out of the store with them, you can keep them...." I just looked at him in awe and informed him that I had no use for sparkle fake lashes.


So thats our day!

I'm going to try and shop for christmas online~

Going through toys!

So this morning started off fairly well, we went to bed with no snow on the ground and woke up with 5 inches, the twins are baffled by this white stuff!

I decided to go through all their toys in the living room today sine they have SO many. We made a a game out of it and have moved about 70% of it out of the room, packed up and will go in their closet untill this spring for a sale. Some of the neater things that I know they won't play with at all we are donating. I explained the whole time we were going through things that we were going to give these to other little ones who would like some new toys. We sang carols and generally had a good time.

Last night my mom and I went out to target and Bought the kids some new winter coats and snow pants. Maddie is pink and purple with flowers and she has lavender snow pants. John got a navy, green, red and yellow plaid (tartan plaid really) jacket and Navy pants. I think he's fairly "dapper" in the outfit! We did some other shopping, I love targets groceries, amazing bargains!! We finished off our target trip to the Starbucks in the front of the store, they have this AMAZING salted caramel hot cocoa, I am thrilled with it, it's so so so so so so so so good. Then we made a nice trip over to Hunan Gardens and got chinese to take home. Lovely evening. By that time I had been up since 5 and it was nearing 10 so I was pretty tired (early work morning)

We are just getting into the holidays around here, I think I am driving everyone nuts because I am trilled with the holidays and just can't wait!

Have to run, maddie is pushing buttons!

Prayers and tears

A family of 4 may be a family of 3.

Saying it makes it feel real, which is not what I want, but I have to face facts.

I don't want to tell my family.

I don't want him to leave, but I think some things are out of my control

I need strength.

I feel like this isn't fair, I'm 25 and trying to make everything work.

I don't care about myself, I care for my two sweet innocent gifts of grace that I have been blessed with. For godsakes how do I fix this for them.

Maddie and the flower

This is 2 months old but I thought it was toooooo cute!

Again I am holding the camera to close to my face so I sound funny!

CHicago

My mom took me to chicago yesterday for a few fun reasons. we had to take an order to the Chicago Botanical Garden, I got to the fresh floral arrangements for the shop this week, I was so thrilled!

After that we headed to Trader Joe's in wicker park. I am totally obsessed with Trader Joe's. The prices are rite, I love the selection, because they have everything, just not a huge selection, which is awesome because It takes to long other wise. Prices are just awesome though.

Everything (mostly everything) is Their own brand. For instance, our local store brand of Maple Brown sugar oatmeal is $3.99 at trader Joe's it was $2.29 for the same amount of packets. And I acutally liked their brand better, it tastes way better to me and it doesn't get jelly-ish. Nice and fluffy.

So I stocked up on some stuff and tried a few new things. They have Dolmas in a jar, which are stuffed grape leaves, stuffed with jasmine rice I do believe. They had a great Idea of chopping them up and then putting crumbled feta into it. Now I took it farther, made the dolma feta mix, then I took a pita put some humus on it and then put the mixture in side and made a fantastic pita pocket. I thought what the heck lets see if the babies like it, they were just thrilled with it!

They also had some thai peanut satte, which I cooked up with chicken and again the kids loved it.

I really want them to have a wide varitiy of tastes to explore.

So for new foods that we have tried in the last week we like

Humus
Pita
Stuffed grape leaves
Brie ( I checked with the Dr. First and it was fine)
Fig bars from TJ's
Chicken Satte
Thai Curry chicken
Babba Ganuj

We also went to Sam's wine and sprits and I picked up a couple bottles of ICe wine for Josh and I, we love it, it's really sweet and quite a treat. I also grabbed a bottle of pre made white russian mix. I like to make home made mudslides out of it, add some chocolate sauce and some ice cream and put it in the blender and away you go! It's actually really fun for parties! And the mix is fairly week and since I'm not a huge alcohol fan, but love mudslides, It's pretty good!


I am so excited for them, I am going to keep writing Trader Joe's on a daily basis to get them to put one near us, I am on a campaign~

good swims and cute clothes

I found the most adorable dress on e-bay for maddie, it's from a small boutique in Nice, I adore it, she's so cute in it!

I got John a Hawaii style short and shirt set that is from Hawaii, I love e-bay. I buy a lot from the same women who has twins that are a little bit older then JAM, All of her things are clean and sent wrapped in tissue with ribbon and come from a smoke free home.

So the twins went out on my dad's boat last weekend, we had fun!! Maddie got in the water and went swimming with grandpa and she had a blast although I only caught the last part of her swim on video.


My mom brought the babies recorder flutes to play with over the weekend as well, that was pretty fun, they seem to enjoy them but I only let them have them when they are in their high chairs because I am afraid of them falling with them in their mouthes.


They were too cute playing the little flutes!!

You can see the green color we are painting our front room and you can kind of see our un finished front wood floor. I am so ready for it to be done but the twins have to be out of the house for 48 hours so we can urathane it. UGGH

New Blog

I've added a new blog for my wedding floral work.

www.Phineuaweddingflroal.blogspot.com

Check it out, I'm still working on it!

cry-o-rama

Good lord we had a long sunday. Poor John had a breakdown at the grocery today. We walked in and he just started sobbing. we had no clue what was wrong just sobbing, we tried everything and nothing worked, he was inconsolable. So I carried him and pushed the cart, while josh tried to shop the list. we ended up just leaving. AND we spent way to much at the store because he was power shopping due to the apparent emergency with JOhn so we didn't shop smart. It's just we were in town at the store with the good prices and couldn't afford to do our shopping close to home, a trip to the "Good" Store may cost $85 and at home it's about $140. No joke.

We are switching to Voice over Internet this week, so we have a new number, woo hoO!! Not a big deal I guess.

So we had our 15 month well child check's this past friday, at 16 months, we got behind when they had Chicken Pox so....

Maddie is 31.5 inches
John is 32.5 inches

Maddie - 20 lbs
John is 25 lbs

We got the DTaP and the HEP A, is anyone else doing HEP A?? Our pedi said it's newly recomended by the Pediatricians Association board academy thing, and with all the imported foods coming in that it's a good idea, so we did it, I read about the research and it makes sense to me. Our HIB was delayed, has anyone else had their HIB delayed due to shortage??

They did their "Skill test" and they did AWESOME! We have been working on colors and numbers for the last few months. So our pedi was suprised when I asked Maddie to Bring me the Blue Cup and she did, John brought a red ball!! So far they know Red, Blue Green, yellow, Black and White and Maddie knows pink I think, or she just really likes it! They can also separate colors.

Also, while we get them dressed we always count, and they both can count to five, which I am so happy about.

We are also working on letters. I made Giant 8 by 10 flash cards with a big letter on one side and then I went around taking pictures of things that start with that letter, A, Apple, Arm, Arch, Altoid (a picture of the box and a mint next to it) ant and Aunt are on one page and I found a picture of an ant on the net and a Picture of their favorite aunt . So I put each set of letter cards on a little metal flip card holder ring thing, like from a binder, and every morning when I go get them up I introduce a new letter and then that day we do something with that letter, we are on I rite now, so they had ice cream today after their shots. It's just fun for now! I try to have at least 5 word cards for each letter.

SO all and all they are great, super impressed with their progressed, which makes me so happy because they were getting labeled as "preemies" for so long and now we are Finally past that.

OH OH OH and they aren't orange any more