D-Day

Our List of Things To Do Today:

• Eat breakfast
• Find great books at Another Story Bookshop with my mom
• Buy garam masala, fennel seeds, and chili flakes at The Mercantile
  
• Eat lunch
• Walk through the entire mall while searching for rubber boots (didn't find any)
• Succeed in finding a shirt for my mom & getting her to buy it!
  
• Drink lots of raspberry tea and eat lots of pineapple (supposed labor inducers)
  
• Go grocery shopping
• Watch my mom make delicious honey mustard chicken and then eat it
  
• Complete two crossword puzzles
  
• Have a baby

Well, we ALMOST got everything done today.

Food Addiction

I recently saw a TV show on which they said "If you think about food for more than an hour a day, you have a food addiction." Yikes! I definitely think about food more than that. John is wondering, however, if I am more of a cooking addict than a food addict.

For example, this morning as we huddled over our cereal bowls, shivering in our cold apartment, I said, "It's kind of cold in here, isn't it? You know what that means!" John replied, "Time to turn on the radiator?" "No, time to start cooking!" [Our apartment heats up pretty well when the oven is turned on.]

Even if I do have an addiction to cooking, there are times when it's important to get working in the kitchen. Like today my mom is coming! Thus, it was vital that I made a Chocolate Sweet Potato Torte at 8:30 a.m. to satisfy all of her chocolate needs, don't you think?

"Ticket to Acquire"

Many of you know we are big gamers. Every time we move I am amazed at how many boxes we fill with games. Unfortunately, most of them are in storage as our apartment doesn't allow for our collection but a few made the cut to live with us.

These are two of our favorites. I've played Acquire since I was young and am really happy that my husband loves it too. John was given Ticket to Ride for Christmas.


John doesn't like to just play games, though. He's always trying to make them better OR to create his own game. Making a game that combined building airlines and buying their stock has been an idea of his for a long time. Most of his ideas are possible by combining these two games, causing the game set-up to look like this at the beginning:


We're still working out the details but "Ticket to Acquire" is showing great promise. Below shows what the board looked like at the end of the most recent game.


Anybody want to come over and play?

Art Gallery of Ontario

John & I have always been dinner & a museum people, rather than dinner & a movie, so our date Wednesday night was spent at John's Italian Caffe & the Art Gallery of Ontario.


The best meal I've ever had in my life was eggplant parmesan in Italy. So when the chef at John's said the special was lasagna made with eggplant parmesan rather than noodles, my dinner choice was simple. Wow, it was good. John had gnocchi with a pesto sauce.


The AGO was a lot of fun. Instead of our usual walking around as individuals unless a new favorite piece of art showed up, we stayed together and chatted through the whole thing.


A new favorite artist did show up! William Kurelek, a 20th century Canadian, paints amazing yet really playful pictures. The painting above has the outside snow adventures painted on the canvas and the man sleeping inside on the frame. Check him out!

Ugaritic Kindergarten

John's been busy learning the alphabet this past week...

Outside our Windows

Our apartment is on the fourth floor, so cars and buses don't go driving by our windows. We do have some great views, though. This is what we see after snow has freshly fallen.


When the leaves are on the neighborhood's 200-year old trees, this isn't visible. However, in the winter, we have a view of the skyline a few miles away. Do you see the CN tower to the right?


A couple of weeks ago we looked out and saw this man working five stories up in the air.

[Sorry about the need to tilt your head.]

We'll be three any day now!

The countdown for Little Critter's arrival is nearing its end. Yikes! Until recently we were both feeling pretty good about our new upcoming roles. We even got our crib area all set-up!


Then, a few things happened.

Our good friends Dan & Jemma and their six-month old Levi came and stayed with us for the night. Now don't get me wrong, we had a great time with them. But after they left, John turned to me and said, "I'm nervous. The baby is with you 24/7!"


Then on Friday night I had quite a few Braxton Hicks contractions that were 14 minutes apart. All of a sudden we're thinking about actually going to the hospital to have this baby, and it was just too much for me. All I wanted was for Little Critter to stay inside for a long LONG time!

While we anxiously/patiently wait, we've been having some fun just the two of us. One night we got all dressed up and went out for a dinner at a local Polish restaurant. I had a Potato Pancake Hungarian Style, which means filled with goulash. John has Weiner Schnitzel and Potato Dumplings (Notice the fried egg - that's kind of his thing...he's had burgers, pizzas, and now schnitzel topped with fried eggs.). The food was delicious, and I loved how each dish included "a bouquet of salads on the side." See the sauerkraut, beets, and vinegar coleslaw salads?


There's a local theater near us that shows regular movies and fun features. We went and saw "The Thief of Bagdad" (not a spelling mistake!), a 1940s silent film that was accompanied with live piano. We felt that the beginning was a bit slow but once we got involved with the storyline, the music went perfectly with it and it was lots of fun!

The Thief of Bagdad

If Little Critter stays inside for until the due date, more dates are planned. But we'll see what happens!

Post-Holiday Highlights in MN/WI

Our celebration with John's family was atypical in that it wasn't on Christmas Eve, but we did bring back a tradition! Part of their celebration used to be all singing carols together with those who played instruments accompanying the songs. We tried that this year, and it was so much fun. With the piano, guitar, violin, cello, and trumpet playing and voices singing, it was so enjoyable. Even the kids got into it, especially when it was time for Jingle Bells!


Afterwards we attempted to take some nice pics of John with his brother and sister, but you can see what happened! Ahh, older siblings...


Once John's cousin Rae got into the picture, everyone started behaving :)


For the next week we spent time with each individual family. It's always so much fun to be able to play with our nieces and nephews, and then have grown-up time too! The days went by with multiple games of Ticket to Ride, playing in the snow, shopping, piano playing, car maintenance, and lots of chatting.


As huge Wisconsin Badger fans, we also gathered for the Rose Bowl. TCU won the game, but it was still a nice time together.

December Highlights in Bemidji...Including Root Beer

Trying to get caught up here...

Usually we celebrate the holidays with John's family until late Christmas Eve, then pack up, drive the four hours, and drop exhausted into bed. But this time we decided to switch it up and go to Bemidji before Christmas! It was really fun to make Christmas cookies, decorate them, do last minute shopping, and attend the Christmas Eve service with my family.

Here are a few highlights:

Rob took the initiative and waxed everyone's skis (um...except mine!), and then got us out cross-country skiing. My dad braved it through the cold, my mom was such a trooper not having much kick wax, and we sibs had fun.


There's this park in Langley where you can take birdseed and feed the birds from the palm of your hand. John decided to try it with the chickadees in my parents' backyard. It wasn't very successful with regards to the birds, but those of us inside got quite a kick out of him!


Christmas Day was lots of fun - but we missed you Eric, Kari, Emma, and Charlie!


The funniest part of our stay definitely happened at the end of Christmas Day. See, my husband is quite the root beer snob. I have to admit that there's good reason to be since he comes from Wisconsin. In the summer there are these root beer stands which serve hot dogs, hamburgers...and homemade root beer. SO GOOD. Anyways, my mom picked out five root beers, planning on us having a taste test. When John found out about it, he insisted that it be a blind taste test and boasted stated that he'd be able to name each root beer he tasted.


So we did it. With Chex Mix as a palette cleanser, five root beers-all chilled-were sampled, scrutinized, and categorized. It was easy for me, as each root beer seemed to get progressively worse, but one of us had to resample the root beer, swish it in his mouth, smell the various bouquets, and really consider each drink many times. You can probably guess who that was.

Well, guess what. He got every single root beer dead wrong AND he put his (supposedly) favorite root beer dead last. John claims that it's because you have to drink some root beers from the bottle, not a glass, but...


From left to right, here's the order John put the root beers in. If asked, however, to order them from his least to favorite when he knows what they are, he'd say Spreckers, Henry Weinhards, IBC, Frostop, and then A&W.

Sorry John, but you are never going to live this one down...

A Rough Start to the Year

Back in college there was always some theological question coming up that made me rethink my faith. Just a few weeks ago I was telling a friend that I feel like I've moved past that point in life. Sure, there are still lots of faith-related questions that I don't have an answer to. Yet God has shown Himself to be faithful and true so many times in my life that when a tough question comes up, my thought is "I'm not sure about that but I know God is real. That's enough for me."

Funny how feeling confident in God causes curve balls to come! The year 2011 started off quite rough for us (no, nothing so far with Little Critter). I haven't been questioning whether God is real and true, but I have found little comfort in Him. Interesting how my question has gone from "Who/what is God?" to "Where are you God?"

While the Bible has been hard to crack open, the songs of Audrey Assad have been helpful to listen to over and over again. Introduced to her this November, John & I are now hooked. She reminds me of Sara Groves. Here's one of her songs that is currently resonating quite a bit:

The Rose Bowl

As it's the first day of the new year, it's Rose Bowl time! The first one was held in 1902 with Michigan vs. Stanford. Humorously, Stanford was losing by so much in the third quarter that they flat out quit!

Today we won't be seeing any quitting, however, because the Wisconsin Badgers are playing.

Go Big Red!