Guilty Pleasures - Early Valentine's Day

On Friday, February 6 we celebrated and early Valentine's by going to see one of our favorite shows. Clay Jenkinson portraying Theodore Roosevelt with John Williams from WGN720 radio as a mediator / host. He also portrays Thomas Jefferson (we'd seen it twice) and he was saying that he is trying to portray Robert J. Oppenheimer, the man often remembered as the "father of the atomic bomb." He said that maybe next year will happen. I hope so, we will go see it. If you want to know more about it: http://www.jeffersonhour.org/
The show was excellent and lasted from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. Then, they were given autographs; they even let me take a picture. We were supposed to go to a quick dinner after the show, but by the time we got around our area (show was in Waubonsee - Sugar Grove), not much to choose from. All restaurants by 11 pm are closing and it was 10:39pm and did not want to rush. So, we went for Arianna to my sister's house. Thanks for babysitting!

So, the next day Mike had a plan and he did not tell me, but he surprised me by going to Michigan City. But first, we needed to stop and give a quick wash to our really dirty car and while waiting in line, I saw this tree with a really nice bird nest. Just the perfect spot for it too!


Also, while waiting Arianna was drawing and making lots of "o" "t" and "h"... those are her favorite sounds for letters!


Then, while inside the car wash you could tell Arianna's face was going from happy to worry to scare. I held her hand and told her that everything will be ok. She cried for 10 seconds, and then just held my hand. She was fine.

Mike drove to a restaurant in New Buffalo, MI called El Rancho Grande. It is a mexican restaurant with some tacos named Taco Duncan. They are very delicious: steak, bacon, chorizo (mexican sausage), onions, jalapeno, cilantro, homemade tortillas and a special sauce where the tortillas are dipped. So, that was our Valentine's brunch!

We stopped at OshKosh store in Michigan City to buy a few more pieces of clothing for Arianna. We are also trying the "leash" because she wants to walk everywhere. She did not like it, but she dealt with it. In the picture she found a dog and was hugging it, but the camera was not fast enough to capture the moment :(

And for our guilty pleasures... I bought Mike a pocketknife - a leatherman - since he uses it all the time and the one he had was from 10 years or so...

And he bought me a fossil bag and wallet. To be fair, I think I have about 6 bags total (bought in a 10 yr bracket), and the one that I had used for the last four years is giving in ... as for the wallet, I needed a replacement because mine broke. And he bought them at the outlet were thankfully the discounts are better! (He bought me a secret present... we'll see what it is !)

Footprint and Food

In another post I had showed a picture similar to this one (two footprints of Arianna's shoes), but I wanted a comparison between her shoe and mine. So, here it is!

My sister came to our house for a little and Arianna is getting better with her cousins. Here is Raven holding her while Mike looks for the website they wanted to see (Barbie).

We went to IKEA two weeks ago and bought this wonderful secretary desk for our dining room. We were still in the process of rearranging some stuff around, but we already love it because our dining table is free of clutter (papers, computer, camera, etc..). We also bought 4 replacement chairs for our table. The ones we had were from about 4 yrs ago and they were too light and Arianna was able to flip them quite easy.

I always forget to take pictures of my finished homemade craft. But this time I remember! Here is a finished scarf for a friend.

Arianna playing with her new basket of produce. She loves the grapes and banana the most, then tomato, strawberry and ice cream... then the rest!


We were trying to go to the store and she could not let go of her basket!

In a small note, our gerbils Data and Geordi were separated so each have their own house/box because they started fighting (and we were told that one of them will die or get severily injured). Gerbils are sociable and are supposed to be in pairs, but apparantely sometimes it does not work, they start to fight and can get ugly really fast. Data was injured in the right leg (that is how we started to notice something was not right). I read that if there is blood in a fight (Data's leg), reconciliation is impossible and fight will be to the death (they kept chasing each other in the box for awhile, first we thought they were playing).
So, we would not come home to a death gerbil, each has their own happy home, and they are doing just fine. We had 2 sets of gerbils before, and we have two sets right now, and from the 4 sets, this is the first time that we had to do this. I remember when Max passed away, Sam did not live to long after him, and you could tell he missed his brother. Goes to tell you that even gerbil world is very interesting!