The tree is up

E didn't want us to put the tree up yesterday until she left. OK, she didn't want to carry the decorations in from the garage. So we waited till her friend N's mom picked her up and L and B helped Andy and me bring in the decorations. B did a good job on the lights and fluffing the tree branches. The rest was pretty much left for me to do.

Not ready to let her go

Muffles either wants to go to college with E, or he's not ready to let her go back today.

Pillow pet

Muffles really lets these kids manhandle him. Here he is serving as B's live pillow pet.

Black Friday

L had a fun day out with Cousin C, who took her Black Friday shopping. L couldn't wait to show me these hair clips she bought so she can wear them to school and be festive. She also bought a cute hat and mittens for a family her confirmation class is sponsoring. They'll be wrapping the gifts at their meeting Wednesday.

Thanksgiving dinner

L wanted to prepare a side dish for our Thanksgiving dinner so she found a recipe for macaroni and cheese from scratch. It ended up tasting pretty good.

Appetizers were cheese and crackers, meatballs and B's favorite, Little Smokies. E's boyfriend, P, joined us for appetizers, but had to leave before dinner.

The table is set and ready for the family - Aunt A, Uncle P, Cousins C and M, and Grandma.

My attempt at a festive centerpiece - floating leaf candles.

A Thanksgiving picture of us all that Andy took ...

... and the picture I took so Andy was in it. We also took one with L's selfie stick so we could all be in it:

We enjoyed quite a spread - turkey of course, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, stuffing, cranberry sauce, L's mac and cheese and Aunt A's Hawaiian salad, corn casserole and Hawaiian rolls. Dessert was pumpkin cheesecake and apple pie. Our turkey was so big Andy had to run to the store to buy a disposable pan to bake it in. Leftovers for everyone!

And in his usual style, B fell asleep after dinner. Last year, though, his nap was before dinner.

Tale of two chests

For some unknown reason, I've always kept the silverware chest on the highest shelf in our living room. I was putting it back earlier this year when it slipped out of my bum hand and came crashing down, leaving silverware all over the floor and the shelf dented. The hinge broke off the box and I was able to kind of fix it, but knew it needed replacing. Since we're hosting Thanksgiving, I thought this would be a good time to order a new chest as an early Christmas present and switch over the silverware, which L happily did for me.

The old chest is on the left. The new one seems bigger, but it's a little harder to get the silverware in. L managed though. Notice that the new one has handles on the side so maybe I won't drop it. And now we store it on the lowest shelf in the living room, just to be safe.

Christkindlmarket

L and B finished up classes today so we decided to go downtown to the Christkindlmarket as we do every year. The weather wasn't too bad (around 35 degrees) but it was still pretty crowded. We didn't spend too much time looking at the booths.

What the kids really wanted was the hot chocolate and souvenir mugs. E got hot apple cider in the market's 20th anniversary boot mug.

L got hot chocolate in the kids' snowman mug. B got hot chocolate but he had his in a styrofoam cup. He's not really in to the collecting tchotchkes.

I did walk through a couple of ornament shops. How cute are these owls? Too bad they cost $16.95 each.

After the market, we went to Pizzeria Due for deep-dish pizza.

Recharging

A friend of mine who has two college students told me to expect E to sleep a lot while she's home on break. I think she's recharging to tackle her finals.

Thankoffering dinner

I didn't take any pictures until the dinner was over, but we went to church last night for the annual Thankoffering potluck dinner. We noticed last year that there wasn't any mashed potatoes so our plan this year was to bring some. We mentioned that to one of the organizers when we were at our annual church retreat in October and since she's once of the dinner organizations, she made 30 pounds of mashed potatoes. Then we brought our additional 10 pounds. Surprisingly, they were pretty much all gone by the end of the night. We're predicting next year there will again be no mashed potatoes.

B stayed home, but L and E went. All the college kids were home for break so they all got to compare their experiences so far.

First snow

The first snow of the season started last night and the storm watch continues through 3 p.m. today. Forecasters have predicted as much as 11 inches to fall in the area; we're expecting more like 5. This is what we had this morning - maybe 2 inches - but it's continuing to come down.

Guess I spoke too soon. They snow kept coming and it got really heavy.

It was snowing like this in the early afternoon when it took Andy 25 minutes to drive from our house to Lake Street to pick up L and her friend, J, who were shopping and hanging out.

When it was all over, it was the second largest first snowfall of the season Chicago has ever had (less than 12 inches the area got in November 1895). We probably got about 6 inches. Not a way to ease into winter.

Army?

It's not everyday B comes home from school wearing an Army hat so I knew there had to be a good story behind it. Some Army representatives came to his engineering class today to show off some robots. After their presentation, in which they carefully noted they were not there to recruit students, they let the students operate the robots and if they were able to pick up an item, they got to keep it. And B was able to pick up the hat. See, those video game-playing skills do come in handy.

We decided to have a little fun with E, though, was was with Andy on the ride home from Urbana so we texted her the picture and said B has enlisted. B insisted I add the winky face emoji. She wasted not time in responding, "No, he's not going to the Middle East." Aww, she loves her brother.

Fundraiser organization

L stayed after school today to help with the distribution of the band and choir members' fundraising items. She even got pizza for her efforts. Then she came home and had to start sorting her items - all 38 of them - with a little help from a curious cat.

Potatoes for all

Andy got up early this morning to peel and cook almost 10 pounds of potatoes for his office's annual Thanksgiving lunch. All that peeling and it filled one container.

Pledge class

This picture of E's pledge class was posted on Facebook. Can you find her? She's toward the left.

Me and my girl

E sent me this photo she took of us over the weekend when we were in the Illini Union elevator.

Funny T-shirt

Couldn't resist taking a picture of this T-shirt we saw at one of the shops near campus. This is the front ...

and this is the back. Guess that explains Illinois' corn.

Perhaps the best part of the store was the three dogs the owners had in the back. They sat their and let L and her friend, pet them, which gave Andy and me ample time to look around and catch some of the football game on TV in the store. The Illini were playing Ohio State and lost, and were expected to lose, but at least they scored 3 points. The owner said that was respectable. Ha.

Dads Weekend

E wanted to go to her karate club this morning so we knew we had some time to kill until 1 p.m. before we could meet up with her. We drove around the town of Rantoul, which L promptly labeled a ghost town. We drove around the old Rantoul Air Force Base, which was pretty neat to see. L, though, couldn't wait to get to Champaign because we agreed to pick up her friend, J, who moved there over the summer.

This was how one business welcomed dads and advertised their specials for the day.

Before we let the girls walk around the campus together, L had a little "homework" to do. Her engineering teacher is a U of I grad and when she told him she was going to visit her sister this weekend, he asked her to take along his stuffed blue-footed booby and get a picture with the Alma Mater statue. On the way to that statue we passed this one by the engineering library so L decided she needed to take its picture with the booby too.

And the Alma Mater!

And about 1 p.m. E met us by the Union. The girls went to the Union to choose lunch from a variety of fast-food options and we took E to Panera.

After lunch we made a quick stop at Wal-mart then went back to campus and walked around ... and walked ... and walked some more. We walked nine miles. This is the dorm where E will be living next year. It's being built now and should be done (fingers crossed!) before school starts in the fall.

We were going to have dinner near campus, but it was really crowded with Dads Weekend and the football game being over so we got in the car and headed to Brixx Pizza, which apparently just opened last month. Nice place and E was able to take a couple slices of her wood-fired margherita pizza home with her. She told us good-bye. She'll be busy studying tomorrow so we're planning on leaving straight from the hotel to go home.

Going to see our girl

Andy got home a little early today so we could leave for Champaign to see E on Dads Weekend. We stopped by our hotel in Rantoul to check in before heading to campus to give E dinner and a break from dorm food. The first restaurant we stopped in said they had an hour and a half wait. No, not doing that. So we walked across the street to Guido's and they said the wait would be about 40 minutes, significantly better, so we stayed and were actually seated in about 15 minutes.

B stayed home to take a practice ACT test tomorrow at the high school so I sent him this pic of E at dinner.

Determined

Muffles was determined to drop a screw in Andy's shoe, then dragged the shoe all over trying to get it back out. Makes me wonder what these cats do when we're not here.

Attention, please

August waits patiently to get some attention from Andy.

Post-concert churro

L had a big band concert at the high school tonight and afterward Andy and I took her to a local Mexican restaurant where she had a chocolate churro and ice cream for dessert ... and Andy and I had a margarita and quesadillas. Can you tell she did not want me to take her picture? Thirteen is such a fun age.

Not Nutella!

L was watching TV this morning, eating her Nutella-covered bagels for breakfast when Muffles some how ended up getting his tail in the Nutella. It took some patience to get it all out before L had to leave for school.

Hairnets!

L went with her confirmation class yesterday for a mission project at Feed My Starving Children in the northwest suburbs. L said they made packets of rice and while most groups pack 60 boxes of food, these kids and their adult helpers did 70! Gotta love the hairnets. So fashionable.

Honor Roll

B made the honor roll again!