Long travel day

Got to O'hare at 6:30 a.m., had breakfast in the United Club then were on our way to Jamaica.

We got settled in our room and walked around a bit just in time to see the sunset.

We had a late lunch and early dinner.

I had the bacon-wrapped chicken and roasted potatoes but really was too tired to eat much. We'll get a good night's sleep and lounge around the pool tomorrow.

Santa down

It was too windy for Santa. He has since been tied to the porch railing.

Cookies for Pilgrim

The preschool is having a cookie sale/craft show this weekend and a church friend asked for people to bake and donate two dozen cookies. When the kids were in preschool we were required to donate five (I think? It's been a while) dozen to the school's cookie walk. And they had to be pretty - no chocolate chip. So donating two dozen was easy peasy (and they didn't even specify that they be pretty).

Outside lights

Andy and B put a little tree, Santa and a lighted wreath on the front porch and lined the awning with icicle lights.

They put colored lights along the fence.

And they hung this Christmas light on the garage. We have to get another outdoor extension cord to light it up.

Decorations are done

I'll keep tweaking things until Christmas, but for now, we're done decorating. We're using the flocked tree with red and green bead garland.

The mantle with wire-brush trees and flameless candles.

Dining room windows.

The buffet.

Back porch.

I had some extra ornmanets so I put them up in the kitchen. Wasn't sure I liked how it looked but I sent L a pic and she liked it so I guess I'll keep them up.

Day of decorating

Andy brought in the Christmas decorations this morning then left to go to the driving range. Hmmm. He's going to owe me for that. This is our newest ornament. We got it at ISU a couple of weeks ago.

At least B helped out.

I ordered two boxes of the shatterproof ornaments from Wal-mart when they were marked down to $2 a box. I must have found eight or so that were dented. I was able to fix the dent on one, but the next one I tried broke in my hand so the rest of the dented ones went in the garbage.

In the midst of decorating I found August snoozing in L's bottom drawer. That's a new spot for him.

Since I did most of the decorating, I had Andy come out shopping with me. We stopped for cheeseballs before going home and putting up the outdoor decorations.

Schubert stopped by to check things out.

Black Friday

Left when it was dark outside, around 5 a.m., to drive L back to Champaign. She had to be at work at 8 to open the store at 9.

One last snuggle for Muffles and we were off. Traffic was light but it was really foggy as we got closer to Champaign.

We got there early enough to stop in a few stores. There weren't many shoppers out which got L concerned that she wouldn't be selling as many shoes today as she had expected. We saw this Tito's bottle with an orange and blue sweater and wondered if that was special for UIUC or those are the colors they have.

We dropped L off at her car ...

and Andy and I had breakfast at Merry Ann's before driving home.

Thanksgiving

L texted me yesterday afternoon asking if she could drive home for Thanksgiving. She hasn't really driven on any highway and the Tri-State isn't a good place to start. Andy and I agreed to drive down and oick her up. She was supposed to be done with work at 7:30p.m. it we sat in her parking lot staring at the UIUC stadium until she finally arrived around 8:45 p.m.

We got back home around 11:30 p.m. but L is home for the holiday!

Table is set ...

and appetizers are ready.

Two of three kids home for Thanksgiving makes me happy.

Allison and Clare try Andy's pumpkin pie martinis.

Time for dinner!

Holding my phone hostage

Silly August.

He is a sweet cat.

Office Thanksgiving

Andy's office hosted its annual Thanksgiving potluck yesterday.

His contribution was this kale salad from Costco. It comes in two kits per package so he took three kits (leaving us one to try at home) and said it was pretty good.

Getting ready to eat.

Lunch time!

That’s just ugly

This candy corn candle is the ugliest thing I've come across at Goodwill in a while. Makes me wonder who bought it retail and why. And they had a smaller one just like it.

Pretty Monday morning

Challenging for 500 pieces

Our latest puzzle was just 500 pieces because we wanted to be done before Thanksgiving. It was kind of hard. B finished it over the weekend. He did most of this one.

Cleaned out

Andy spent Saturday morning at the old office supervising the movers who took all the papers away to be shredded.

Another company has been moving out the furniture. Andy is thrilled to see it (almost all) cleaned out. One less thing for him to worry about.

No lettuce for us

Ten dollars for three romaine hearts? i don't think so.

Craziness.