An Update of my life…

Hello all! Thought I better update before I got way behind! I’ve had a busy week! Last Saturday (that is, June 21st), Justin and I met my sister and her family up at Wisconsin Dells at the Noah’s Ark water park for a day of sun and slides! Justin and Nicole went on practically everything - twice! My sister Shannon did a few slides, while John, Hannah and I claimed the kiddie park! I’m not really a fan of water…or slides…or being wet, but I had a good time in the wave pool and the 2 lazy rivers! Hannah LOVED the red slide at the kiddie park, though she did not so much like getting water in her face! I think she went down that slide about 100 times! By the time we got to supper she was passed out! Poor baby. Here are some pics from that day:

Hannah also liked the turtle shaped slide. Here she is with her daddy, John.

There was a bucket at the kiddie park that will fill with water and then douse anyone who was standing under it…can you find Justin??

After the water park, Nicole hopped in our car and came back to Chicago with us for the week. This is a tradition we started the first year Justin and I were married and living in Chicago, but unfortunately last summer it just didn’t work out. This year we made the most of it though!

Sunday night we had people over for dinner and I made Chicken Coconut Curry then watched X-men 3. Nicky lounged on the couch.

Malcolm really liked having Nicky around all week! You can see he has laid claim to her in this photo.

On Monday, Justin took Nicole to the Hancock building downtown and also to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. They walked along the lake front, looked at the shops downtown, and Nicky got some photos of graffiti. Here are some pics:

Nicole on the platform, waiting for the ‘L train

A view from the Hancock Observatory…they had a BEAUTIFUL clear day to see the city! Justin got one shot where you can see a building all the way up in Wilmette!

The monster piece of Cookie Dough cheesecake that Nicky had for lunch that day at the Cheesecake Factory!

On Tuesday Justin took her to Devon St, the Indian/Pakistani neighborhood. They had Indian food for lunch (I hear the curried lamb was fabulous!) And hit a bunch of the shops. Nicole got a beautiful Saree that is pink, purple and orange. After Devon St, they headed for Belmont St. and hit The Alley as well as a few other shops. Nik got some really neat books from The Alley. Sorry, no pictures for this day!

On Wednesday I took over and we headed to the Shedd Aquarium and the Field Museum. The aquarium is always my favorite. I love all the fishes and other water creatures! Beluga whales are my favorite to watch! At the Field Museum we went to the Mythical Creatures exhibit. That was one of the main things I wanted to do while Nicole was down here, because I knew she would enjoy it! Unfortunately they didn’t let us take any photos inside the exhibit. But here is a neat one of the Belugas…a mommy and new baby!

Thursday was our shopping on Clark St. day and going to the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago. On Clark we hit a bunch of different shops including few antique stores, Bon Bon’s, the Paper Trail, Kopi, the Brown Elephant (where Nicky found some plaid pants) and ate at Huey’s Hot Dogs. After lunch, we drove downtown and picked up Justin after work and then went to the Oriental Institute. Our good friend Sarah works there and was going to give us a tour, but turned out she had to move that week, so it didn’t work out…we still had a great time there and got to see my favorite kind of stuff - Ancient Near Eastern artifacts!!

Description from the OI website: “This colorful striding lion, its mouth opened in a threatening roar, once decorated a side of the ‘Processional Way’ in ancient Babylon (the Biblical city of Babel). The ‘Processional Way’ led out of the city through a massive gate named for the Mesopotamian goddess of love and war, Ishtar, whose symbol was the lion. Each year, during the celebration of the great New Year Festival, the images of the city’s deities were carried out through the Ishtar Gate and along the ‘Processional Way’ past some 120 lions such as this one to a special festival house north of the city.”

Here is Nicole and with the “lamassu”, the bull (which is Sarah’s ‘boyfriend’). Again, from the OI website: “This colossal sculpture was one of a pair that guarded the entrance to the throne room of King Sargon II. A protective spirit known as a “lamassu”, it is shown as a composite being with the head of a human, the body and ears of a bull, and the wings of a bird. When viewed from the side, the creature appears to be walking; when viewed from the front, to be standing still. Thus it is actually represented with five, rather than four, legs.”

And here is Nicole with King Tut!

Friday was a day of driving to Minnesota. Justin and I had a wedding reception that night, and of course I forgot to bring my camera!! Grr…argh! Hopefully I can get a few shots from someone else (hint hint Susie!). We had a good time and it was fun to see some old friends I haven’t seen in a long time

On Saturday my mom, grandma, Nicole, Justin and I headed up to Rochester for some shopping and family time. I got a few new work shirts (which I needed desperatly!) and Nicole found a new pair of pants and a RECORD!! Yes, actual vinyl, not a CD! I’ve introduced her to to love that is vinyl records and gave her my old record player that’s been sitting at my mom’s house for the past 5 years collecting dust. I’m so proud!

Sunday was a birthday lunch for my little sister Robbin. We had ham and salads and DQ Ice Cream Cake…Mmmm! It was good to spend time with the family. Here’s a picture of my dad and Hannah playing together (my dad is wearing Hannah’s hat).

July 4th is this Friday, and we’ll be heading to Madison to spend the weekend with my best friend Susie, her husband Erik and our goddaughter Jannah! I really can’t wait. I’m sure I’ll have another post next week with pictures from the weekend! Malcolm will be spending the holiday with Randy and “Uncle” Albert (the basset hound). Happy holiday to you all!

 

My Rock ‘n Roll Dream…

 

Iron Man Rocks the Casbah

Oh, you know it totally does! I’ve seen the movie twice now, and I’m planning to go again sometime soon! The writing is fantastic (even with the comic book cheese factor, but you HAVE to have that in there!), the casting was spot on (who knew that I was totally in love with Robert Downey Jr.??) and the story was great. I highly recommend it to all!

I saw the movie opening weekend and I’m just now getting around to my recommendation…sorry about that folks! Don’t know why I waited. So why am I writing about it now? I got a random comment on my last post about the Hulk from Patrick. I went to check out his website and it’s pretty cool! The tag line of his website “KOG Media” is “God’s Kingdom in Movies, Music and Television”. Gotta love that! I clicked on his review of Iron Man and was very intrigued. Click here to check it out yourself!

Also…if you’ve seen the new Indiana Jones movie, check out his review of that as well.  My view pretty much coincides with his, though my order of prefrence is 1)Raiders 2)Last Crusade 3)Temple of Doom 10)Crystal Skull.  My basic view of the most recent Indy movie is this - if you want to see it, you should.  If you had no desire to see it, don’t.

 

One more reason to LOVE the “Hulk”

Last Friday, I went to see “The Incredible Hulk”. It was AMAZING!!! I loved it! I highly recommend it to all, especially those of you who loved the original TV series, you won’t be disappointed!

Not only is the movie great (with a guest spot from Tony Stark aka, Iron Man!) but I just found out about another reason to love the new Hulk movie - it’s GREEN!

 

Funny Face

So Justin and I did a 5 mile Walk-a-Thon to raise money for Family Matters here in Chicago last month. I got a few nice pictures (which you can see on my picture website from Shutterfly). The organizer for our team gave me some pics to scan in for the church office to have. I was looking at the large group shot when I noticed something:

See it? No? Okay…how about I zero in a bit…

See it now? Okay…a little bigger…

There it is…a funny face from Malcolm!!!

He’s so cute…Justin thinks he looks like he just ate a lemon

 

Birthdays, Indiana Jones, and Sunday Dinner

Hello all! Time for another update. This weekend was once again full of fun and friends! I have a feeling that this summer will have very few empty weekends! We’re already looking forward to many weddings, a week long visit from my niece Nicole, camping, traveling and other fun! It will be an expensive busy summer, but I’ve very much looking forward to it!

So, on Friday we celebrated the 2nd birthday of our dog, Malcolm Reynolds Thornburgh. He seemed very enthused when we sang “Happy Birthday” to him…I think he really just wanted to eat the cake! He also got a couple of new toys, including his new favorite - a squeaky, stuffed warthog that we named “Piggy”. Piggy is about the same size as Mal, so it’s really fun to watch him play with it and try to carry it around in his mouth!

Here’s the birthday boy with his cake…he looks really excited to have his picture taken, doesn’t he?

The next day, I hosted an Indiana Jones Movie Marathon!  It began at 12:30 pm and we watched the first 3 movies in a row.  There was food, themed beverages and games!  I made trivia questions to go with each movie and a few bonus questions.  The winner of that game got an Indy “action figure”.  There was also the Last Crusade Cup game.  I had the table covered in all different types of cups and glasses and each one had a red sticker on the bottom.  Most said, “You have chosen…poorly” but one said “You have chosen…wisely.”  The goal was obviously to choose the correct cup.  The winner got a pack of Indiana Jones trading cards.  I thought that was pretty clever if I do say so myself

Here is the table, covered in the cups, glasses and mugs.

Close up of the center piece I made for the party.  The “stones” are boxes wrapped in packing paper.  It was covered in bugs, a monkey and a snake!  The ball on top is one of those Styrofoam balls painted brown to look like the big rolling rock at the beginning of “Raiders of the Lost Ark”.

Themed beverages, from “Temple of Doom” - the “poison” was ginger ale, and the “antidote” was blue kool-aid.  If you don’t get it, go back and watch the opening sequence of Temple of Doom!

Here are some of the people that came to the party enjoying the show.  We had about 15-18 people in and out throughout the day.

After we watched the first 3 a group of 6 of us went up to Evanston and watched “Temple of the Crystal Skull.”  It was a good day all around!

Of course the next day was Sunday, so that meant Sunday Dinner!  We all trekked down to Marcie’s place in Hyde Park as she is going to England for the summer, so we won’t see her again until September!!  Her place is AMAZING!!  We had a great time with everyone there.

Here’s some of the group - there were about 13 of us there that night :-D  Marcie made salmon.  It was really good!

Here’s Leo enjoying the culinary delights!

And some of the entertainment for the night - Hank has just decided that he’s a baby dolphin, so he regaled us with his tricks.  You have to do the real dolphin hand signals for him and he’ll follow!

Trish enjoying the cake before the rest of us could get any!

A good weekend full of food and friends - always gotta love that!  Hope you all had a wonderful weekend and are enjoying a good week!

 

An Update

My posting has been scarce of late. Sorry! I finally uploaded pictures yesterday…All 242 of them! It had been a while and quite a few events since I emptied the camera, so I feel we’re in for a long post!

Way back on May 9th, we went to Café Ba Ba Reba to celebrate Sarah’s 25th Birthday. The restaurant is Tapas, which is a Spanish style of eating where you order small “appetizer” plates and share them family style…very good! I had muscles, es cargo (snails), calamari (squid), scallops, octopus and shrimp along with all the other good stuff!

Here’s Hope, Rony and the Birthday girl Sarah enjoying the Tapas!

Toward the other end of the table: Tripp, Bethany, Marcie and Justin.

There were lots of other people as well, but I won’t put up all their pictures! The room was packed! There was a sign on one wall that said “Occupancy by more than 25 persons is dangerous and illegal.” There were almost 20 people just at our table, and the room was still packed with other large groups!

Here’s Randy enjoying the culinary delights. Bethany made a birthday cake and brought it for all to enjoy (well, all except for me…it was chocolate! Yuck…). You can see Sherry in the background.

The next morning, Miss Sarah had her first Creative Memories workshop. Like me, Sarah is a direct sell consultant. While I work with Pampered Chef, Sarah works for Creative Memories which is a company that makes and sells scrap booking materials and other photo preserving items (digital, photo books, etc…). At her workshop it was basically just a time to come together and work with your photos. I took the time to organize and finish up the Wedding scrapbook Sarah had helped me to create.

Yeah, this is what my table looked like while I was trying to sort through my mass of boxed up photos…looks like I still have a lot of work ahead of me!

Here’s Sarah helping some other customers!

In other news, my good friend Tripp finally finished his Masters Thesis with Seabury Seminary here in Chicago! He graduated with an MDiv a few years back and is the Pastor at Community Church of Wilmette, a Chicago suburb. Now however, he’s finished his Masters paper about Calvin, and he decided to “graduate” again! He had a fun graduation party in his backyard that night. What does one do at a graduation party for a baptist pastor finishing his thesis on John Calvin from an Episcopal Seminary you may ask? Well the obvious of course: sing Old Thyme Hymns!!!

Here is the AngloBaptist himself with his trusty banjo…

And a shot of me singing one of the hymns at the party…It was a good time with lots of good food!

Of course, every once in a while, one has to step back from the constant party going and enjoy some time at home with family. Malcolm took full advantage of that one night:

Poor Justin, pined by a 19 lb. Chihuahua/Terrier!

On to more parties! Justin’s friends Mike and Erin we joined in marriage this past Sunday in St. Louis. The ceremony took place in a BEAUTIFUL park in St. Louis. The weather was perfect (for me). It was around 80, humid, sunny and just the right amount of cool breeze.

Here is the happy couple. In the background is Ziggy. He was the “pastor” at the wedding. He was ordained online, as was Mike when he married Ziggy and his wife Elisa. Zig was returning the favor!

Of course, I needed something to wear to this event. For over a year I’ve had a design in my head for a red dress with white polka dots. I’ve been talking about it with my friend Kate (an amazing ‘modiste’ who made my wedding dress for me, a bridesmaids dress, and the flower girls dress) for sometime, and she even bought me the fabric for my last birthday. I finally decided it was time to get the thing made and she excelled with it! It’s gorgeous and a lot of fun to wear! One guy that I was seated with at the reception even said that when he’d seen me at the wedding, he had “voted” me Best Dressed! Yay for me! I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that! Here are some shots of the dress:

I’m super hot *wink*

The reception was a ton of fun. They had good food and a good band. Erin and Naked Dave even broke out “A Little Help From My Friends”, Joe Cocker style for us!

Well…I think that’s all for now! I’m sure I’ll have more to report on Monday, as before next Monday I will have pics from Malcolm’s 2nd birthday, my Indiana Jones Movie Marathon Party, and the latest installment of “Sunday Dinner”! Have a great week and a “fierce” weekend!

 

TWILIGHT TRAILER

I love reading. I love it. I would be most happy curled up in a comfortable chair with a stack of my favorite books next to me and just work my way through one at a time and start over. I love the smell of books, and using my imagination to picture what the characters and places look like!

I love movies. I would also be happy, curled up in a comfy chair with a stack of my favorite movies next to me and just work my way through one at a time and start over. I love seeing the images and letting someone else’s imagination create a cornucopia of images for my mind to wrap around.

So…the best of both worlds is sometimes a movie that is based upon one of my favorite books. I say “sometimes” and not “all the time” because more often than not, a movie adaptation of a book is horrid (see Eragon…actually, DON’T see Eragon). Harry Potter I rank some of my all time favorites. The movies don’t hold a candle to the books, but they are tolerable. It’s rare that a movie and a book are both amazing. In my opinion I love both the Lord of the Rings books and movies! Another movie/book that I can say are both good is Interview with the Vampire.

I’m bringing all this up because once again, one of my favorite books, Twilight by Stephanie Meyer is being made into a movie. I seriously hope that the movie is as fantastic as the book. There are 3 other books in the series…two are out, the other is not yet released, but will be on August 2nd. I can only assume that they’ll do movies for the rest of the books, too. I will definitely be going on December 12th, 2008 to see the movie. Here’s hoping it can live up to the book! For a sneak peek, here’s the teaser trailer:

[UPDATE: Edward seems to bear a striking resemblance to a certain Cedric Diggory of Harry Potter fame...Hmmm...]

 

Draco sings?

Apparently he does!  Check it out.

 

Oh Hell’s Yes!

Who’s going with me?