it's been a long week. Thursday I headed south to Urbana. I took the new I-355 extension to I-80 to I-57. It wasn't any faster than any of the previous routes. IL-47 remains king. When I got there, I helped Helen make cookies for her coworkers. We made a good 150+ of GF sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, and chocolate cookies. daaaaamn good. i think the sugar cookies are my favorites.
Friday while Helen worked, I went and had lunch with Joel. We swapped stories from the last few months, and i got to hear about his time in India. sounds like he had a good time, but is glad to be back. after lunch, helen was done with work, so we went to do some shopping. i finished my xmas shopping and we did a few errands. then we went to her mom's house to eat some chili and french fries with her mom and Barry. then they went out and we watched Love Actually, Helen's first DVD. after the movie we went to work on Kathryn's bench. Helen got to use her new router for teh first time! It was pretty sweet. then we filled in the nail holes and stained it.
Saturday we painted and sealed the bench. It looked pretty awesome. Then we went to Uni for Helen's 5 year reunion. I enjoyed the food while Helen talked with her old school buds. We took a tour of all the things that had changed at Uni, none of which I could tell was new or anything, but it was cool to see the school. I saw Helen's handprint on the wall on the first floor. then we went to Helen's dad's and carried Linda's stocking stuffers for everyone down south to Mt Vernon. the drive went pretty smoothly. hardly much traffic, and some decent xmas music. we arrived in Mt Vernon and got to see Kathryn before she went to bed. We spent most of the evening trying to chase Bear off of Helen's bed. Then we watched The Incredibles, laughed about how Kathryn appears drunk when she's tired.
Sunday we woke up, played more with Kathryn, and opened our stocking stuffers from LInda. THey had lots of useful things in them, breath mints, office supplies, a lighter, and a white castle hat! We all put on our hats for a while. Wendell put his on sideways tto become "Gangsta Wendell" and then Kathryn couldn't take it anymore so we let her open Helen's present. She loved it! She was sitting on it immediately as it was perfect for her size. We had an early dinner of Helen's grandma's pasta casserole dish, and then we went to Wendell's family's gift exchange. It was pretty cool. Everyone buys one gift and then everyone picks one at a time. You can choose to open your gift, or steal someone else's, which was amusing to watch. Scott was nice and stole Wendell's dvds. Helen got a birdhouse, liked it, had it stolen from her, and got another one in exchange. We all laughed a lot. The food was good too. Also, it seems like Wendell has great-grandkids who are college aged. I didn't get the full story there, but between all the people i talked to, that's how i figure it. AFter the dinner, we headed back north. I tried to take pictures of Helen asleep in the car, but they didn't come out better than making Helen look like a 300 pound man.
Monday Helen had to work again, so I drove north. Luckily mom and dad were home, because they'd had the locks changed on Friday after teh doorknob broke. whoops. We spent most of the morning and afternoon wrapping presents and getting ready for xmas. I spent most of the day trying o get my DVD for grandma' to work. For some reason Day 1,2,3,4,6,7 all work fine and Day 5 didnt. How irritating. We cooked a lot of food and then missed teh 5:00 service so we had to go to the 7:00. It had some good points, but some weird points too. Like I don't quite know why there was 2 girls who did an interpretive dance in front of the cross. And I'm always put off by guitar solos during the church worship songs time. You're not there to be a rockstar. After church we drove around like usual to look at lights. As we left the parking lot, we noticed that the church had a live nativity scene, complete with a donkey and some sheep. I didn't see a camel. Then we came home to open presents. Micki gave me a spongebob blanket and Biaggi's coupons for me and Helen. Mom and dad gave me a nice outfit. At some point during the evening my camera stopped working. It just stopped showing anything in the lens. LAME.
Tuesday morning I made pancakes and Helen arrived around 9:30. We opened our stockings and ate some chocolate. Then it was time to head to the Pulias for the first half of xmas. Helen was pleased to discover that Elf was playing on USA. She's been wanting to watch it all season! Gram passed out the holiday $ and we ate ate ate. Dino and Gigi were there all dressed up for the holidays. People kept changing the channel and we had to move from room to room while we socialized. Gram was looking ok at some points and sometimes bad. Gramps seemed to be doing ok. I talked to Meagan's boyfriend Joe for a while.
At 330ish we left for teh next round of family fun time. We got to Grandma's house before AJ left, so that was good. We got to play with Kate and scare Grace, as usual. Kate had me first spin her in the chair, and then spin Mary Joseph and Jesus figures. They seemed to have a good time. Gram changed some things up this year and did a new version of Luke 2 involving a lot of 'lefts' and 'rights' and we passed little gifts around. It was a lot of fun. Then we did the 12 Days. Helen and I were Ten Lords A Leaping. I showed Gram her DVD. Everyone liked ti a lot which was good. I didnt have as many pictures of Sean and Megthough , because their cameras didnt get included in the picture day swap.
Wednesday Helen and I played Scrabble. She whupped my butt once again. She's better at seeing words than I am. I do ok. I got "Zone" on a triple word score with the Z on a double letter. Dad got home early, right as Helen left, and he and i went to do some returning. He swapped a shirt and tie, and returned a game. I got a James Bond novel and a sci fi book.
Yesterday we went to Woodfild for lunch with Gram. Uncle Mike came too while James and Tory worked, and Aunt Lois and Emily went for peticures and shopping. We ate at the Cheesecake factory, which ended up being pretty lame. There was an hour wait, and the food ended up being either fried in peanut oil or cross contaminated. (Uncle Mike ate it anyway). I had a pretty good spicy chicken sandwich though. Then we more than earned our free meal by sitting around for over TWO HOURS while Uncle Mike tried on six pairs of pants, several shirts, jackets and sweaters. Sigh. Then we had to hurry home so i could go to karate. It was a good workout, we did some core body training and then some self defense exercises. Katlin was home for the hoildays so she came with.
Today dad and I went to do some errands. We stopped to look at the camera I was thinking about at Office Max. it turned out to be on sale for $20 cheaper than anywhere else, and also, it came with a free 2GB card. So I went ahead and spent dad's money. I felt bad. I think he was a little jealous of my camera. He never says anything, but you can sometimes tell. And he never would say no to us. It's awkward.
He and mom went to take food to Gram and Gramps today, and I took Micki to buy a camera for her. She ended up going with the slightly cheaper, smaller camera. We went to 4 different stores to find it, but finally found one. She likes it a lot.
Sorry for the boring report nature of the post. I've been watching Dr. No, and possibly not paying as much attention to the computer as I should have. Now it's time for bed.
