G.O.R.G.E.

Thanks to Chad Reichert, we have a great photo of this year's annual Christmastime gathering of some high school and college friends of Jeff. This is the first time we did a school gym instead of a restaurant to make it more relaxing for children and parents alike.
Good eating was still a high priority though, with pizza brought in from both Sanfratello's and Gino's East.

Christmas Day

Some special gifts and a quiet holiday to play with them:
Magnetic dressing dolls for Karma
Gas station with oil tanker and cars for Douwe
A new game, Quirkle, for Jeff and Jess

Christmas Eve

Painting the Stars

Token shots of our bare-bones Christmas-time baking: about 9 pre-cut cookies and frosting out of a bag from Market Day. Douwe and Karma enjoyed smearing their three cookies with colored frosting and eating them.

Suiting up

This was actually a more slushy than snowy morning, but fun to put on snowpants, boots and mittens for the first time.

Holiday Music Concert

This Kenwood school singing concert was one of the highlights of my Christmas season.
We got a front row seat, and both toddlers were totally tranfixed the whole hour. Each grade from K through 5 had two songs and the music director had chosen a lovely variety of traditional Christian carols and fun songs about santa.

Gabe asked for permission and was granted to play Jingle Bells on his flute to open the evening. He has no qualms about being in the spotlight, that's for sure!

Anniversary over-nighter

Jeff and I celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary with an overnight excursion downtown. We have done this for several years now, to walk around where I lived when we were dating and to stop in the church where we had our wedding. We even walked in our reception place, which is now a jewelry close-out store. That awesome cigar-bar Club Macanudo closed down only months after our wedding when humidores passed out of mode.

The biggest highlight of our day today was our first visit to Xoco for lunch. It is Rick Bayless' and Deann Groen Bayless' (yes Deann is cousin to Jeff's dad) new Mexican street-food restaurant. We waited in a long line,mostly indoors, but the whole time we could watch the food preparation. Here's a photo of the wood-burning oven where they make their special tortas.
And a photo of a woman with a very tedious job, peeling the skins off roasted poblanos.
We watched them making the sandwiches, and another team was mixing up batches of chocolate hazelnut cookies, there were bags and bags of special torta loaves being unloaded from a Labriola box. They had signs up where we waited of all their food sources: a few we recognized were of course Labriola bread from Alsip, Three Floyds beer from Munster in the beverage case, and flour from New Rinkel mill which is not too far away in Indiana.

We ordered two tortas and shared each. These were the best sandwiches we have eaten maybe ever? The bread was perfectly crispy and soft at the same time.
That must be why they use a wood-burning stove. And we shared one of those chocolate hazelnut cookies. A perfect lunch. I was tempted to dance out of the door and sing out to all the waiting people, "Yes, it is so worth your wait!"

Another highlight of my day happened in the Apple store on Michigan Ave. It is quite an experience to just be in that building and play with their latest models of Macs, iPhones and iPods. But I'm less into computerized toys than Jeff so after a few minutes I was waiting till he was finished browsing, standing in the middle of the store looking around at people and the space and thinking all this whiteness and glass and vaulted glass ceiling makes this a modern sort of cathedral.
I heard clapping and music upstairs, so went upstairs to see what was drawing the crowds to the second floor demo/teaching auditorium. As I was going up the glassy staircase I heard these words from part of a later verse of the Christmas carol O Holy Night:

. . . And in his name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise his holy name.

Christ is the Lord! O praise his name forever.
His power and glory evermore proclaim. . . .

This is the Apple store and I'm hearing angels singing upstairs. Well actually it was a rock trio called the Barlow Girls doing a free concert on the little stage near the Genius Bar. I shouldn't be surprised, it is Christmas time, but it was a treat to experience how gospel announcing keeps happening these days, even inside a place built to the honor and glory of a digital screen nestled within a slim white case.

The third treat was touring the new food market that opened a few days ago in the Ogilvie transportation center right across the street from Jeff's work building. We sampled wine, truffles, gelato, empanadas and a raw or unbaked lemon bar.

Who moved my cheese?

At the lunch table today, Douwe dropped his piece of grilled cheese on the floor. I was sitting right next to him so he knew that I saw him drop it. In times past he has had to go sit on the steps for using food and utensils as projectiles from his booster seat. But lately I try to ignore him when he does this, since it rewards him with what he wants anyway, more attention from me and a chance to leave the table early. Also, Karma mimics whatever gets Douwe in trouble so she can have the attention of a consequence also.

I didn't really pay any attention to the dropped sandwich, but he said, as soon as he dropped it. "I don't want to sit on the steps." And then without missing a beat he added: "She jumped off the table by herself."

I'm not sure why a cheesy sandwich scrap is a she, maybe because it was a penguin waddling around his plate a few minutes before. But it amazed me how he discovered in a flash that it might help to make up a new reality, then looked straight in my eye and sweetly described how the sandwich got to the floor. Welcome to the human race, my baby Douwe. You are now complicit with the rest of us who have made many an attempt to cover up our actions and blame another. Usually we are too crafty to pin our actions upon an inanimate object, but you'll figure that out too, I suppose.

Long tables

Gabe is in chess club at his school and the Hammond elementary schools had an invitational tournament today that included many schools in northern Indiana and hundreds of kids. I was so amazed to see the game room lined with long tables and hundreds of chess boards. WE parents had to camp out in the hall ways for the day so the kids could play without coaches nagging over their shoulders.




Midday, Jeff took my place in the hallway so I could take Karma and Douwe to the Christmas party hosted by our placement agency. This room was also full of long tables set up for many families and their foster and to-be-adopted children. Santa even came for a visit.



By 4 pm we were all home and winding down from a busy day. My sister called to see if we wanted to join her and her friend Patrick for a pizza night out. On one hand we were finally home on a cold day after being out and about all day. On the other hand, I didn't really have anything tasty in mind for supper, so we hopped in the car and enjoyed some pizza at another long table that was set up for 7.

December in the Park

Was it really 57 degrees today? Can't pass up the park on the way home from school!