Christmas in Milwaukee

On Monday December 27, we went for an overnight to see Mike and Jackie and Hazel in Milwaukee to celebrate Christmas with them. We had fun eating at an indoor Market. We also had a great field trip to Growing Power, which is amazing and worth visiting. We played a new game and ate a couple great meals before heading back to Chicago area.

Walking on the Lakefront


Hummus, Eggplant dip, she'll eat everything!


Hazelnut

Christmas celebrations

Two shots from family Christmas gatherings: Hungry Hippos and a little trap set were favorite gifts of Douwe's (and yes he did get the black and white scarf and pretend bird that talks).

December highlights

Douwe made his first acquaintance with Santa at a Christmas caroling party. He made this request: "I want a black and white scarf and a pretend bird that talks. "



Snow angels


Greta and I attended the Christmas talent program at Steve's current school to see him recite "The Night before Christmas."
One child lip synched James Brown's "Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto." Hearing that song in an auditorium full of children who live in the rejected city of Gary and have themselves been further rejected for behavior or academic ineptitudes from mainstream Gary schools . . .a very powerful experience.


Steve came over for a few nights over the holiday school vacation
Opening an early present . . .

Gingerbread cookies . . .




New pretend family to play with

November highlights

The week before Thanksgiving, we had Steve as an overnight guest, then spent Saturday morning at his favorite museum, the Museum of Science of Industry. Steve's choice of special exhibit was the Smart Home, which is an actual house built in the courtyard which incorporates many inventions and materials and design choices for reducing the energy and natural resource demands that are part of building a home and living in it. Douwe absolutely loved the Idea Factory exhibit.



The day before Thanksgiving Douwe and his cousins enjoyed a morning at Bellaboo's, which is Douwe's favorite destination for a special excursion.




On the Friday after Thanksgiving, Douwe spent lots of time with his new cousin Hazel, who was in with her parents from Milwaukee. She is growing so much and it was fun to see her at this age!



The same weekend, we made our annual trek to the DeMotte area to pick out our Christmas tree.

10 years

In a few weeks on December 9, we celebrate ten years of marriage, so this past weekend we made a long weekend in Santa Fe New Mexico to celebrate and enjoy some leisure time with the two of us.

It was a perfect trip. The location was beautiful, we made good choices for dining and we spent the bulk of our free time exploring the scenery on foot and on bicycle. Our Friday hike was pretty impressive. We picked a loop trail near Taos up in the foresty mountains. I wasn't sure how we'd do because of the altitude, and the loop was a 5 mile length that included 2000 feet of incline, and 2000 back down to the trail head. It took several hours, but we kept the pace slow and all the views were worth the effort.

On Saturday, we rented some cruisers to cruise around Santa Fe a bit. We should have found bikes with more gears and better brakes because there were lots of hills and steep fun descents (not so fun with a weak back tire only brake). Exploring the outlying neighborhoods a bit was fun, because there are so many sizes and shapes to these adobe style houses.

I highly recommend a visit to this city and region, and the casita where we stayed, Las Palomas. And the new history museum. And many other spots. It is not a city that I would have ever picked to visit, but now that I have been there, I'm glad Jeff suggested it.

October camping

It is always a bit risky to plan a camping trip in late October, but if the weather is mild, cool weather camping beats a hot summer tent anytime! We traveled south a bit in Indiana to Mississinewa Reservoir SRA which is huge and has a lot of sites to explore and a huge campground. This is only a few minutes from where my sister Emily lives and works, the city of Peru. Emily joined us for camping and my brother Zach and our parents came down on Saturday for the day. Well the weather was PERFECT, mild and cool and falling leaves. We hiked the Lost Sister Trail with, we visited the loud crashing side of the dam which makes the reservoir and we explored along the river. Steve joined us for the weekend so we spent several hours imagining we were solving a mystery or setting spiders loose in bark ship races down the river. He is very talkative and imaginative and loves the outdoors so it is very fun.

It rained north of us in Chicago most of the weekend, but we only got a few drizzles at the most during a dry weekend, which for basic-outfit tenters, makes the difference between a fun campout and a sloppy miserable mess.

Visit to Grand Rapids

In early October the three of us made a short visit to downtown Grand Rapids to see some of the special exhibits for Art Prize. We visited the Ford Museum and the Grand Rapids Art Museum for the first time, and enjoyed crossing the river on one of the bridges. We also enjoyed the hospitality of our friends Amy and Dan and their children, so it was a fun 26 hour getaway!