still gobblin'

Over a week after Thanksgiving and we're STILL working on our leftovers! Once again, our very delicious meal was courtesy of Brian (with some respectable prepwork on my part) - I continue to be amazed by his ability to do things like brine and stuff a turkey, while my greatest accomplishment was designing a dough turkey:

As I referenced in my last post, this year had a lovely twist with our visitors, John, June, & Megan all the way from Tejas! They spent all week in Chi, joined us for Thanksgiving, and then Mego stayed through the weekend. Although this was a slightly less competitive holiday than last year's, I think it was to everyone's benefit :) The actual day was great, and beyond that we got in some good QT, lots of exploring, and a couple of delicious meals. Oh and a pickle ornament. Megan went ahead and bought that as a souvenir.

Here are a few shots from the weekend:

my first trip to Navy Pier with the McAdams clan

the ferris wheel yielded some awesome views of the city

then on Turkey Day...where all the magic happened!

my favorite spread of the year!

So John started asking us ridiculously subjective, arbitrary questions throughout the day like "POP QUIZ: What's the greatest band of all time?" etc. etc. The best one was:

"POP QUIZ: If Brian wants to take a nap after lunch, who else wants to take a nap?"

"You do?"

"That's right. You aced it."

ha.

Beginning to soak in the Christmas cheer at the Christkindl market downtown. Key notable in this photo - there were 39 other cabins like the one behind us, which Brian BUILT over the course of a few weeks. The man cooks and builds. Applause please!

Another great Thanksgiving gets checked off!

the grind

Ugh, I would love nothing more than to have more time to blog lately, but work is SUCH a grind right now! I'm in the middle of a massive project that's 2 months down and 2 months to go, and every week is the same three-step process:

1. Monday and Tuesday I go hardcore.

2. Wednesday and Thursday I've lost 50% brainpower.

3. By the time Friday rolls around, I'm basically a functioning vegetable, so I try to block work out over the weekend to recharge, only to realize that HEY-O it's Monday again and now my work is backed up so I need to play catch-up in the form of #1.

Don't get me wrong, I remember very vividly being unemployed a year ago, and this beats that ten-fold although I could really brush up on my tennis. But man...I'm just mentally destroyed when I get home. Case in point - I can only tolerate mouth-breathing TV shows because my tiny pea brain is too shriveled to comprehend anything beyond "Cabs are here!" and "Next, on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills..."

This particular weekend has been even worse because I just had to keep plowing through after a crazy exhausting week. However, I think I'm not the only one who's happy to be working from my couch...


Happy Sunday! Here's hoping that everyone has some fun Thanksgiving plans coming up this week. We are staying here and will be hosting the MCADAMS family live in Chicago!!!!!!!!! We always cook a full-blown meal and rarely have other people to help us take it down, so it'll be fun to get to share it with one of our favorite fams. Not to mention the fact that Megan's never been to Chi and they'll be here all week, so we'll get to do a little staycation sight-seeing as well - the Christmas decorations are up around town and it's beautiful - so excited!

halloweeeeeen

Once upon a time, our friends convinced us to have a Halloween party. I resisted for about .03 seconds and then spent my week/weekend planning, buying crap, buying more crap, cleaning the house, and then finished it off with some last minute crap-buying. But I can't say I didn't love it, because I always do. And fortunately Brian was on board for "doing it right," as he always does...which meant lots of work, but a great turnout (or so we thought, since the last people left at 5 a.m.). We had about 30 people, scary music, pumpkins, blacklights, red lights, scary movies, beer die, spiderwebs, a delicious punch in a cauldron, food, candy, catchphrase, buckets of beer, and jello shots. (May I caveat that we did NOT make the jello shots, and I refused to pass them around - although they were delicious.) = Photos may do it more justice!

So excited to have Chrissy & Eric in for the night!

Even more excited to dress her up like Brian, late night.

Sarah made the mistake of telling me she used to be a "shot girl" at a bar, so I made her peddle the goods

Newsie!

wahhhhh

no big deal, but that punch was amazing. and it only had 18 ingredients in it - what a cinch!

ah-mazing handmade fascinator, right?!

and last but not least, leprechaun and a pot of gold.

why Brian went for "pimp leprechaun," I don't know.

fourth meals = friendship

Last weekend we got a very special visit from some very special friends: Amy & Matt! (Well Matt was my special friend by association before the weekend, but now we're friends of the real variety).

I'm not even sure where to begin - maybe at the end, when they left on Monday and I went into an MPF (major pissy funk), which was directly correlated to how much fun I'd had over the past few days. Some major accomplishments of the weekend included late night bowling with old drunk people, a house party, a 90s hip hop cover band concert, sightseeing without exhaustion, two group fourth-meals, and running 14 miles at 8 am. Oh wait, that last one was just Matt, because he's insane. (Is there a nice way to say "insane"? Because that's the way I want to say it.)


But more than anything, I just loved getting to know Matt better and getting to spend so much one-on-one time with Amy. She's long distance from both of us, so I hope it was a nice two-fer for her too! So glad they were both willing to give up a weekend of alone time together to share with us. (P.S. If we all ever live in the same city, we are going to dominate.)

I would like to thank Brian for letting me call the shots, Matt for not checking us into AA, and Amy for being endlessly awesome. Please come back in 42 months when it's warm again!!!!

a tour of fall

It has been magnificently beautiful outside for the past 10 days or so. The temps already dropped a few weeks ago, so trees started to change colors, but WAIT - a warm front! So we've been enjoying the seasonal colors alongside unseasonable highs in the 70s / low 80s, which I've been doubly enjoying since I've been on the road a lot to-and-fro my client's HQ up in Wisconsin - just what the sunroof was made for! After playing tennis and jogging and just biking around aimlessly, I feel like I've sucked every ounce of warmth out of the sky...I can only hope it's enough to carry me through April May oh dear God.

photo opp (or not)

What happens when you put two DesGrangeses in a photo booth with no time to plan (along with our inscriptions in the couple's wedding book):



Your love is hair-raising...



A love that will ride off into the sunset...




We pledge allegiance to your love...







What?!

the power of a slip 'n slide

There are a lot of things that make me laugh out loud: It's Always Sunny, cats chasing lasers, Brian, watching people slip, Tina Fey, honey badger, etc. But there are only a precious few things that make me giggle.

One is bubbles.

The other is slip 'n slides.


I never really played on slip 'n slides when I was little, so I assume my infatuation is somehow an attempt to reclaim the childhood I never had blah blah whatever they're awesome! It started with our epic 2006 of July party on Rosemary Lane, when we busted out a slip n' slide to celebrate America (obvi). We were bruised and battered and really drunk and it was amazing. After that, I tucked my slip 'n slide days in for a loooong nap. Good night bruises, good night giggling, good night hangover.

And then five years later, my SNS love stirred from its slumber.

We were on annual our girl's trip in August, this year at Ashley's lakehouse in Texas. After an afternoon on the boat, we came back to the house to relax for the afternoon, and that's when we found this surprise waiting for us.

(This was actually our last few moments hanging out with the slide,
but it's the best overview pic I have)

Now a slip 'n slide is one thing. A two-laned, inflatable slip 'n slide with sprayers is an entirely different thing.

Being the mature adults we are, we waited about .2 seconds before hurling ourselves down the lanes, and then immediately corrupted it with drinking games, trick competitions, and entirely new uses (for example, have you ever jumped over the backstop as a way to enter?). Oh the joy. I would just stare at it and start giggling about how much fun my next "run" would be. I seriously could not get off this slide! We spent about three hours(!) on it the first night, and about the same on Saturday. Some people were over it by the second day, but not me! (Fortunately, I wasn't the only one).

Peters, drink at her mouth, arm outstretched, waiting to be tagged by her teammate so she can chug and run. Ha.

What a fantastic invention. I mean really, it makes no sense. I would've loved to have been in the room during that inventor's sell: "Okay so you just put down a sheet of plastic, spray some water on it, and hurl yourself at the ground. No really! Yes of course I'm serious!" Anyway, I can only hope I somehow secure another couple of hours with one of these someday. At the very least, you can guarantee some child of mine will be forced to have a birthday party featuring an inflatable SNS. You know, gotta do it for the kids.