Merry Christmas 2014

We had a very family filled Christmas. We started at home with Bob's parents. We had a very nice Christmas Eve Mass and a wonderful meal of fillet mignon. 

After opening presents on Christmas morning, we drove to my parents in Illinois. 

Papa and the girls

Nana and the girls

Bob and Papa eating giant crab legs

Silly girls

Maria

Leah (Check out my parents beautiful home!)

Yesterday I cleaned out the pantry. That usually means one thing...Homemade chex mix! I make mine in the crock pot and I use odds and ends. 

This batch only has one kind of actual chex mix cereal. I also added pretzels, broken bread sticks, the bottom of three jars of nuts, a little snack bag of cheezit, the last bits of a real bag of chex mix and more cashews.  I put a little Tabasco in the sauce so it has a kick!

Sometimes when I clean out the pantry I make granola instead. 

There is a little bit left from my last batch.

Surgery update

Jenn is recovering! She only missed 2 days of school but by the looks of her foot she probably should have kept her legs elevated and rested for longer. 

Leah's left foot is on the left and Jenn's is on the right. The girls are done with finals and can rest and relax until January 5.

Speaking of January 5, that will also be Maria's first day of her BSN program in Arizona. She is almost done packing. She can only take belongings that fit in her little car so most of her junk will stay behind. Once Maria leaves, Leah will move into her room. Jennifer wants to stay in her present room and Leah's room will become Maria's. I dread moving day but it will be a great opportunity to purge!

Jenn

Jenn had surgery today!

Specifically, she had a faciotomy which gives the muscles in her calves more room to work. She was in continuous pain and couldn't even run.  If you know Jenn, you know running is a huge part of her life. The recovery time after the surgery is 6 weeks. She is in great shape and should be back on her feet very soon. For now she is in a wheelchair for the next two weeks.  

Christmas Cookies - This is only the beginning!

This project takes sooooo much time. I made the dough from my Grandma's recipe. It calls for 8 eggs and makes more cookies than most humans could ever need. This is 2/3 of the recipe. I cut out and baked the cookies in the morning with a little help from Bob. After dinner I couldn't stand looking at the naked snowmen any longer so I started "dressing" them. I probably should have started sooner because the process takes hours. I like how they turned out! These will be given to the girls' teacher plus we will share them throughout the holidays. 

Back to Indy

Our very busy trip to Phoenix is over. I have to say it was a huge success. We all love Maria's new apartment and the school is a perfect fit for her. Now she just has to start packing. She can't take all her belongings but rumor has one of the twins wants her room. This means some major purging and organizing needs to be done!

On Sunday we took a drive up to Sedona. What a beautiful place!  We will definitely come back during on of our future visits to Arizona. 

Maria ❤️ Arizona!

Maria will start her newest course of study on January 5 in Arizona! After lots of thought, preparation and determination she has decided to pursue an accelerated nursing degree. This plan lets her build on her BS degree from Purdue and finish with a BSN in 16 months. 

Maria is very excited and so are we. This weekend we traveled to sunny Phoenix to secure an apartment and get her registered for classes. 

Her apartment is tiny but it has all the conveniences.

We went to IKEA twice to window shop, bought a bed and a couch and scoped out the area. She is all set to go!

One of the perks of living in Phoenix is the fact that my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim live in Scottsdale just 30 minutes away. We enjoyed a great dinner with them at Houston's. 

Bob came along too but he was the photographer. 

Another perk of Poenix is that Nana and Papa will be there as usual this winter.  I know Maria will be well cared for. The twins, Bob and I are planning to go in March during the twins' spring break. The weather sure is beautiful in Arizona. Maria may think differently in August but I'm sure glad she didn't pick Michigan!

Junior year for Jenn and Leah

The girls are Juniors in High School! It's hard to believe they will be 17 in October. They drive to school frequently using Bob's car. It's not really "their car" but they are the only ones who use it. 

We have started the college search process which is daunting when we think about sending 2 daughters to college at the same time. Everyone asks if the girls will attend the same university. I have no idea but it's fun to speculate where they will go. Until then we will keep saving our pennies!

The picture is from a Roncalli football game. Fall has been fun!

More on Alaska

 Our Alaska trip was fabulous!  It's so hard to choose pictures for the blog because there are just too many good ones to pick from.   We took some awesome excursions while on the cruise ship and we documented all of those but what I don't have pictures of are the little things that happened along the way.  Bob won $500 (twice) in the ship casino.  The twins met some fun friends and became buddies with the lady who made milkshakes for them multiple times a day.  Maria read books for fun, not for college and finally relaxed. I got to have eggs benedict every day. (I really wish I had a picture of those eggs because they were perfect!)

Mendenhall Glacier - We suited up and took a helicopter to the glacier.  Landing on top of it, we could hike and explore.  We even filled our water bottles with real glacier water.  I hope none of us ever forget that day!

Denali National Park - Beautiful scenery.  Do we look cold?  It was rainy and chilly but we still got to see parts of the great Mt. McKinley.  Our guide for this trip was really knowledgeable and helped us spot lots of wildlife especially moose.

Princess Cruise Ship - Glacier viewing.  It was cold and rainy but we didn't mind at all.  The scenery and comforts of the ship made up for the dreary weather.

Denali National Park - Leah and Jenn went off the path.  They hugged a few trees, jumped on the spongy tundra floor  and took lots of pictures of wild flowers. I would definitely go back to the park again.  It was beautiful.

Some of our pictures don't even look real!  This one was taken on the train traveling from Mt McKinley to Whittier, Alaska, where we boarded the ship.

Leah, Maria and Jenn on a hike near the Mt. McKinley Lodge.  The sun was out!

Princess Cruise Ship - We saw lots of glacier calving.

Fishing in Skagway - We had a blast on this excursion.  We were supposed to catch salmon.  We were very unlucky and only caught these little fish.  Bob was VERY disappointed.  We could even see the salmon in water but none of us could get one to bite.  Bob looks very wet in this picture because we fished in pouring down rain.  This excursion started out with nice weather.  We took a ferry from the cruise ship to another town, drove along the coast and then boarded our fishing boat.  Just after we got started the rain came down and didn't stop until we finished fishing.  Although the weather stunk and we didn't catch any salmon we still had a wonderful time. 

Jenn caught a fish too!

The most exciting part of our fishing trip was the bear along the shore.  We were VERY close to him!  He had no problem catching salmon.  With one scoop he pulled out a fish and threw it on shore.

It was a fabulous vacation!

Alaska

We are in Alaska and having a blast! We actually started our trip one week ago and have 5 more days to go. I will give a full report when we get home but for now I will just add a few of the pictures from my phone. Bob has taken many more (1,000!!!) great pictures and I'll add those when we get home.

Posts to do

That's a weird title but this is just a little to do list of the posts I need to get done. I figure if I put it in writing then I will have to sit down and finish these entries. The problem is that I can create the words for the posts on my phone using the blogger app. I can do this in the car, on a plane or while I wait for girls to finish a music lesson. All of the good pictures, however, are on the computer. So blogging is now a two step process combining phone and computer. I know about the cloud and that I could put my computer pics up there but the entire cloud concept gives me headache!

Here is list of blogs to look forward to...

Leah and Jenn's successful track season

Maria graduates from Purdue University

Bob's parents moved in down the street

Homemade pasta and ravioli making

The Girls

Here is a nice picture of the girls.  They are really growing up!  Maria is 22.  Leah and Jenn are 16.  Maria graduated from Purdue in May.  She is now in nursing school and doing about a million other things too. (None of these things bring in $ but that's ok for now.)  Leah and Jenn will be Juniors in the fall.  They get their braces off tomorrow and are finally learning to drive. (I am ready for that because I am tired of being the Mom Taxi!)

 

Videos updated

Thanks to my Aunt Ruth, I found out the link to the videos of the girls at camp didn't work.  I have fixed the link!

I think Aunt Ruth and Uncle Jim, Ted, and my Mom may be the few people who read my blog.  Thanks for stopping by every once in a while!

Fireworks last night...different than usual.

(I used pictures from the web so you could see what we actually saw last night)

 

The picture above is a similar view from our seats at the Indianapolis Indians baseball game last night.  We have made a tradition of going to a baseball game on July 4.  In Indy you can watch a baseball game, view the fireworks offered by the ballpark and then stay in your seat and watch the fireworks downtown.  It is a spectacular show! The game this year was slow at first with the Louisville Bats hitting a homerun in their first at bat.  Eventually the game picked up and the score was tied at the end of the 9th. This is where things got interesting.  On all other July 4ths we watched the game, then the Victory Field fireworks and then the city fireworks.  As the 10th inning began we new the game would not end before the city fireworks would start.  Imagine watching an All American baseball game with a spectacular fireworks display in the background.  If you look again at the picture above, the fireworks were shot off right beyond center field.



I couldn't find any stock pictures of the game with the fireworks in the background.  Our own pics were horrible mostly because the lights were on in the baseball field and it caused a bad camera glare.  In person the sight was fabulous!

As the city fireworks reached their finale, the game ended too.  Unfortunately the Indians lost.  But we stayed in our seats and then watched the Victory Field show. 

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July from the Indianapolis Indians baseball game!

There's more than corn in Indiana!

Promoters for the state of Indiana have frequently used the slogan-

There's more than corn in Indiana!

Since I live in Indiana I know the state has a lot to offer. From the dunes in the north to the caverns in the south, we have a very diverse state. 

We can boast a commitment to sports that never seems to die with the Colts and Pacers. Our AAA baseball team, the Indians, has the most beautiful and affordable stadium. We will be there on the 4th to celebrate Independence Day. The NCAA has their headquarters in Indy along with the impressive Hall of Champions museum.

Indiana has 46 state and private universities, shopping, zoos, golf courses, soy beans, big cities, small cities...yes we have it all.

But when summer comes, most people in Indiana care about one thing. Corn! I got this beautiful pile of corn from a farmer on the side of the road. $.25 each! There might be more than corn in Indiana, but today I don't care!

String Camp Videos

Here are the videos from last nights concert! On both links the conductor speaks for about 2 minutes so speed through that if you wish.

This song is called Last Spring. The intro is very long but the song is great! It begins at minute 2:19.
http://youtu.be/Ohrbt24G774
 

This is the camp song Kumbaya played by the orchestra. The song actually starts at minute 2:20. It was beautiful. Be prepared to hum the tune all day!

http://youtu.be/Q6vjZlV3JgI

String Scholars Camp

This week the twins are at camp. 

This is somewhat of a tradition for the girls. They go to this camp at Butler University each summer. We live close by so they are commuter campers instead of resident campers. Translation- They get to come home each night and swim! Tonight we got to watch their final concert. Although they played some really wonderful classical pieces, my favorite was the standard camp singalong- Kumbaya! In my next post I will upload the video of the song.

Oh yes, I have a blog!

I just got a notification that someone commented on my blog. All comments to the blog are moderated by me which means a comment can't be published unless I approve it first. I haven't had a comment in over a year!  I didn't publish the comment. It was rude and from an anonymous poster. But it just reminded me that my blog still exists and I should use it more!