Northwest sucks!

As I type this it is almost 7am, and I'm NOT sitting on a 6am flight headed to Honolulu by way of Minneapolis!

Yep, at exactly 2:09am this morning we received a nice little wake-up call from some cheerful automated woman to tell us that our flight had been canceled. I have worried about this for the last couple of months due to all the bad press Northwest Airlines has been receiving regarding their statistics of canceling flights. However, I've heard that they typically cancel flights towards the end of the month. October 5th? I thought we might be OK. Obviously not!

They rescheduled us so we don't leave Peoria until 11:00 this morning. Unfortunately, we won't get to Honolulu until 8:30pm vs. 2:30pm as originally scheduled. That means we just lost 1/2 a day of vacation. Also, we now have an extra transfer, we're flying 3 different airlines, and we only have an hour layover in LA! Considering these factors, I'll consider ourselves lucky to be in Hawaii by 8:30pm...with our luggage!

Oh, well- I just need to look at the big picture and pray that we'll make it there safely. Still very frustrating to have everything planned out only to have it changed at the last minute. Not to mention that poor Harli could have stayed an extra night at home with us!

Please pray for our safe travels. We know we'll need it as we're booked on Northwest Airlines for our return flight home, too. Although being stuck in Hawaii has got to be better than being stuck in Peoria! :)

On a short hiatus..

Well, we are turning in to bed early tonight because we have to leave for the airport at 4:30am. We are off to Hawaii to visit my brother, Rob, and his family on Oahu for 5 nights, and then to Kauai on our own for 2 more nights. Unfortunately, I've come down with a nasty sinus infection this week, so I'm hoping the drugs I got from the doc yesterday will kick it out of my system.

So it will be awhile before our next blog entry, but we're sure to have lots of good pics! Here's a quick pic until we return. This is Harli and me watching the Biggest Loser on TV the other night. Yes, she is sound asleep like that! She cracks us up! Now I'm sad because she is at her little pet "hotel" by her lonesome for the next week. I miss her already!

Aloha!

Love is in the air...

This past weekend, Scot and I went back to Columbia, MO for my cousin, Mac’s, wedding. I hadn’t seen Mac in quite a while, so it was great to see him and his bride, Mindy. The wedding was beautiful, and it was great to be back to Columbia. We hadn’t been there since Easter weekend!

After the wedding ceremony, we had about an hour and a half to spare until the reception started. Scot was already getting hungry (go figure!), so we decided to stop somewhere for a drink and an appetizer. Since we were downtown, we headed to one of my favorite stops, Tellers. Why is it one of my favorite places? Besides the cool artwork and great windows for people watching, they have sweet potato chips! Mmmm… I have not been able to find sweet potato chips in Peoria, so I have been craving them for quite some time. As you can see, they didn’t stand a chance against Scot and me!

After getting our fix at Tellers we headed to the Columbia Country Club for the wedding reception. Here are some quick pics of the bride, groom, and family from the event…

The beautiful bride and groom. Doesn’t Mac kind of look like Tom Cruise?

Mac and Grandma (and part of Grandpa peeking in!)

Grandma and all of Grandpa

Uncle Mark and Aunt Holly

Uncle Brian and Aunt Shawna

Scot and I

The sister of the groom, Miranda, dancing with her dad, Bill

Viva Las Vegas!

Thanks to Scot for keeping this blog active for the last couple of weeks! I have been out of town for the last two weekends, and very busy during the weeks in-between.

As he mentioned, I went on a girls' trip to Las Vegas two weekends ago. While I won't go into a lot of detail (add Vegas cliche here), I will say that we had a lot of fun! Here are some quick pics to give you the run-down of our trip.

My girlfriends from Columbia, Missouri drove up to Peoria Friday night after work. Peoria has cheap direct flights to Vegas, so this is usually the route we go. Did I mention that I purchased my flight to Vegas on 7/7/07 for $7? The return flight was $77, but still a cheap trip nonetheless! Here are Heather and Sherry at the airport early Saturday morning as we wait for our flight...



We usually stay at my dad's house in Vegas. We still did, however my dad is in Pennsylvania for a few months for work. I wished we could have had some time to visit with him, but we did have good visits with my lil' bro, Keith, and my step-mom, Susan!




We arrived Saturday morning and spent most of the day by the pool. After a short nap (yes, you're officially old when you have to take naps to keep up with Vegas), we headed out for the night. Keep in mind, this picture was taken as we were leaving the house around 10:00pm, which is midnight back home. So I would say that a nap was justified! :)

My brother, Keith (aka Jeeves), served as our gracious chauffeur during our stay. He did a great job taking us downtown in the evenings and picking us up in the mornings! Thanks, Keith!

The first night we headed to Tao at the Venetian. This is a frequent celebrity hot-spot dance club, but we saw no celebs that night. Here we are on the balcony at Tao that overlooks the Strip.

As you can see from the pics below, the place was packed! Surely there had to be some celebrities in there somewhere!?!

Another view of the dance floor. Note the girls in the bathtub with "strategically placed" flower petals. Nothing like Vegas!

Here is a picture of the three amigos at 5:30am after about 6 hours of dancing. Still all smiles as we wait for our "chauffeur!" :)

The next day, Sunday, we headed to our traditional Vegas lunch at In-N-Out burger. No trip to Vegas is complete without a meal here!

After our Sunday evening naps, we got ready to go out again. Here we are as we're leaving the house. My camera was doing the random spots thing again, and it seemed to land on Sherry's shirt this time! :)

In the past, we've found that Body English at the Hard Rock Hotel is the best place to go on Sundays in Vegas. So we headed there for some more dancing. Group shot in the car!

Check this guy out. He was at Body English, and we got quite a kick out of him. He was all done up like an 80's flashback. Check out the phone! You can't see his hair very well in this picture, but he has a hi-top with all sorts of designs shaved in the side of his head. He was hilarious!

After two long nights of dancing, our dogs were barking!

We headed back home on Monday. After a short delay in our flight, here we are on the plane. We had fun, but we were ready for a good night's sleep!

Here is a picture of Heather enjoying our lovely view of the engine.

This was our shortest trip to Vegas thus far (only two nights), but we found it to be the perfect length. Two nights in a row in Vegas is about all we can handle anymore! :) Heather and Sherry stayed the night with us in Peoria on Monday night before heading back to Columbia Tuesday morning. We always have so much fun together, and I'm glad they were willing to make the trip with me. Looking forward to next time (once my feet heal!)

Sunday, Bloody Sunday

After a long drive back from Columbia, MO, I rushed to Andy's JFL game. Andy's team was playing the team that he used to play for a couple years ago. It was a beautiful, sunny day and all seemed right in the football world upon my arrival. Devin Hester had just returned a kickoff for a touchdown for my Bears and they were actually winning! Thankfully, I didn't have to witness the meltdown that solidified my Beloved Bears hold on last place!

I was holding out hope that Andy would play despite a rib injury in practice Thursday. His ribs were x-rayed Saturday night and didn't show a break, but he was too sore to play. Unfortunately, the rest of his team didn't play the first quarter either. They were down 13-0 very quickly. The rest of the game was very good, but Andy's team lost for the first time this season 19-16. Andy was very disappointed that he didn't get to play against his former teammates.

Hopefully I'll have better news next week - at least for Andy's team. I'm not looking forward to the beating that Brett Favre and his merry band of cheeseheads puts on my Bears!

Congratulations Kimmy Kay!

Our lives continue to be incredibly blessed! Kim and her girlfriends planned a Vegas trip for this weekend a couple months ago. Who knew they'd be celebrating? Kim accepted a promotion to Business Unit/Regional Manager with Volt! She will be over units in Boonville, Missouri; Corinth, Mississippi; and Morton, Mossville, and Peoria, Illinois. Congratulations baby!

Now it wouldn't be a Sunday without a football report. Andy's team won again this week, 21-7. Andy did a great job blocking again! No pictures of the huge kids he was blocking this week (Kim has the camera in Vegas). The boy really needs to grow!

Time for the Bear game! Cross your fingers for Good Rex to show up this week!

The girls will be back from Vegas late Monday night, so look for the full report later this week!

Come on in!

Since we live quite a distance from so many of our friends and family, I have had multiple requests to post pictures of our new home. OK- so we've been here for almost 5 months now, but it still feels like new to us! We really love our new home. Keep in mind how small our other house was- if we ordered a large pizza, we had to go outside to eat it! OK, so that's a bit of an exaggeration. But our new home is almost 3x the size, not even including the basement. We can actually move around in this house without running into each other- what a concept! :) I kind of got carried away with taking pics, so this post is kind of long...

"Before" picture of the entry way

"After" picture of the entry way. Check out our demon robot laser cats! They protect us from all intruders. :)



Here is a picture of our living room before we moved in. Lots of white walls!

And here is a picture of the living room now, looking down from the staircase. What a difference a little paint can do!

Another picture of the living room. Rob and Nancy- that is the painting I got in Rome when I visited you in Italy a few years ago.

One of the things we loved most about this house was the high ceilings. We quickly changed our opinion when we started painting! That's why we decided to have someone else paint the living room and entry way. We did the rest of the painting ourselves, though.

Here is a picture of the kitchen before we moved in. This was one of two rooms that the builders had already painted.

Here is our kitchen now. I plan to eventually change the wall color in here by doing some faux finishes, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Here is our dining room area. The house has a formal dining room, but, as you'll see below, we decided to use it for other purposes. The eat-in area in the kitchen was large enough to accommodate our full dining room set, so it worked out well. As you can see from the before picture, Scot switched the light fixture in this room with the one that was originally in the formal dining room.

Here is the sexy 1/2 bath off the kitchen.

Here is the before picture of the formal dining room. Very stuffy.

We decided to turn the room into an entertaining area with a bar. We had a lot of fun decorating this room, although we still haven't been able to find the right curtains for the area.

Another view of the bar room.

Here is our Master Bedroom. I don't have any "before" pictures, so just imagine a big, white box. We haven't finished decorating this room yet, so the walls are still pretty bare. Those spots are from the camera, not on the walls.

The walls look pretty red in these pictures, but they're actually more of a terra cotta. I like bold colors!

Another thing that we really loved about the house was the size of the Master Bathroom. No kidding- our bathroom is bigger than our bedroom was in the old house! This was the other room that the builders had already painted before we looked at the house. I plan to change the color in here and paint the whole room at some point. Here is our jacuzzi tub that we rarely take the time to use.

Here is the shower area. A little note- behind that half wall is the "throne." When we bought the house, that wall was not there. They seriously had this little toilet sitting by itself on that wall out in the open in this big room. It was the first thing you saw when you walked in and it looked ridiculous! I would never have been able to go to the bathroom in there! So we had the builders turn the toilet 90 degrees to face the shower and build us a half wall. I now feel like I have a little more privacy. :) I have issues, I know...

Vanity area

I'm not posting any pictures from the upstairs because we haven't gotten around to much up there. There is the boys' room, the guest room, the game room, and another bathroom. Those are all on our "to-do" list for the fall/winter months. Also, not much going on in the basement either as it is unfinished. We plan to finish it at some point, but we are in NO hurry for that. Right now we have one corner utilized for Scot's weight room. I take that back, OUR weight room. Scot got me started lifting weights almost three months ago, and I'm still sticking with it! Yay, me!

Well, that is our home in Peoria. We welcome visitors at any time, so come see us!

Did you do something different with your hair?

From the front, Sam looks like his normal fluffy, blonde self...

However, after this...

You can see that Sam is trying out a new "do" for the fall... and doesn't he look happy about it? It's kind of like a reverse kitty mullet... party in the front, business in the back!

Here the other pets stare and mock him. He is not a human being.... He is an AN-I-MAL!

Seriously, though...we did shave the cat. You may ask why. Well, Sam has very long hair, and it gets matted very easily. Don't worry- it grows back just fine. After his trim, Sam said he felt a lot better- kind of like a "Rock Star!"

Fall = Football!

After a work filled Saturday and Sunday, we finally reached my favorite part of every fall weekend...football! The Bears played at the same time Andy did again this week, so we had to play the "tape the Bears and talk to no one" game again. Andy's team, Metamora, played in Pekin this week. To give a little background, it's very tough to come out of Pekin with a win as they have a pretty good program (for the players and the officials). Knowing it was going to be a tough one, we called in reinforcements. Grandma Haines made the trip up from Springfield to catch the action. Metamora jumped out to a 20-8 lead, but Pekin tied the game after a controversial pass interference call on fourth down late in the fourth quarter. Metamora pulled out the win in overtime despite additional officiating controversy and an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on our coaches. Andy saw his first action on defense this year and made a tackle.

Here's a picture that Grandma took of Andy (#34 on the left) playing defensive tackle. You might notice the size difference between Andy and the other lineman. Andy looks like a midget out there, but he's actually 5'3" and 140+ pounds.

Grandma took this picture of Andy blocking on offense. Check out the size of the kid he's blocking here! Not sure what's in the water here, but we really need to get Andy some of it!

After the big win, we headed home for more of Kim's favorite thing! Kim was more excited about making dinner than watching the Bear game if that gives you any clue of how much football she can stand at a time. Despite another week of Bad Rex, it was great to see a Bear win!

I'm sure Kim will post the other events of the weekend. Be sure to check back for pix from our Saturday morning fun.