Free Technology

Next Friday I am going to HECC, a technology conference downtown at Union Station. Everyone that attends the conference scores a free Lenovo Tablet! 

Awesome! I didn't even have to pay to go!

Warm and Snuggly

When we lived at our house in Camby I told Clint I wanted one of those electric fireplaces. Being a wonderful husband, he bought me one! Well, little did I know, electric fireplaces are not real fires! Yeah yeah, I know. I'm a nitwit.

Well now our new house has a real fireplace! It is a wood burning fireplace which is a shmidge annoying but nonetheless, I love being warm and snuggly!

Fancy Dinner!

A few weeks ago, Clint and I had two free tickets to the Wayne Township Education Fund's anniversary dinner. I was excited because I love getting dressed up and going out with Clint! I spied a fancy dress at Macy's a couple months ago when shopping with my step mom but at the time had no reason to buy it. Well, once I had these free tickets I rushed to Macy's to get the dress. Unfortunately, they didn't have it anymore :( Luckily, Von Maur had it! They only had one left and it just so happened, that it was in my size and half price!! Double score! Clint and I forgot to take our prom picture but here are a few fun ones:

Clint and his Buddies

Of course, Jack was Clint's original buddy, but there are 2 cuties trying their best to win him over!

Competition

 Well, those who know me well know that I love games! Part of that is because I like competition :) Well, an unnamed sister of mine...actually Lindsay, decided that she was going to start blogging everyday. WELL....I can't have her beating me in the blog department! Not to mention that I actually do like blogging...I am just lazy sometimes! I actually enjoyed my 100 days of blogging at the beginning of the year, so I may do another 100 days of blogging to end the year! I didn't an official count backwards thing, so I don't know where it falls and I know I won't do 100 in a row. I have found that writing several in one day is easy and that is when I get my mojo! Well, I need to maintain my edge on her, so I must blog!

Fun Pics

I have had the kitties for over a week, and of course they are already trouble! They sure like to chew on anything. They also like to wakl all over the keyboard of both the laptop and computer! And boy are they noisy!

Student Drawing

Lindsay has been sharing some of her students' drawings lately and I have shared some before. Last week, when grading my students' science quizzes, I found a very cute and realistic drawing of our classroom.

It even includes the hanging leaves and Owen, our tortoise!

Max & Lucy

So after debating for several days, I finally decided on Maxy and Lucy for the kitties' names. I don't have any idea how I came up with these names either! I had several cute paired names picked out but they just didn't seem to fit. And Max and Lucy just kept sticking in my head! So, that's their names!

New Kittens!

So last week I finally found a lady who had some Oriental Shorthair kittens available that I loved! I had trouble finding kittens that were not all white or all black or even oriental shorthair at all. But I finally did! I talked with the lady and set up a plan to get the kittens on Wednesday of my Fall Break. A fun little roadtrip to Chicago with my sister Hilary. Well, this lady had surgery planned for the following Friday and had some surprise doctor's appointments for that Wednesday. So she called me last Saturday and asked if I could come pick them up a few days early! Of course! I couldn't wait!

Clint was busy working that Saturday but was more than willing to leave work early and go with me on the trip. 

As you can tell, he was really thrilled!

The lady I got the cats from suggested that we meet at the O'Hare Oasis. I googled it and printed the directions and off we went! Well, we made it to Chicago pretty quick. However, we accidentally took 90 through downtown Chicago which was a disaster! Well, it wasn't an accident, the directions told us to go that way. Then once we finally got to 294 we took an exit that was seriously 1 minute before our actual destination (we didn't know this til later). We drove around looking for our destination and called the lady but she wasn't answering! I was getting really frustrated at this point because we were pushing almost an hour late now! I finally got a hold of the lady and she didn't really know where we were at the time (later she figured it out - she wasn't from the area). She told me that we weren't supposed to even get off 294, because the oasis was actually a rest stop thing on the interstate at the toll road! Duh! I wished that she had told me this before! Clint talked to her for a while and we finally made it to the oasis and we got the kitties!

The brown one is the little boy and the gray one is the little girl!

You can find me in St. Louis

This past weekend my cousin Erik got married! He lives in St. Louis so we took half-days on Friday and drove over early to enjoy the evening rather than drive there and have to go right to sleep or even leave in the morning and be rushed. Well, mistake number 1 was I70. We both had forgotten that it was under construction from Plainfield to Terre Haute. So we sat on 70 for maybe 3 miles which equaled 30 minutes. I decided to bail because traffic can stress me out. I had to make the sole decision because of course Clint was passed out! We headed to Washington Street/40 and were free of traffic at last! It took us almost 2 hours to get to the Haute.

We ended up making good time (probably because there were zero cops on the way and I drove in a little caravan going about 75) and got there in 4 hours. We checked in at our hotel, the Pear Tree Inn near the airport. Dad called us a little while later (while Clint was napping) and said he wanted to take us to Hard Rock for dinner. We agreed to meet in his lobby and head out. Once I dragged Clint out of the bed, we headed over and I couldn't find dad. I called and asked where he was. He said he was in the lobby of the Marriott. I said, oh. This isn't the Marriott next to us. I told him we were by the airport and he said they were downtown. Oops. Luckily the Pear Tree people were nice and said they were ok with us switching. Then they saw we booked through Travelocity and said that we had to call them to get the switchy switch done. They told me know but then Clint called back and they said yes. What the heck. Oh well, whatever. We then switched to the right hotel.

There was crazy traffic to get from the airport to downtown because they had 70 closed at night. Finally we arrived downtown. We were both kind of tired at that point and didn't feel like driving around anymore. So we ordered pizza that was in a nice STL magazine. Well, that pizza was pure nasty. Boo.

My other cousin Josh texted me and told me that he wanted to go to the casino that night. I have only been to one in my life (and it was in a tiny western town in CO), so I thought it might be fun. We made it to the casino after more traffic. All three of us put $20 in the slot machines and both boys lost their money and I cashed out around then with $22! Winner!  Josh scoped out a poker table he wanted to join and put his name in. We walked around checking out the place and played a little more slots. Josh's name came up on the poker game so Clint and I wandered around some more. Clint wanted to play Roulette but the tables were all packed and he doesn't like big crowds. We ended up at more slots and Clint lost more money and I would get several good pulls but before I knew it, I was down to .25! Yikes! Well, I hit the big one on that last quarter! I went all the way to $35! I played a little longer and quit at $42.10. Winner winner chicken dinner! Josh and Clint both left losers. I was money bags!

Saturday was the big wedding and the reception was pretty fun. They had a cool fish eye camera set up for everyone to use. They had props for you to use. The special thing about this camera is that you lean real close and it has a rounded lens to make the picture a little different. Here are some of the pics of my family:

Are these not awesome?!?!