Millennium Park and the Chrome Jelly Bean

I have no idea what they call this thing in Millennium Park, but to me it is a chrome jelly bean...


And then a variation of 'Where's Waldo".. How many Kevin and Didi's can you find... I think I found 10



I'm wearing a grey/green shirt and jean shorts and Didi is wearing a yellow shirt and jean shorts and I have a camera over my face.

Sears Tower

The Sears Tower is still the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, and is only shorter than two other buildings. And so Didi and I took a ride to the 103rd floor (which took about 1min). The building is quite large and views from it are similar to those seen in an airplane... so here we go...



Looking up the NW corner of the building.. Even from the ground it keeps going and going...



So even the 'tall' building around it like small... with Lake Michigan in the background.



Down the side of the building.... gotta lean on the glass to get this shot...


Ok, not really, but I did lean way over the rail..

Chicago....

Some of you know that we are here in Chicago this week due to a conference with Jody's work. So we decided to drive here and after about 16hrs of driving we made it safe and sound. So here are some pictures of what we are up to....

First up we have to show you the 'Welcome Signs" that we saw...

Iowa was on the Missouri River so we could not stop for that one. We are on the 20th floor of our hotel, so we have a pretty nice view.

So I'll chronicle our adventures in some later posts...

To shop you need nurishment

Saturday, we decided to go to Superior and Broomfield to go shopping. So we needed a good lunch to make it through all the stores....so we went to Red Lobster.

Of course we started with Salad and those Cheddar Bay Biscuits


For lunch Didi had garlic grilled shrimp, they were really yummy.

maybe they were finger licking good...wait no....that is another restaurant
I had shrimp scampi and some small fried shrimp
Kevin had shrimp Alfredo

Ok....this doesn't have anything to do with lunch....this is DiDi at the Hallmark store...I just thought it was funny.

We had a great time shopping....we left home around 9 am and didn't get back till 7 pm, so it was a long day, but we spent a lot of money to help the economy....

Yesterday we recovered, went to church and did laundry...today we head off to Chicago where 4 fun fill days of meetings await me. So you won't hear from me, but Kevin and DiDi will be off site seeing so stay tuned for pictures of their adventures.

I still want to be like April

So I took my kids (aka Kevin and DiDi) to the park also.....

I did ride this slide....it was good...but very wet after the rain on Friday night...

After the rain

Comes the rainbow....so after the big rain Friday night and our dinner out...we stopped at Rainbow Bridge...this is the bridge that goes over the South Platte River. We cross this bridge everytime we go in or out of town...well not this bridge exactly...it is only open for foot traffic now but there is a new driving bridge right next to it.



Look I am still not as tall as Kevin

The South Platte River....you get some great views from the bridge.

Kevin Jody and Didi on the bridge

Dinner out

We went out on Friday night to a little Mexican Restaurant here in town. This was DiDi's first experience with Mexican Food. She liked it.


We didn't get pictures of dinner...but remembered for dessert :)
Kevin is demonstrating his expertise is sopapilla eating

It rained really hard this night. When we left the streets were flooded all down town. But it started to clear up, so we stopped at the park...check out those pictures....

Teenagers

are the same everywhere. Video games are fun :) This is Diana (Didi) our exchange student from Slovakia playing Wii for the first time. This is tennis.
We are enjoying getting to know Didi and showing her some very American things. Today marks her one week anniversary here in the states. She will be staying with us for 6 more weeks. We look forward to all our fun adventures.

For Uncle Steve

Empty boxes....
This is the dining room, where all boxes have been living as we empty them. You can tell there is not anything in the china hutch yet (I hope to get a bigger one someday), because that stuff is still in storage. So you can see Kevin's and my handiwork....



Versus God's Handiwork.....

No comparisions....He has us beat every time of course :)

We aren't sure how much more we will get put away, so you may all have to wait for more "furniture" pictures. Next week we are off to Chicago, I have a work conference.

Life on the Ridge

We are moved in....well mostly. We are unpacking and getting settled. The other night after moving stuff we looked out the kitchen doors to the would be deck and caught this beautiful sunset.


Looking forward to sitting on the deck with a glass of wine watching the sun go down. Soon...very soon....

We've obtained the ridge

Hello all,

Well the stress was worth it. We were able to take possession of the house on Wed, although we don't close until Friday (I think). But you know what they say possession is 9/10ths. Anyway, thanks to all who helped us move: Mert and Jean, Doug, Dez, Curt (he only helped move a table, but I guess it counts), Randy and especially Nolan (who was on the other end of almost everything I carried). It was about 101 out here on Wed and so I thought I was gonna die a couple of times.

So hopefully on Monday we get to do this again and move in Mert and Jean's stuff.

Also, on Wed we picked up Didi (our exchange student from Slovakia) from DIA. Hopefully, she was adjust to all our changes as well.

Family BBQ

Our niece Desirae and her husband, Tim decided to have a few friends and family over for a BBQ on Saturday night. They provided the meat and a few drinks, and then everyone brought some other yummies. I made a salad out of the gooddies from my brother's garden, we also had potato salad, chips, deviled eggs, brownies, brats and burgers!

Desirae's son Caelum (he is 2.5) had a great time playing on his swing while everyone enjoyed his backyard....that is until he jumped off the top of the slide...then the night was over for him :(


My brother made this firepit/cooker out of an old barrel of some sort. Pretty cool.

Since he made it, he is the expert on how to cook on it...so he was Chef for the night.

All sitting around chatting and enjoying the evening.....

It never fails that my brother always has to do something silly...so he was showing how he could pass through fire....

Not to be outdone, Kevin on his way to get a brownie also passed through fire....that way he said he could truly say "I had to pass through fire to get this brownie"
It was a good evening just chatting and catching up with friends and family. A time to relax from all the stress Kevin and I have had.

Glass Tiles

When we started doing the decorating, the one thing I really wanted was some glass subway tiles for the backsplash. I've seen them in a lot of places and always liked the look of them. The tile guy, Jean-Paul, said they were a pain to install, but I think they came out great.

The picture is of them before the grouting is completely done and so they actually look better now. I'm hoping to take some pictures with everything cleaned in the next day or so.

The cooktop is below the microwave, but it is still protected at the moment. It is black as well.

Orangecello

Orangecello is a grain spirit (flavored vodka) that has an extremely strong orange flavor. We picked some up the other day because we liked the Lemoncello from the same company and thought that we should give the orange a try. Personally, I prefer the orange over the lemon, but they are both very good and can be mixed with several things.

Recommended!

Cool-ickles

About a month ago we were watching "Road Tasted" with Alton Brown on Food TV. He found a place that was selling Cool-ickles. They looked pretty good/interesting to us. So we made a jar, and they are surprisingly good. Now what exactly is a cool-ickle? Well it is a normal jar of pickles that you dump all the brine out of and then you replace the liquid with 2-3 times strength red KoolAid. And then you let it sit for a couple of weeks. We ended up using mini-gherkins and after this process almost have like a candy like shell on them. I would recommend a pickle with a little thinner skin on it, so the KoolAid goes all the way thru the pickle. Ours is just pretty much on the outside 1/16th of an inch.

So try some, and tell me if you like them.

No Posts.. sorry

Sorry, we have not been posting much this week (Sorry Aunt Doloris) . But we are kinda in a whole new level of stress this week with the house coming to a close. Hopefully, today we'll close but just like everything else, there are problems with something. So I hope it can be resolved early today.

Lets see here is a sampling of the problems we've had to work with this week:

1. The elevator is now coming a week later than promised. I had to call to find out where it was. When will sales people learn that a quick call telling your customer what is going on can save a whole lot of yelling from the customer.

2. Problems with the appraisal

3. Material shortages or incorrectness

4. People not showing up

5. Inspections failing

So needless to say Jody and I are a little fried... but we'll get though it.

Wordle

I ran across this web app called Wordle today. Basically you can give it some text or a website and it creates a word based image. Where the words with more frequency are larger. So by using this on a site you can see what you frequently talk about. So I ran it against this site today and here is what I got...

So from that you can see that we talk alot about the house, the phone and calls... Gee that is just like our daily life. So I guess we are posting primarily about what is actually going on in our life. Nothing real exciting, but is kinda neat to see things in a graphical way like this.

The Ditch House...

Jody was talking to Deogi (the dog) last night on how she was going to be moving to the house with the ditch. Because all Deogi cares about is running and playing in the ditch. Then Jody said that Kevin's Aunt Wanda and Uncle Steve have a beach house and we have the ditch house... So we laughed for a minute.

For those of you who have not had the privilege of visiting the beach house, it is a nice place and I hope we will be invited back some day...