I'm Going Home...

Well, to my university's homecoming that is.

It was last month and I decided that since it's already been 5 years since I graduated and I haven't really been back there since, why not?

We drove the 30 miles over in the late morning. I took the back roads for nostalgic reasons. It was fun driving past all our old favorite just off campus places.

First thing we did on campus was check out the remodeled Cole Hall.

For those that don't know, Cole Hall is the building where the 2008 Valentine's Day shooting occurred (I've mentioned it on Valentine's Day every year since). On the main floor, the building consisted of 2 big auditoriums used mainly for Gen-Ed lectures that the majority of students took during their time at NIU, as well as housed a small anthropology museum. Thanks to the voices of students, alumni and others, they made the decision not to tear down the building like originally planned and instead sent out a survey as to what should be done. The result was a remodel. The outside and front/main hallway got a total facelift, the auditorium where the shooting occurred got split, part of it now being a smart classroom while the anthropology museum expanded into the other part. The other auditorium got a facelift as well so it no longer resembles the old one. Pretty neat.

Gotta admit though, I got chills and started to choke up a little just walking through that building again. I had several classes in that damned auditorium during my time there. It was a tad emotional.

After that visit, we headed over to the Alumni and Visitors Center and proceeded to the Alumni Village area behind it where they had various tents for each college at the university where you could eat free food. Since I was an Art major, we went to the Visual and Performing Arts tent. Can't say I knew a single person there. After we ate lunch we went in search of the school's newspaper tailgating tent, since most of the people I knew during my time at school, outside my art classes, were the newspaper staff. Sadly though, this being the 1st year with a new adviser in years, there apparently wasn't one! Which sucks as I knew some of my fellow newspaper staff people were th

ere... somewhere.

New building in the end zone!

We did get tickets to the game though, where we were up by A LOT at halftime (which is when we

left as Jay couldn't sit through an entire 3 hour football game). There was a lot of changes though - at the one end of field is a new field house that I had no idea existed. You could also the new high-tech residence hall from the stadium. I got myself a new t-shirt, as well as one for Jay to grow into.

After we left the game, I ran into a few of my fellow newspaper peeps - the gal that was editor-in-chief the semester I started as well as 2 guys that I worked on staff with for a few years. It was nice catching up with them!

Jay hamming it up at the football game
with mommy and his plastic Geico gecko
(you can see the plain backside of it)

From there we took a drive around campus and then went to our favorite local dinner, just off

campus.

Then we drove over to the theater so I could harass my bestest buddy from my time there. Sadly, the last of the kids I worked with on staff had just left not too long ago, aside from one that is now management and left before I got there.

If anything, this trip made me realize how much I miss DeKalb and my time in college... we really did have too much fun in college!

Funny story though - at the Alumni and Visitors Center, Geico had a booth and they handed out pompoms with a plastic Geico gecko as the handle. Well, ours immediately broke off so we gave it to Jay to play with... Little Man clung to that plastic gecko alllllll day, lol...

Jay's Day Out with Thomas!

Yesterday (Sunday) we took Jay to meet Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt!

HiT Entertainment with MegaBlocks held the annual event again
this year at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, IL which is roughly about a 45 minute drive from us. I had first heard about it a few years ago when hubby's brother and sister-in-law took our oldest nephew to it as, like Jay, he's loved Thomas for years. This was the first weekend for it this year as it continues next Saturday and Sunday. They had a bunch of different booths and stations set up around the railway museum grounds - a Thomas merchandise tent, a local firefighter booth, a tent to watch some Thomas videos or hear stories, mini-putting greens, and a tent to get temporary Thomas and Friends tattoos! You could also get your picture taken with Thomas between train rides (yep - you could purchase tickets to go for a "ride" on train cars pulled by Thomas) as well as pictures with Sir Topham Hatt. It was really neat!

 As we pulled up to the railway museum grounds we got stopped at the train tracks that go around the parking lot and lo and behold - there was Thomas going past us! Jay got the biggest grin and made a face like "Oh yeah, that's Thomas, that's my pal."

 Thomas at the station, between train rides

 Jay didn't want to take his eyes off him!

 Daddy, Jay and Thomas

 Mommy, Jay and Thomas

 Riding on a train car pulled by Thomas

Jay was doing good until the family sitting in front of us pulled out their brand new Thomas toys, opened them up and proceeded to play around with them. Naturally, Jay being a toddler, he wanted them so we had to struggle with him for a good bit to keep him from diving over the seat to get at the toys (he had his own Thomas train toy with him but he wanted theirs!). He also wanted crackers during the train ride after they had told us no food or drink on the train.

 There's Thomas coming down the tracks!

 Jay got Thomas and Percy temporary tattoos on his hands and just like last week at the fair when he got a Jolly Green Giant one, he promptly proceeded to rub at them, lol...

 He couldn't believe it was Sir Topham Hatt! He didn't want to take his eyes off him!

 Sir Topham Hatt, Jay and Daddy

 Jay started touching him, lol...

 He started babbling nonstop to Sir Topham Hatt, it was really funny!

  Sir Topham Hatt, Jay and Mommy

 Thomas running down the line

Processing the events of the day

 And he fell asleep on the car ride home

 Jay's loot - we got him the reusable Day Out with Thomas bag and this year's annual wooden train car (a Quarry car) to go with the set we plan on collecting when he gets a little bigger. He also got a certificate after going for a ride on Thomas that makes him a Junior Engineer!

This year's annual wooden train car... which I already found in the dog's water dish this evening!

Jay had a great time with a huge grin on his face for the majority of the time we were there. We definitely plan on taking him again in a few years when he's a bit older! If you have a tike who loves Thomas and you're interested, be sure to check out the official Day Out with Thomas site to see if Thomas and Sir Topham Hatt are coming to a railway museum near you!

And because today is  Monday, here's the only other photo I took this week:

Hubby's sis turns 14 next month, however she's huge into the Hunger Games and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I was going to take her to the midnight DVD release of Hunger Games at Walmart however her and her dad took a spur of the moment trip down to Springfield for a few days and weren't back in time so I went with my sister and got it for her (I had to do some grocery shopping after work while there anyway). This was the setup we had waiting for her on the kitchen table when she got back into town. We got her the 2-disc Walmart set which included trading cards (she got Effie Trinket!) and a Mockingjay pendant and we also got her a Twilight Sparkle plushie. We figured we'd give it to her a month or so early that way she wouldn't go out and buy the movie before then (we know she's been dying to watch it again!). She loved her gifts and we're glad =)

Breaking Up with Netflix

Well, I did it.

After a 2 year relationship with Netflix, hubby and I cut the cord and I canceled our membership tonight.

While I have enjoyed having it the past 2 years, the recent price change is just not worth it for us.

We joined in August 2009 after we had rented 2 newer movies at our local Blockbuster that cost us roughly $10 and we had only a week to watch them. I had heard about Netflix for awhile and decided to look into it, as pizza and a movie rental was an easy at home date for us on the weekends. After learning that the cost of Netflix was about $9 a month, we decided why not? If we didn't watch a movie right away, no worries, we'd only get charged the flat monthly rate. Plus, they had some stuff available for streaming too, which seemed kinda cool and I did get some use out of it every once in awhile.

We would watch an average 1 DVD a month, unless it was one that one of us wasn't that interested in, then it might take us a few weeks to get around to it. And while I didn't stream a lot, it was nice to have that option in case I got bored one night and wanted to watch something if nothing good was on TBS that night.

But since having Jay, our priorities have changed and it usually takes us a few weeks to get around to watching our Netflix movie. I also don't stream all that much these days since we moved as the TV with the Netflix devices (our PS3 and Wii) are in the basement and I don't always enjoy sitting down there by myself late at night after Jay goes to bed. I have watched some TV episodes on my laptop, but still... I hate watching TV on there as I can't do anything else on the laptop while it's playing.

The $8.99 charge for Netflix was reasonable - we did get around to watching our movies eventually and the streaming was a nice option to have for when I wanted to use it.

But with the recent price change... we'd be paying $15.99 a month to keep the same services - $7.99 for streaming which we hardly use and $7.99 for DVDs that we eventually get around to watching but not right away.

It just doesn't make sense for casual viewers, like we are now, to keep it.

We might do the streaming in the future when Jay's a little bigger, as there's lots of kids shows on there for him, but right now I think we'll just do Redbox for our movies. There's literally at least 2 kiosks within walking distance of us (1 is just a block away) not to mention most weekends we make a stop at Walmart where a major kiosk is so we could just pick up a movie on our way out and drop it off at one of the kiosks by our house. As far as TV shows, if I want to watch an older show, we'll just download the torrent from somewhere online like we have in the past - not that big a deal.

So, Netflix, it's been fun, but you've just gotten too expensive for us and you're just not worth the cost.

Wedding Bells are Ringing!!

I have four - 4!- good friends getting married now within the next 2 years! I'm so excited for them and just because of the fact I love weddings! They're soooo much fun and it's neat to see how every wedding is done differently as each couple likes different things.

First one coming up, that we got a Save-the-Date card to, is my childhood best friend's wedding.

Us drinking hot chocolate at McDonalds in the late 80s after a day of sledding!

It's on the Friday before 4th of July and up in Minneapolis as she and her fiance live near the Twin Cities. I hoping that hubby is able to get the Thursday before off so we can drive up there and spend 2 nights in a hotel before driving back early Saturday for him to be at work. I'll be really sad if we can't go and I'd rather not drive up there and stay by myself, as it's like 5-6 hours away.

Us drinking fruity drinks at local cafe Octane
summer between my freshman & sophomore years of college

The next wedding isn't until December and it's a good friend of mine I've known for years. She was a freshman when I was a senior and she was one of the few freshman who somehow got stuck in the senior lunch period, but it was okay - my friends and I deemed her as one of the "cool" freshmen. I had known her a little prior too from church as we both volunteered in the summer at our church's summer kids day camp. Anyways, we kept in touch when I went off to college and hung out a lot. She lived with me and long-term college roomie for a year, although the 2 of them had some issues and that didn't work out very well. She ended up transferring to a school in the Chicago suburbs to get a court-reporting degree and I still keep in touch with her online and try to meet up with her when she's in town visiting. I'm excited for her though too as she's been dating her fiance for years - I actually met him when I was a freshman in college as he lived 3 doors down from me on my dorm floor and that's how they met!

Us during one of the youth groups
annual Snowcamp winter retreats

Summer 2012 an old friend of mine is finally getting married to the guy she started dating when we went off to college just over 8 years ago! I've known her since like kindergarten as we went to grade school together and eventually church too when my family switched churches in 2nd grade. We hung out in the same group of friends during high school youth group. She lives in Ohio now but is having the wedding back home here, as her and her fiance are both from Illinois (I think he's from the suburbs). I've been able to keep in touch with her via online over the years though and she's another one I see from time to time when she's in town visiting family. So excited for her too as she's been with the guy for so long, a bunch of us all agree, it's about damn time they finally got married! lol...

We had a pirate-themed party for her birthday one year.
Don't we make hot wenches?? Johnny Depp eat your <3 out!

August/September 2012 is the one I'm probably most excited for as I get to be part of it! I've mentioned before, my long-time college roommate is getting married! And she asked me to be a bridesmaid too so I'm really excited about that as in my "adult" life I've never gotten asked to be one before aside from a few friends saying after the fact that they wished they had asked me (last wedding I was in was my aunt's when I was 12 and I was a Jr. Bridesmaid so I wasn't all that involved). Although she moved down towards Dallas a year and a half ago, they're having the wedding up here in the suburbs where she's from. She's coming up in March to look at venues and stuff while she visits - can't wait! It should be fun and I look forward to helping her with planning stuffs as well as the actual wedding itself!

This Weekend's Milestones

Before midnight strikes, I thought I would take a second to point the milestones of today! =D

1st, today marks 30 weeks in my pregnancy, which means we have 10 or less weeks to go til Jay is here in the flesh (we're pretty sure he's going to be somewhat early though due to both him measuring several weeks bigger than he should be as well as me having the gestational diabetes).

Also, this weekend marks 13 years that hubby and I have known each other!

I remember that Sunday we first actually met - it was the same weekend in December as our church's big weekend long Christmas production. He stopped me on my way out of Sunday School, handed me a folded up piece of paper with my name on it and before I could response he took off running up the stairs! I could see him sitting elsewhere in the sanctuary during the church service, but didn't actually see him again until the end of January, lol... the folded up piece of paper he gave me was a poem he wrote just for me. I still have it (and it's sequel he gave me several months later).

A look at this past week

So I realized I've been kind of scarce with posting this past week (I blame WoW) so here's a brief update on life.

Mom and me are on the left.

Saturday morning I got up and went up to church for the annual Christmas women's luncheon they have every year called The Prepare Him Room where we eat a yummy dish, some dessert and listen to a guest speaker or 2. My mother-in-law and a friend of hers always put together a table for it each year as that's one of the highlights - a woman or a set of women each get a table to dress and decorate all Christmas-y. This year though, we had a decent snowfall Friday night and into Saturday morning (we got like 6 inches) and my in-laws live out in the country with a quarter-mile driveway that's a pain to shovel out in the snow. All my brother-in-laws were in town Friday staying with friends so the only one around to shovel was my 12 year old sister-in-law. They said she made a good effort, but they just weren't able to get out of their driveway, that's how bad it was out by their house! My mom and I still went to the luncheon but our table didn't have a centerpiece as my mother-in-law was bringing it into town with her - oops!

On Sunday, hubby and I attended his Verizon company's Christmas party which I had found out that afternoon I was allowed to go to too (previously they said no "dates" but an email went out Sunday afternoon retracting that). It wasn't great but I had fun getting dressed up nice and going out - it definitely beat sitting at home! I gave hubby my free drink tickets since I obviously can't drink (everyone got handed 2 tickets for alcoholic beverages). I did try a Virgin Bloody Mary but ugh, it tasted way too spicy and I couldn't drink more than 1/4th of it - Jay didn't seem to like it either. They also gave out door prizes - hubby (and  I) won one of several $50 Visa giftcards - they were also giving out $25 BP gas cards and the grand prize was a phone.

Monday was kind of a crappy day for me.

Last week I had my glucose screening to test for gestational diabetes which is a form of diabetes that pregnant women can develop although it usually goes away. I "failed" the 1 hour version of the test so they had me come back in and do a 3 hour version (where you fast the morning of and they draw your blood and then draw it again every hour for 3 hours). Monday I got the results from that and turns out I have the gestational diabetes. It wasn't too much of a surprise as it seems to run in my family on my mom's side (my mom was borderline while her sister and mom both had it like I do) and they said at my last appointment that Jay is measuring a big bit for his gestation age which is common for women that have the gestational diabetes, but still... it sucks. I got a call today from the Maternal Fetal Medicine ward at our hospital to set up an appointment for next week to meet with a dietitian/nutritionist and schedule an ultrasound so we can get my gestational diabetes under control. I've started watching what I eat even more than I was going off outlines for it that I found online and started keeping a food log too so they can go over with me what I'm eating that I shouldn't. I keep telling myself, I only have to deal/suffer with it for 10 weeks or less... I just need to get past the holidays and all the sweets/cookies I have to miss out on this year =(

On top that, I was frustrated as my mom's been busy the last few weeks doing all the costuming for our church's Christmas production of A Christmas Carol this weekend and it seems I've been having the worst time trying to reach her lately and The Children's Place didn't need me to come in again - I guess things have been so slow out at the mall that they've called and cut my last few shifts and didn't need me to come in for my on-call/call-in shifts, which is a little frustrating. To top everything off, I couldn't find the shirt I was looking for and broke a nail in the process. Hormones got the best of me and I had a little bit of a breakdown (I hate when that happens!). Fortunately hubby came home from work soon after and insisted I snuggle with him, which helped me calm down.

The rest of the night turned out okay - we went to Best Buy to pre-order the new WoW expansion and I bought a wireless mouse for my laptop since I figure if I'm playing WoW on it, I'm going to need an actual mouse as the Dell trackpad is different than the Mac one I'm used to playing on. I ended up getting WoW later than night and taking advantage of the Expectant Mother parking they have at Best Buy and played the new expansion well into the morning, sleeping in late Tuesday.

A few packages arrived Tuesday and Wednesday. I had ordered this Holly Lites aroma melt warmer from Partylite as it's normally $20 but was listed as an internet special this month for $10 and goes great with our Christmas decor - now I'm just waiting for my Iced Snowberries aroma melts to come in so I can start using it. My dad's Christmas present also arrived too so I got that wrapped and put under the tree.

Speaking of the tree... I think Tiger's retarded this year. This is her 3rd Christmas with us and she's acting like she's never seen the Christmas tree before and won't leave it alone! She keeps knocking ornaments off (none of the breakable ones, thank God!) and stretching up into the tree... I don't get it! She was so much more behaved around it last year, this year she's a complete terror! And she doesn't listen or learn as we keep spraying her and putting her in "time out" in her crate/cage/kennel when she keeps it up!

Today was a so-so day. I was up late last night/this morning as I've been playing WoW while hubby is at work and he's been getting home about 4am lately. I was going to go to bed at 430am but made the mistake of checking Facebook one last time and got to chatting with a friend and yeah... time flew and next thing I know it's already 530am! I was in bed by 6am and I needed to get up by 930am as I thought I had work, however it took me a good hour or so to fall asleep (Jay's been kicking A LOT more lately, as it's clear he doesn't have a lot of room in there now). Anyways, I got up around 930am, ate something quick and showered and drove all the way across town to work. They didn't call me yesterday so I took that to mean it was okay to go in. Well, I was wrong - I walk and one of my bosses is like "Didn't we tell you last week we didn't need you to come in this week?" What she had said was that they weren't sure if they would need me and since they had called all the weeks before when they didn't, when I didn't get a call I took that to mean it was good for me to come in. I left promptly, a bit annoyed, but whatever. I had errands to run anyway so if anything it just made me get out of bed and dressed to get out and get em done.

Stopped by my mom's house for a bit to pick up tickets to the church Christmas program tomorrow and we ended up going out to hubby's Verizon store so my mom could look at a few phones she was interested as our plan has 2 upgrades available, Best Buy has some 6 day special where you can get decent smartphones for free or $1, and we have some promotional thing hubby put on our family plan where everyone gets the $29.99 data package for $9.99. My sister is getting the HTC Droid Incredible (it's $1 at Best Buy right now) and while my mom was planning on getting the LG Octane, the price on that one went up from $29.99 to $69.99. While she can use the internet on it, we learned that the GPS on it is through the VZ Navigator (since it's not an Android phone) which costs extra to use, so I got her looking at the LG Ally since she really wants a phone with an actual full QWERTY keyboard (she's iffy about full touchscreen phones like I originally was), would like to be able to use the Google Maps Navigation  (she thought it was neat that I used my phone as a GPS when we drove to St. Louis and back to pick up our car after the accident), and would like to be able to check her email and Facebook from her phone since she doesn't always have time to get on the computer to check that stuff so she sometimes doesn't get an email or message for days at a time. She also wants a decent sized screen as she's getting old and wants to be able to store baby photos on it to show off to people and put her music on it too. It's currently free at Best Buy too. Hubby agreed with me, an Android phone would be best for her and the LG Ally is about the size she wants and has the keyboard too, so he showed her one of those. While he wouldn't recommend the Ally for someone more tech savvy, he said for my mom it would work just fine for her and her needs. He said she'll need a car charger if she's planning on using the GPS so he said he would get her one at cost for $5.

I stopped into Hobby Lobby to see if they had any Christmas-themed coasters as our Vegas ones don't really match our Christmas decor and I only found 2 in sets of 3 and wasn't thrilled about either. I found one I like on Zazzle, but they're sandstone ones and cost $9.99 EACH! A set of 4 Christmas-y coasters for under $10 is ideal... I guess I'll check Walmart next week. I also picked up my paycheck from The Children's Place and learned that I actually had 2 checks to pick up AND they totaled more than I was expecting to get! That was pretty sweet! Also, the mall was REALLY dead/slow for being 2 and a half weeks until Christmas - no wonder they keep canceling my shifts out there! I stopped by the bank on my way home and got stuck behind some guy in a truck doing 25-30mph in a 45mph, I'm assuming due to the snowfall that started this afternoon. Granted, the snow was covering the roads so you couldn't see icy patches as easily and was coming down pretty steady, but it wasn't THAT bad to be going THAT slow!

RIP Boy =(

In hubby news... he got a mini-promtion/pay-raise at Verizon - he's now an assistant to the executive administrative of their company, although really he's not doing much more than he already was, he's just getting paid for the extra stuff he's been doing. He also found out this week that he got the 2 week Christmas overtime shift at UPS he was hoping to get. Sadly though, we learned tonight that one the dogs at his parent's house (they have multiple dogs and cats - it's like a mini zoo out there! lol...) suddenly died - it was their smaller dog named Boy and he was only 7. When we've talked about getting a dog of our own in the future, hubby always says he wants one that's a lapdog about the size of Boy. One of his brothers is pretty bummed out.

And that's been my week.