A few more cutie patootie pictures!

Haircut!

What a treat! Ellie has been asking for a haircut as the hair on the back of her neck is too long, she tells me. So I found a great little place today with no waiting .. $10! Great woman finally gave her a GOOD haircut. I'd explained that we were used to Aunt Mimi giving her a good haircut .. experienced! .. and we'd had two bad ones in a row with inexperienced stylists who left her with straggling ends by the time we reached home.

So happy to for new 'do! She looks adorable!

Cornbelters at the Corn Crib!

Saturday night we went to our first Normal Cornbelters game. Ellie was much more interested in the concession stand offerings than the game, but we had fun nonetheless!

Happy Life

Ellie visited Carl's Ice Cream and didn't realize she couldn't get sprinkles on a hard ice cream cone ... so the woman who scooped it treated her to a smiley face made from candy.

People are just SO nice here.

75th Wedding Anniversary

Today would have been my grandparents Mary and Victor Mitchell's 75th wedding anniversary. I woke up this morning thinking, 'today is July 23rd it was my grandparents anniversary .. I wonder how many years?" To my amazement today would have been 75 years! After some research I found that it used to be called the Diamond Anniversary .. but after Queen Elizabeth marked 60 years as the queen as her Diamond Jubilee, seems there must be a different name for 75!!


"The passing of another year together marks a deepening of the couple's commitment, an accumulation of time irreplaceable. To help in celebrating these occasions are special gifts, one assigned to each anniversary and each with its own material and symbolic value. In the United States, the wedding anniversary symbols begin simply, with paper and flowers, and gradually increase in substance and value. The order of gifts reflects the investment that the couple gives of themselves to each other. In Germany, by comparison, couples use a list of symbols that represent the progressive strengthening of the marriage relationship."
Source: Gretchen Scoble and Ann Field, The Meaning of Wedding Anniversaries, page 7.

Today I celebrate the celebration of anniversaries .. of marriages .. of the love of family!

Another week winds down ...

We've worked on boxes this week and making sense of the house. And now we have a weekend of plans to come .. and continuing to beat the heat!

Last night we went to Shannon's - Bill's new favorite place! The have awesome home cooking, and are famous for their Buffalo Chicken Salad Its delish!

Ellie did an awesome job on her dinner tonight so we agreed to let her pick out dessert. She picked cherry pie a la mode! I thought there was no way she would like it - but she loved it!!

End of the first week all together!

One of the teachers from Ellie's school told me a bunch of them get together at Gill Street Sports Bar to listen to music because its early (6 - 10pm) ... so we tried it out. We waited for the beach volley league to end and waited for the music to begin. No music, no kids, no friends from Clubhouse .. but Ellie played in the sand and we had some wonderful Gill St fries!

State Farm Pool

On our first family weekend in Bloomington, we visited State Farm Park's Pool as they opened at 10am! Perfect - hot weather - lots of chairs and so much fun for Ellie to have!

Let the wind blow ...

Look closely and you can see the crescent moon at the top left, and lots of wind mills in the distance!!

When people began congratulate me about my move to Corporate the ones who had previously lived here said, "wait until you experience the wind!" Which made perfect sense to me since there are no mountains to break up this wind, it blows through the plains. I have experienced the wind blowing me around the parking lot, but then I discovered the parking garage and that took care of that.

This weekend I drove through these wonderful wind farms. NOW there's a good idea. Let's take all this wind and turn it into energy. It's what you call 'clean' energy. It's so much prettier than an oil well and way better than those coal mines that miners get trapped in.

Ours is called Twin Groves Wind Farm and it's just a few miles outside Bloomington.

So next time the wind blows me across a parking lot, or messes up my hair I'll remember those wind farms and how much wonderful energy is being generated by that wind!

Happy 4th of July

I spent a wonderful weekend in Indiana .. with Jody! It's a peaceful, straight line drive from Bloomington, IL to W Lafayette, IN. About 2 hours and 20 minutes door to door. Lots of soybean and corn fields, and amazing families of wind mills. They are so happy when you drive by them always waving and churning that wind into energy! Tonight I experienced driving back into Bloomington watching all the different fireworks displays! It was amazing!!

We ate lots of wonderful food .. salmon with balsamic strawberries, asparagus and crusty french bread and good red wine. Today we did a 4 mile walk, quick showers and off to lunch with Shep and Olivia (Shep's 17 yr old daughter). We then spent a holiday afternoon a the movie theatre!! We saw Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen.

We ended our holiday weekend with burgers, potatoes with lemon and parsley and this awesome red, white and blue dessert. It is wonderful to be so close to Jody again. We talked and exchanged our favorite websites .. I am going to bed with a full tummy and a smile on my face!!

Gianni is 17 months old today!

Ellie at 17 months old!


Ellie and Josh - Fall 2007 (4 short years ago!!)


I was looking at some old pictures this morning and realized that Gianni is 17 months old and thought it would be fun to see what Ellie looked like at 17 months old too! Seems SO long ago, but as a wise mom once told me, "The days may seem to drag on, but the years fly by!" That is amazingly true as I am separated from Ellie for two weeks .. I'm sure she'll have grown a foot by the time I see her next!

Red, White and Blue Day

When Ellie and I talked this morning before she left for school she told me, "today is Red, White and Blue day!" So I asked, "are you wearing red, white and blue?" She seemed immensely disappointed that I didn't already know this, and said, "Of course Mommy!" So they sent me a picture for the theme day.

Today I finished my first full week at Corporate - new job, new people, new surroundings! Whew! So exhausting .. but so, so great! Things are beginning to make sense and I found my car three days in a row in the parking garage exactly where I left it without getting lost en route.

The office is on a campus with multiple buildings, a shuttle to take you from place to place and certain buildings with cafeterias, ones with smaller coffee & snack-type cafes. Many people walk from building to building for meetings wearing a backpack (just like at college) to carry their laptop with them. It's definitely a culture change ... but for a the better! We'll see what next week brings .....