Hiya

Hey Ladies!

I hope you all had yummy Thanksgiving dinners with your families!

Matt and I made the 9 1/2 hour drive down to Tennessee to spend the holiday with his family, all went well and it was fun, but that drive is killer! We drove straight down Illinois and then through part of Kentucky to get to Tennessee. The 5 hours driving through Illinois were so boring! All flat flat flat farmland with nothing in sight. Ugh. It's enough to put you to sleep.
But Kentucky and especially Tennessee were beautiful, all rolling hills and rocky cliffs, we drove around Nashville to a town about 40 minutes south called Mt. Pleasant - his sister lives out in some rural area, it was nice - you can actually see the stars out there! I had forgetten about them, there is a constant orange haze in the sky surrounding Chicago from all the light pollution.

We only spent one day in town, as my sister had scheduled my niece's baptism for that Saturday. She found some fairly modern Lutheran church in her town to hold the baptism at and I must say it was strange being back in a Lutheran church again - the last and only time I had been in one was for Krista's wedding! The pastor was from Minnesota, so of course my mother was thrilled - to her, if you are from Minnesota, you can do no wrong! It was a very casual service, they had a live band that played contemporary christian music...not a big fan, I have to tell you. The music all started to sound the same after the second song.

But Sophia liked the music! Everytime the band started to play she started bouncing around on my brother in law's lap and kicking her feet, she loves to dance. I'll try to post some pictures of her, she's such a cute little butterball now!

If any of you ladies are going to be in town at all for Christmas, I'm bringing Matt up with me - not sure how long we will be staying, as Matt never likes to stay all that long (I can't really blame him, my mom is not always that easy to deal with when it comes to men). So we are going to try to cement our plans sometime this week and I hope that I will be able to see at least ONE of you guys while I'm home.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling post - I'm killing time until the end of the day here at work - they're doing construction in our office and the paint fumes are giving me a headache, along with the sawing and hammering noises. Lucky me! They're dividing up the office exactly one foot away from my cubicle!

Miss you guys!

Becks

It's a "Good Thing"

Hey Rebecca -

Congrats! I know how hard you've worked to get to where you are and I hope you enjoy your time off!

All I ever seem to post about is work crapola, but I did happen to see Martha Stewart at the museum on Friday, I walked right past her! She was at the museum visiting and I think might have been doing a bit of business, but all day Friday, everyone was on "Martha watch" and it was a lot of fun.

Fam news - a few weeks ago, my mom was notified that the mammogram she went in for came back with some inconclusive results, and that there was a "densening" (sp?) of one of her breasts. So they wanted her to come back in to make sure if wasn't a cancerous mass. That test was last Friday and thank god it came back fine, no explanation though of why the area was more dense. Needless to say, my mom has been on an emotional rollercoaster while waiting for this second test.

I'm going to Tennessee over Thanksgiving, Matt's sister Theresa is hosting the dinner this year and apparently this is the first year since Matt was in highschool that the entire immediate family has been able to get together for Thanksgiving. So right after I made these plans, my sister Stacey decided she was going to host a dinner and my mom agreed to come down. So of course then the guilt started - I feel like I should be in town, but my family knew of my plans and they're still planning this anyway. My sister also planned to have my niece baptised on Saturday, so Matt and I have to rush back on Friday (9.5 hour drive) in order to make it in time for the baptism.

So this weekend Matt and I got ready for the week, I did a bunch of laundry and cleaned up the kitchen and guess what? I found out we have those little bugs you sometimes get in the sugar and flour bags. Lovely! I spent all day yesterday throwing out half of our food and cleaning out all the cabinets. Gross.

Anyway, I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving!

Miss you guys!

Becks