Week in Review

Time is starting to go by really fast. This past week a rep from the moving came for a survey of what's getting packed up. The date is set, my stuff is packed up 8/11. While I still don't have final approval on my flight, I'm pretty sure there's no changing it now, 8/15. It'll take 6-10 weeks for my packed stuff to arrive, so anything I'm going to need has to go in the suitcase. I'm trying to take as little as possible.

Thursday, Dad came and more stuff left - the dresser, my big painting, VCR, crockpot, pictures and old piggy banks. Some have new homes and others will be waiting for me to return in 3 years.

Friday I showed Kotaro my apartment. He's recently arrived from Japan and will be in Peoria for the next 2 years. He's apartment hunting and if all works out well, he will pick up where my lease leaves off.

Then I took off for a weekend with the family. My Aunt, Uncle, Cousin and her husband came to town. We had a lot of fun, but unfortunately I realized tonight that my Aunt's camera has a lot of the good pics. Nevertheless, here's some of our fun:

We were putting together the ladder/golf ball game and one of the pieces was missing some necessary holes. So Uncle Craig and I found Grandpa's old tools and drilled ourself two holes. Worked like a charm! Took us a bit longer than it would have Grandpa though :).

Here's the mess of food we ate and then played some ping pong to work off those extra calories! Emily's competetive side took over and she was the clear champ with a 3/5 series win over Tim. It was quite intense.

We walked to the park and looked for a geocache (http://www.geocaching.com/). Tim did awesome and logged his first find!!

Us big kids played on the playground for a while. It's a much better playground than we ever had.

Then everyone took off. There was still plenty of light in the day and quite a few caches out near mom & dad's, so Mom and I spent a couple hours wandering around looking like fools searching the trees :). It was fun. At this cache, we saw a fox run away as we approached and Mom made her first find in the culvert! Good job!

Side Notes

1. For those of you that did vote in the poll last week, the answer was Woodrow Wilson. He is buried in the National Cathedral, which is part of D.C. He is the only president. JFK was a little tricky because he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery, which is just across the river in Arlington, VA (not in D.C.).



2. Here's a link to all of the pictures from the road trip to NC, SC and DC.

Weekend at College & Maddox :)

In my quest to try and see everyone before I leave, I went to TX last weekend to see Sara & Sean (and Atticus) at their new house. Sara and I met when we were studying in Spain during college and we've been great friends ever since!

Sara's been reading my blog and took me to Sprinkles for some gourmet cupcakes as soon as I arrived. Yum! I got cinnamon & sugar, pumpkin and marshmallow & chocolate. My favorite was the pumpkin. I did bypass the shot of frosting, which some of you may be surprised at.

Saturday was a big day! Sara got me into her new salon for a much needed haircut and he did a wonderful!! job. I love it :). You can check it out in our pic below at the Cats baseball game in Fort Worth. It was such beautiful Texas weather that night. The game got good towards the end, but the home team lost. However, we did see an exciting "discussion" between the home team coach and the home base umpire. At the end of it, the coach walked away and the umpire had to wipe off his face.

We rounded out the evening with Sonic drinks on the front porch, talking and watching the neighborhood. All the good stuff happens after 11 :) - packs of dogs; cop chases; loud girls on their phone. Atticus was our protector.