house kids

sunday afternoon was filled with fun! after church the kids came over and we had a great thanksgiving meal- with all the fixin's! once the table was cleaned, we all went into the living room to hang out. diana sat with the kids looking at books (in front of the heat dish, of course!). we all got a chance to laugh and play with the kids and talk to the family and everything! these times are what diana and i most look forward to on our trips up to grand rapids!
(more pics: 1, 2, and a couple dance videos by the girls: 1, 2)

game day

one of my mom's favorite things in the world is to sit at the kitchen table and play games. it doesnt really matter what game we are playing, she is just happy to have the opportunity! well, i certainly got that love of games from her. diana and i spent hours and hours playing different games with mom over the weekend- i think we spent the entire saturday going through all the different games mom hand and giving them all a try! there were some winners and some losers as far as the games go, but we had a blast playing them anyway! one of the most surprising things of the weekend was that papa came by and joined us for a few games too! he's usually not very interested in playing, but he was a good sport and pulled up a seat (mom was shocked and amazed, to say the least!). we will definitely have to do this again soon!
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at the hut

one of the special events during our visit to see the family was a trip to pizza hut! we met there for the lunch buffet and a chance to have a good time! the kids all pigged out (and so did the adults...) as we made a game of waiting for the servers to bring out the next pizza- 'is it a supreme? is it a supreme?' mom kept asking. the kids favorite was always the bread sticks though! its so fun to just spend time with jills three kids, its amazing to see how each of them are developing their own personalities. each time diana and i go up there it seems like they have grown so much! all three of them are so amazingly sweet and loving- jill and tim must be doing something right!
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brinksgiving

after a great time with diana's family, we made our way up to grand rapids to see my family. since we had already had a huge feast, mom and papa figured they would push their thanksgiving meal to sunday when tim, jill, and the kids could be there too. instead, we spend thanksgiving day just hanging out and having a great time! it has felt like forever since we were up visiting them, we havent been up there since chad visited in august, so we were long overdue!
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allen thanksgiving

with a bit of a break for thanksgiving, diana and i made plans to go visit my family for the holiday. at the last minute we mixed up our plans a bit and made it to the allen family thanksgiving too! we arrived there thursday around 11am, after dropping off our little dog at barbaras. uncle arnold and aunt nancy hosted the feast at their house and had everyone over- which was about 35 people! it had been a while since we last saw her extended family, so it was really great to be able to see them all again. unfortunately her grandma has been steadily declining in health, but she was having a good day and was able to join us for a while. diana's mom and step dad were even able to join us, so the whole family was there!
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my wife, the stylist!

when diana and i first got married she started cosmetology school with the hopes that one day she would be a hair stylist. well, shes been working for about six months now at a salon as an assistant, working her way up. recently she finally got the call: she is now a full fledged hair stylist! we are both very excited! she is a bit nervous, but looks forward to what challenges are in store.

now comes the real challenge: finding people who want her to cut their hair! the hardest part of becoming a stylist is building a clientele. one way that her coworkers have suggested is by creating an advertisement to give to people that will get them interested in coming in. well, thats where i come in! i've got a little experience in designing stuff just like that. i took a bunch of graphic design classes in college and really loved it. so i thought this might be the opportunity i've been looking for: create an advertisement for my wife! well, after a few hours working in photoshop (and many many hours trying to get the dang printer to do what i want), i came up with a design that we are both proud of. i printed it on a heavy stock paper the size of a postcard and we have since send out a couple hundred around town. hopefully we will start to see the results soon! the picture at the top of this post is what i came up with for her. if you live around us, please click on it and print it out so you can give her a call and use the coupon! she hopes to see you in the salon soon!

chicago bub

after we finished at the lego store we wandered around on michigan ave. for a bit. tim kind of wanted to check out the niketown store (but was sadly disappointed- they didnt have any college sports teams stuff at all), and also checked out the disney store so we could get a couple things to bring back to the girls back home.
bub had such a great time, i'm sure this weekend will be one he remembers for the rest of his life!
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lego bub

the big plans for the day in chicago mostly revolved around bub getting to go to his new favorite place on earth: the lego store! he was so excited to go that he told us in the morning that he had dreamed about legos all night! after the half hour drive to downtown chicago, we found a place to park and walked over to michigan ave. we didnt exactly know where the lego store was, but that was ok considering we had gotten downtown 45 minutes before the lego store even opened! after figuring out where it was and heading up to the third floor of the mall, we found it. bub was in his glory! as soon as the doors of the place opened he raced inside, leaving his dad and i in his dust! he spotted the star wars legos right away and was all set. we pulled him away from them for a couple minutes so he could walk around the rest of the store and check out all the cool stuff they had to offer, but he quickly returned back to the two sections of star wars legos. bub was given an important decision to make while we were there: he had been given money from his grandparents and from his mom and dad to buy his christmas presents, not he had to make sure he made some good decisions about which lego sets he wanted! not one to take the decision lightly, he spend the next hour going back and forth between the two sections of star wars legos looking at his options, weighing his choices carefully. he finally picked two larger sets, and two smaller ones and was happy with what he decided. then we waiting in the 15 minute checkout line (it seems that everyone finished their lego shopping at once...) and bub got the latest addition to his star wars lego empire!
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bub sleeps

eventually, after the movie was finished, we tucked bub into bed. i had planned ahead and gotten the inflatable matress out of the shed for him and got it ready in the second bedroom of our place. as he was getting ready i began to realize what a production this was going to be! after the matress was blown up he asked if we had a night light for him, which for some reason, we did. next, he asks for a fan so that he can have some noise while he sleeps. next up, he needs some music playing so we had to sort through some music so we could have a good cd playing while he slept (granted, the music playing was mostly so that it would drowned out the noise of the trains as they go by during the night), then he needed an alarm clock in the room so he could tell what time it is if he woke up in the middle of the night. yeesh, that kid needs a lot of stuff just to go to bed! i guess i cant complain too loudly since i need a fan blowing too...
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bub's visit

early in the week i got a call from my brother in law tim. he asks me if i have any plans yet for the weekend. i dont. so he runs an idea by me: would it work if he and my nephew came down for a night and we all went to chicago together on saturday? well, of course! what a fantastic idea! well, i spent the rest of the week cleaning up the house (not because we are slobs, but because he was also bringing a couple pieces of furniture for diana and i and we needed to make some room for them) and getting ready for them. they arrived friday night and we had a blast! soon after they got there and settled in we ordered pizza and hung out watching a movie. the movie was pretty bad, but that didn't matter- i got to spend some quality time with my favorite nephew ever!!!

turkey day early

one of the biggest challenges about being married happens when the holidays come around. the big question arises: whos family do we spend it with? well, diana and i were able to avoid that little problem this year already- her mom and david invited us over for thanksgiving three weeks early! we were both very excited to go see her family and at the prospects of a delicious meal! they decided to have it a bit early because dianas step sister (and her son) was visiting that weekend and because barbara had the day off of nursing, so it all just worked out perfectly! we got there sunday afternoon and had a great time. the food was amazing and we were able to just lounge around and enjoy the day and the company. always a great time to see her family!
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soup ball

every year our school has a soup supper fundraiser, and every year i get roped into making the wall decorations for it. i enjoy making the decorations, but i've really got to get better at not waiting until the day they are due to get started on them! the fundraiser this year was for new uniforms for the basketball teams, so the decorations were in line with that idea. i was pretty stuck coming up with an idea on what i should do, but then i just figured i could make a bunch of basketballs and silhouettes of basketball figures. easy and affective! they turned out pretty well and did their job, so everything was ok. diana and i stopped by later that night to enjoy the soup itself- which was amazingly good!
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halloween treats

halloween has never been very busy on the street we live on, but diana and i bought some candy to hand out just in case. most years i've lived here i would only get about 3-5 visitors at my door on halloween, but this year it was quite different! i dont know what it is, but there were dozens of groups of families walking around our street getting candy! diana and i decided that instead of opening the door and having our stinky little dog scare the trick-or-treaters half to death, we would sit outside on our porch and welcome the kids as they stopped by. it was a good time seeing all the little kids dressed up as different princesses and ninjas and pirates and all the rest! we did run out of candy after a while, but we were able to help out quite a few candy-hungry kids!

hair wedding

one of the girls at the place diana works at was getting married and diana and i scored an invitation! because all the people from the salon were going, they closed down early that saturday (which diana didnt mind too much...) so everyone could attend. we went to the reception and had a blast! i hadnt really spent much time with diana's new coworkers, so it was great to be able to finally put faces to names.
it was kind of strange to be there, considering i didnt know anyone at all. i kind of felt like a wedding crasher a little bit... we were at a table on the opposite end of the hall from where the bride and groom were seated so it felt like it was completely unconnected from the festivities, which was ok, but kind of strange. we had so much fun chatting and enjoying the night! congratulations, bride and groom (i have no idea what their names are...), we really enjoyed the free dinner!
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toll cruncher

after diana and i got home from the great weekend with miranda and levi in milwaukee, we had to go and pick up our stinky dog from her dad's place. we took the indiana toll way and stopped at one of the rest areas along the way. i had never been in this rest area, so i was really surprised and quite excited by the fact that it had its own penny cruncher! i know, having a penny that says 'indiana' on it isnt very exciting, but adding another crunched penny to the collection is! ah, its the little joys in life that keep you going, huh?

hello harley

the place that miranda and levi were most excited about going to in milwaukee was the harley davidson museum. (dont worry, the place wasnt on fire, they just bring in some of the fire equipment to show it off on the weekends!) both of them are big motorcycle people and come from motorcycle families. as for diana and i? well, we werent all that excited about it, but were willing to try anything once. turned out to be a lot more interesting than i would have thought! we had a fun time learning about the history of the company and seeing all the really old motorcycles and stuff. the coolest parts were seeing the motorcycles they manufactured for the wars. we all ended up having a great time there- i know my dad would have been jealous!
(more pics: 1, 2, 3, 4. we even ate at the museum restaurant!)

tasty buca

when diana heard that milwaukee had a buca di beppo she announced that we just had to go there! never one to turn down a really delicious meal, i agreed. after heading back to the hotel from our visit to the third ward, we made a reservation and headed over to the restaurant. now, if you have never gone to buca di beppo, then you are missing out on an amazing time! its an italian restaurant that serves their food family style. that means that you really only need to order two things to feed three people. well, we ordered three things, and boy were we full- and we had tons of leftovers!
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old milwaukee

one of the places that diana found while researching milwaukee was the third ward. its an old part of downtown that has been rejuvenated recently and is filled with cool little shops and ends with a great fish market type food commissary. we stopped there one of the afternoons we were in milwaukee, just to check it out. there werent a ton of places for levi and i to check out, but diana and miranda were in their glory! levi and i wandered around for a bit and found ourselves in the food market. it was a really cool place that reminded both of us of the fish market in seattle, it was a bunch of little kiosks that that sold specialty foods and trinkets. levi and i found a seat on the second floor and chilled out for a while and just chatted. eventually when the girls arrived there as well we took a walk along the waterfront and got to see some more cool sights of milwaukee.
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sprecher brewing

one of the things we knew that had to be done while in milwaukee was to go on a tour of a brewery. well, none of us really much care for beer, so levi found a milwaukee brewery that made beer and soda! we went on a tour of the sprecher brewery, which was pretty cool, and then at the end we got all the soda we could drink (and we could drink a lot...) it was a pretty cool tour, but sitting around after the tour just chillin and chatting was even cooler!
(more pics: 1, 2)

blue ribbon mansion

after we decided on milwaukee for our weekend destination, diana quickly went to work trying to find things that we could do while we were there. she found a cool old mansion that we could tour through, its the old pabst homestead, the home of the family behind the beer fortune!
the mansion itself is pretty impressive, its an old house from the 1890's and was built by and for the pabst family to live in. there was some really cool history we got to hear as we took the tour of the home. the decorations and furnishings were really impressive- this place cost a fortune to build! the family had sold it years and years ago, it eventually was purchased by the catholic church and was the residence of the local archbishop. in the 70's it was purchased and turned into a museum. what was kind of cool about the place is that it is still in the process of being restored. only the main floor is completely restored. the second floor is about half way done, but they have to work slowly because they dont have a ton of money or anything to restore it quickly. its interesting to see some of the rooms redone to look like the period it was built, and then one room over see it in its unrestored state, as it was when the archbishops lived there. they havent even touched the third floor of the place, so we werent allowed to go up there at all. it was a really interesting place with tons of cool elements from the time it was built. this was diana's favorite part of the trip- i think she just likes to nose around in other people's stuff!
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