Holidays

Okay let's start with the Thanksgiving Day parade. Two words. . . Monsters and Popeye. We have never lived in a place where real floating balloons come down the street. It was really cool, and cold, and fun.
The other exciting thing to see was in this picture. You may think these are just pictures of me. . . you would be wrong. 10 points to whoever can figure out what we were REALLY capturing in these pictures. (What's up Cooter?)

Then it was on to eating gluten free Thanksgiving food thanks to Matt, the husband of our Relief Society President. He made me such wonderful food (his brother has Celiac so he had special tried and true and perfected over the years recipes for Thanksgiving dinner.) He also gave me my new nickname since he couldn't remember my name at first. The name is Trixie VonSnoots. He said it was fun like me. Thanks Matt for so much lovely food and Pammy for the great desserts. We will come over and eat all of the fruits of your labors anytime :) After we finished and slipped into a turkey coma we started on to our favorite adventure of the year. . .

BLACK FRIDAY!!!
As you can see we got there early this year


We had to be ready for the crowds and the lines. Turns out it wasn't so bad. We were on the news though. Not that we saw it, we had to stop watching the news after three weeks here or we would be too afraid to leave our apartment ever. We shopped ALLLLL DAAAYYYY. Literally. We shopped for 16 hours. It was awesome! We went to an eight story mall and a nine story Macy's. Yes, Macy's. The whole building is Macy's, NINE FLOORS OF IT! It was unbelievable. Plus we shopped Michigan Ave., and went to the outlet malls in Northbrook. In all fairness two hours of our day was spent driving to and from these outlets. 500 stores in one gigantic building. We only made it through half of the stores before we could no longer walk. It was an amazing marathon day. We were a little slap happy after only 4 hours though so we laughed at anything and everything. Take this sign for instance.
We both were walking up to it and stopped our conversation and looked again at it and started to laugh so hard. We thought it said one thing and it said something way more appropriate. What do you think the green words say????

We were confused about why He needed another job. Also we were really tired so it was the funniest part of the day.

We had such a blast that day though. Before Thanksgiving we seriously considered going to Ithaca again for the holiday but we really wanted to go Black Friday shopping in Chicago. How many times can you do that and just take your presents home in between stores? While we missed our friends in Ithaca, we really had a memorable shopping experience. Imagine us walking down Michigan Ave. holding ENORMOUS red bags that they were handing out on the street. Each of ours was totally full of stuff and this was only one quarter of the day. In the end we came home with this: The best find by far was the vacuum. We got a Dyson for ourselves with the money we got from last years Christmas. We love this thing. There will be a separate post about it. It was the best deal too, we saved $150 on it. Nothing like shopping before the sun comes up.

Then we started the decorating. We rearranged our couch (surprise, surprise) to make room for the tree right in between tow chaise lounges. Then we put last years after Christmas find around it, a train we got for $4. Ben had a grand old time with the train. He played with it for 45 minutes before putting the tree and train in their proper places. It was hilarious! This guy needs a little boy.
Since we don't have one of those we called our friends Doug and Heather Fife to come over with their kids Evan and Audrey. Evan showed Ben all about how to make the train work. I think Ben had as much fun as Evan did. It was so fun to hang out and watch the train. Audrey learned how to turn the tree lights on and off so right as the train would pass her she would turn off the lights.


We were all geared up and counting down the days until we went home for Christmas when we got a call from my step-mom one Thursday morning and Friday we were on a plane to Utah. It was the big 50 for my dad and in order to keep the very large party a secret we had all been lying to him for months about what was going on in December. Well he really wanted me at his party on the . . . I can't even remember anymore what day we told him and he kept pressing the issue. Trish was worried that he was going to buy a plane ticket for us (unbeknownst to him we would already be there so that would be a waste of money). We flew out early to surprise him. This is really a very very very elaborate story that I am glossing over. Ben still can't figure out what went on for this and he was part of it. My step-mom is the best ever at planning elaborate things and this was the best. When he walked into the house and everybody yelled SURPRISE! Trish said she thought he would have a heat attack. He thought they were going to not one, but two other parties that night. He had even made a cheese tray for one of them (which was totally fake, he made his tray for his own party. Classic) so all he could think about when he saw all these people was "so are they coming to the Halladay's party with us?". Then he was equally shocked when Ben and I walked in during the present portion of the evening. It was so great. Mom you deserve to take Dad's whole 51st year off for pulling off that whole thing without any suspicion.

It was fun to see everybody a little early and drop off some presents so we wouldn't have to carry so many bags to the train station at Christmas. I got a photo shoot while I was there from my niece McKayla. She got a little camera from a birthday party grab bag and some little jewelry and stickers. She looked at me and said "cheese" and made the picture sound. Then she started putting things on me.
'here's ring" and she would put a ring on me. " take necklace" and she would put her necklace on me. Then she started putting stickers on me and saying "move legs" click click "turn head" click click click " close eyes" click "no teeth" click click click "PRETTY!" and she would clap and take everything back. Photo shoot over. It was the funniest thing I have ever been part of. I was laughing so hard and she would just keep posing me and moving me and taking fake pictures. HILARIOUS!


When we really came home for Christmas Chicago was having the biggest storm. . . well not the biggest because we had another one last Saturday and there is one that seems worse going on right now. The airports closed for hours. We decided that we would still go to the airport because if we didn't at least show up they probably wouldn't get us on the flight for the next day. We took our time though. We took a cab to the train station (almost no weather can stop a train, I love it!) and we took our time getting to each destination. As far as we knew our plane was delayed two hours so we had all the time in the world. When we got there we stood in line for a couple of hours and snacked on pretzels and treats we had brought with us. Just before we got to the counter they announced that the airport was open again. At the counter they said our flight had been delayed another hour but was going out. By this time our original flight should have left almost two hours earlier so delay was not a big deal. Just as we knew our status, in pops Beth's head (my Real Housewives of Cook County counterpart from upstairs). She was there picking up her sister from the airport and making sure we were getting on our flight. If not she could take us home. It was fun to visit for a bit and then we parted ways and found a restaurant for dinner. Ben and I had a nice relaxed dinner together and then started over to our gate. Ben found some open seats and thought "we'll just sit there next to that girl who looks like Alicia Knapp". Sure enough, it's Alicia! So we did some more visiting (poor girl had been there since 4:00, it was now 10:00. They told her the flight wasn't going out and to go home but she didn't have boots on and she wasn't going back out in the blizzard. She said she would sit there until they flew her to Seattle) and while we were talking they announced that her plane would be boarding in ten minutes. We were so excited for her. So we talked until she got in line and then I looked at Ben and asked if we should watch the movie we had brought (you know, for they crazy delays) and they announced our flight was boarding! It turned out to be the most relaxing travel ever. Way to go blizzard! Then we came into Salt Lake to see thisIt was great. We had such a good time over the break hanging out with nieces and nephews.During one particularly fantastic blizzard Ben and I decided to make a snowman. However once we got going we were really impressed by the amazing packability of the snow (which is not common in Salt Lake) so we decided to make a dragon instead. Yes, this is a Christmas snow dragon we are working on here. Claws, ribbed belly, pointed tail, spikes down the back. Even better than that was that overnight it turned to ice. By the time the grandkids came to play they could climb all over the thing and it didn't break.

Here is a better view of how big it is as well as the excellent work Ben did on the back spikes. We originally were planning on putting a much taller neck and head on it but new snow came before we got to that point and it wasn't packing snow at all so we had to turn what we had into our creature. It was a hit. We were the only house in the neighborhood with a dragon. Brad and Wendy were nice enough to let us give them a dragon house. We refrained from spraying it with green food colored water, they were glad about that.

Another Christmas highlight was the present we got for my brothers Parker and Chase. We got them the worlds biggest chocolate bar. That was cool but we couldn't leave it at that. We found a box that was almost the same size as the bar, then put in a false bottom, then filled the rest of the box with . . . charcoal. Then we wrapped the box with. . . red duct tape. . . three times. We debated telling them they couldn't cut it open but it could have taken all day and we didn't want them to break up any of the coal . Here is Ben at the beginning of the wrapping process. Red, nice and festive.
After Christmas I got sick and we were less than interesting. We went to Idaho to see Grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. We had a good time seeing everyone. My Uncle Tony and Aunt Emi showed us their house all fixed up and pretty, last time we were there all of their furniture was still being shipped from Brazil.

For all those friends that are wondering what the heck happened to us. It's my fault, I was sick and I didn't think anyone that we knew wanted what I got. Nose running, eyes crying for no reason. I couldn't wait to get back to Chicago and hang out in the steam room in our building. I spent a week being miserable and came back and went to the steam room twice and I was fine. It's like a miracle cure. I will forever need a steam room at my house. So we love all of you, which is why we didn't see any of you. Anyone is welcome to come visit Chicago. . . except come prepared, it's going to be -30 with windchill this weekend. The average temp is 2. Don't come to do outdoor stuff. We will have to find more time to visit with people next time.