Sunday, August 19, 2012

An Air and Water Show Baby Shower

Yesterday was our "Stock the Bookshelf" baby shower for Baby Nickels, who is estimated to be around 6.5 lbs and Julie is hoping that he holds that weight steady until his due date in two weeks. Lisa and Rebecca hosted us at Lisa and Matt's "Pub Neenan" (the best pub in town) so we got to enjoy each others' company and the Air & Water Show.

Jeremy, Julie, and Baby Nickels (he's in there, you just can't see him)




Mary, Lisa, Julie, Rebecca, and me

Caren, Julie, Rebecca, and Mary
Lisa and Matt cooked us up an amazing meal of crawfish cakes, a fresh greens salad with walnuts, goat cheese, and new potatoes, and grilled corn on the cob. Delicious. Rebecca made a gorgeous fruit salad and brought the best mini cupcakes I've ever put in my belly. I didn't take any pictures of the food because I was too busy eating it. Sorry.

We ended the night hanging out on the Pub Neenan terrace, eating pizza (that's what happens when your hosts feed you at 2 p.m. and you are still at their house at 8 p.m.) and drinking beer (or white wine spritzers...whatever). It was a perfect day and night and it was just what I needed to relax before classes start on Monday. Oh, wait. Monday is tomorrow. Crap. Gotta go.

Friday, August 17, 2012

Door County, Part One

Greetings!

We got back from our four day vacation to Door County on Tuesday, but since I didn't take many pictures, this will be a mini-posting until I can round up more photos from the Power people, who were better about snapping shots during our many adventures. But for now, here's what I've got.

First, the house we rented, which used to be a church, turned out to be kind of humungous. We had five bedrooms, all with en suite bathrooms (and all bathrooms had jetted bathtubs! [but I forgot to take a soaker before we left and am now kicking myself]).

T, Angi, and John, being great in the great room
   





The outside of the humungous church house
A close-up of Auntie Me, Sadie, and Uncle Trevy-Trev (photo by Angi)
Of course we took our regular trip to P.C. Junction. Sadie is older now and can truly appreciate the train car delivery service.

Hey-Yo, we're at the Junction!
Rae, Cassie, Destiny, Fran, Sadie, Neill, Angi, and Sean
And our last night in the Door we had dinner at the Square Rigger for their world famous fish boil. Unfortunately, Destiny and Cassie, Neill and Fran, and Rae and Letty had already taken the long road home, so we remaining seven met the cousins--Ben, his fiancée Danielle and their kids, Bladen and Mason, and Daniel and Gabe--to enjoy the great dinner and (my favorite part) cherry pie a la mode.

Fran and John, Sadie, Sean, and Angi, and Trevy-Trev

Some of the Power and Madel Gangs (minus Angi, who is behind the lens)

Waiting for the boil

The Madel gang, wandering near the water
Now, I don't have any pictures of us at the beach (although I'm kind of thankful for that...), us at Grandma and Grandpa Madel's place or at their anniversary party, of us at the family BBQ, or of me and T shopping for some books in Sister Bay. But this is one of the treasures I found for $.50:

Yes, that's right--fifty cents!

And then, Sadie drove us home. She's a very safe driver, though she had a hard time checking her rear review mirror.


 Oh, yeah, and we also accidentally stole these Trivial Pursuit playing cards from the rental house:

T claimed that he thought this was ours. It's not.

I'll start harassing my sisters-in-law for some of their great photos, so hopefully I'll do another post next week.

I'm also starting classes on Monday (ack!) and will likely be procrastinating my lesson prep by writing about the baby shower we're going to tomorrow for Julie and Jeremy. So stay tuned!

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Celebrations


Last weekend was full of celebrations. First, there was a party on Saturday afternoon to celebrate Destiny's graduation from high school! Hurrah! We met at a park district party space in Hoffman Estates to get some grub, give Destiny 1,000,000 high fives, and celebrate with the Napier/Power clan.

But we had to scoot out quickly to hop to another celebration, the Bharathanatya Arangetram of my friend's daughter. The Arangetram is a sort of graduation recital to signify the end of a period of Indian dance study, so after a decade of work, the fifteen-year-old Anita below put on a three hour recital that was absolutely fantastic.

It's not a great picture but it should give you a sense of Anita's fantastic costume and meticulous dance style
After the recital we got to eat dinner, and Trevor and I were in heaven because everything on the menu was vegetarian!

Another mediocre picture, but you can see the recital program in the background
Better picture, taken by Trevor (obviously)
We left and got home that night, our bellies full of delicious Indian food and our minds full of happy thoughts about Destiny and Anita, two young ladies bound for success.

But it wasn't over with Destiny, because as part of her graduation gift, we treated her to a back-to-school shopping spree (with just me, not Trevor; that would not have been fun for him at all). So Dest and I headed to State Street on Sunday afternoon for some shopping.

Shoes!

Clothes!

Shopping Queens
 And now this weekend we're heading up to Door County for four days of vacation with the Power peeps and to celebrate Grandpa Madel's 90th birthday. I'm sure we will have an account of it once we return. Until then, happy August!