Farewell Chicago?

Recently they changed my sales territory at work.  For the past couple years I've focused on Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Indiana  But our company is growing, and they've hired more sales reps, so as a sales engineer I'm now working with sales reps who are closer to Kansas City.  I'm not sure how this will go, because the Kansas/Missouri/Ohio/Colorado/Iowa/Nebraska territory isn't exactly booming with opportunities (I also have New Mexico, the Dakotas, and Montana, but those aren't really even worth mentioning).  I do have Minnesota, which probably holds the most promise out of all the states.  The new sales rep for that territory starts in a couple weeks, so hopefully he'll do well and we can get some business.

For now, though, I'm holding on to a few of my old accounts, though I'll likely lose them in the near future, so yesterday and today I was in Chicago visiting one of them.  I was supposed to fly back first thing this morning on a 9am flight, but my flight was delayed due to a mechanical problem.  By the time it was ready, I would have missed my connecting flight, so I had to be rebooked on a later flight leaving at 5pm.  So I spent basically the entire day in O'Hare.  I wore my glasses in the morning because I planned to sleep on the first flight (it's not very comfortable to sleep in my contacts), but because I didn't end up flying until the evening, I ended up wearing them all day.  Here I am toward the end of my long day living in the airport like Tom Hanks.

New and Improved Tummy Time

Hannah is making big progress with her motor skills lately. Not only does she smile and laugh more and lift her head up more often, but she also bats at things and is more interested in the world around her. This means tummy time is going much better than it was and she seems to actually enjoy it for at least a little while. It is exciting to see her develop new skills and become more like a tiny person with likes and dislikes.

Merry Christmas!

Today we had a very nice Christmas. We woke up, read the Christmas story, and then did presents. Joshua was a little excited this year, but not too much. Terrence still was the most excited one in the house. Joshua did really like taking off the wrapping paper though and he was not really worried about only unwrapping the ones that were his. Jason and I had fun giving the kids the gifts we made, as well as the ones we bought. This is Hannah in her carseat poncho and Joshua with the helping tower. Later, we had our traditional dinner of sauerbraten. We really enjoyed spending the day with the kids and each other.

Christmas Eve

Today is Christmas Eve. Our normal tradition involves Jason shopping until dinner time, but this year he was ahead of the game and finished shopping yesterday. But he had to work so we didn't really gain too much, though I guess he had the satisfaction of feeling ready for Christmas a day early. Regardless, we had our traditional dinner of shrimp bisque and rolls (lots and lots of rolls for the under-three set). This year Peg and Ron joined us for dinner and they, as well as Julie and Andrew, went to the candlelight Christmas Eve service with us. We have always gone to the 11pm service, but this year we just didn't think Clara could deal with it so we went to the 7pm service and used childcare for both Clara and Joshua. Though I love having communion in the service and also leaving church and having it be Christmas morning, the earlier service was still very nice and we enjoyed it. Unfortunately I was losing my voice so I couldn't sing any carols, but I know Jason really enjoyed singing and it was nice to hear them even if I couldn't participate. Here is our family after the service. Clara really enjoyed the large atrium of the church and was just delighted with her ability to run free (not too free, but I think it seemed free to her). Hannah stayed with us for the service and she slept through the entire thing, but we did give her a candle so she could participate too.

Tripping the Lights Fantastic

It may not be the most original idea we've ever had, but last year we decided that a family tradition of ours will be to drive around and look at Christmas lights on a night near Christmas.  This year's event took place tonight.  We decided to put the kids in their jammies so it would be easy to go to bed when we got home.  We drove through Christmas Card Lane and other random neighborhoods.  Hannah was either silent or asleep, and Clara didn't seem all that interested, but Joshua would repeatedly alert us by saying "Lights" and then when we drove through a Scroogy street, he'd say "More!"

I've seen some elaborate lighting displays on houses in my day, but usually they involve every single edge of the house lined with lights and lots of lighted yard ornaments.  But tonight we saw a house that was over the top, but in a different way than you normally see.  It's in the background of the picture above, but I had to take a separate picture to fully capture its, uh, grandeur.  Here it is:

 

I admire this family, because they only had so much surface area to work with, and they maximized it like no one has before, covering every single square foot of the front wall of their house with lights, including even covering their entire master bedroom window!  And then as a bonus, they covered much of their yard as well.  That's some serious dedication.

A Partially Handmade Christmas

Every Christmas, I like to give the kids something I make. I know I can't really compete with toys and I really don't try and consider my gifts more like stocking-stuffers, but I enjoy it and I also hope that as they get older, the kids also enjoy making gifts. This year I made satchels (which I mostly made from a pair of my old jeans, which means I am totally trendy because I "upcycle") and car wallets for the older two kids, booties for Hannah, and am now working on carseat ponchos. There is always a learning curve for any project and these are no exception, but everything is turning out reasonably well except the booties were too small so aren't usable. I had hoped to have all the ponchos done by Christmas, but my new goal is New Year's. However, I will finish Hannah's today. As the first one, hers is the prototype so will be the least good one, but I bought enough fabric to make her another one if it's too imperfect. I like working on my projects and creating stuff that actually gets used. I am pretty excited about having the ponchos done. It's been cold and current carseat safety rules say no jackets in carseats so the ponchos will be a way to keep them warm without having to do the jacket shuffling we currently do.

Christmas Movie Night

One of the activities on the advent calendar was to watch a Christmas movie.  We chose the same movie we watched last year: Veggie Tales: The Little Drummer Boy.  Joshua was quite interested in it and could barely turn away from it long enough for this picture.  Clara was somewhat interested in it, but it didn't really keep her attention.  Hannah might have an extreme interest in computer-animated vegetables, or she might not.  It's a little too early to tell.