Let the games begin

We stayed in a hotel downtown overnight on Saturday with my sister and her family after a night taking in the lights, the Marshall Field's/Macy's Mary Poppins window display, the German Christkindl market and doing a looong stroll down the Magnificent Mile. Here's an afternoon shot from our hotel room window. We figured Simon and others kids would get a kick out of this view.


There was only a shower in the hotel room, so Lily got a bath in the sink.


Lily's first giant Christmas tree.

Santa made a stop by our place earlier in the day and left some stocking stuffers for my nephew and niece Jacob and Marisa, but he also left a note explaining that he has mistakenly delivered some of their presents to England. So we offered to pick those up for them.

We're off Tuesday evening to continue our holiday adventures...

Dates

It's official.

We're leaving for the UK on Tuesday, December 19th in the evening and getting there on Wednesday, December 20th in the morning.

We're going to Barcelona on the 22, 23 and 24.

I'm returning to Chicago on January 3 and Oli and Lily will return a week later (still need to change their tickets).

Excitingly, Mendy and Dave are in town from London right this moment (Mendy is a friend who also married a Britisher and moved away to London a few years ago) . They stopped by ours last night with Colin and Jay and met our girl Lily. They will be back in London for New Years, so perhaps the four of us will all catch up with Marty and Megan and the Milford Kru and it will be an event worth remembering for at least three weeks.

!

Oli at 21 dancing in Marseille.

We were in Marseille, there were some Peruvian people playing instruments, and someone thought it would be funny to dance in front of them. What a loser.

Lily Photo Fun

ENGLAND !

Oliver's permanent residence has been approved. This means we will be in England for Christmas (most likely). The email I got last night says that it can take up to 30 days for him to receive the green card at home, but they said the same thing about the work permit and we got it in under a week.

Our scheduled departure is on Tuesday, December 19, which means we get to England on the 20th. If we don't get the card in time, we'll reschedule for a week or two later.

I was getting pretty excited to spend New Years with everyone here, so don't think we won't be missing you guys, but I think everyone can understand our excitement to go see Lily's grandparents, uncles, aunties, cousins, and Oli's friends and to be in a country that is a lot warmer than Chicago is right now. Brrr.

Humorously, I just sent off a $170 check to Homeland Security yesterday to get an expedited travel document so we could make it to the UK for Christmas. All day yesterday I kept checking my email to see if his perm res would miraculously get approved and I wouldn't have to send this new application. At 4pm I finally gave in and next-day aired it to California. They sent me the approval notice by email at 5:42 pm and I opened it first thing this morning. I almost choked on laughter when I opened my email this morning. My instincts were so right, but I don't mind that I ignored them and now have to clean up the mess of this new application because we'll be in England in just over a week.

England!

This one's for you, Sunday-night-football-watching men

Last night I stopped by Kevin Rooney's where he, Drogos and Jared were watching football. The commercial where all the college team mascots are chasing the heisman trophy came on. There are bears and other normal mascots running around and then there's this boulder-y thing. We wondered which mascot that could be and if it could represent the Ohio State Buckeyes. This question begged another: What is a Buckeye?

Answer:
A buckeye is a stinky nut that comes off of the Aesculus glabra Willdenow tree. See here for discussion.

Other answer:
The boulder-y thing does indeed represent said Buckeye and it looks like we weren't the only ones who had this question.

See parts one and two of the commercial for yourself.

Also, Drogos, we were right that Oklahoma's state motto is "The Sooner State;" thus, the U of OK team name.

Perhaps the funniest thing ever said

Two things:

1 - Good luck to Colin, Brian and Jay as they move to a new apartment today in one-foot-deep snow. Poor timing, but I hear the new place is great.

2 - Note the new tagline up top under "Lomo y Queso": More powerful than Skynet.

Megan Edith's brother Tyler was chatting with us at the Ediths' wedding and he told us a story about a nerdy friend who claimed to have created an artificial intelligence program that was "more powerful than Skynet." (Skynet was the computer network that took over the machines and the world in the Terminator series.)

Shakespeare told us that brevity is the soul of wit, and for many reasons, including its brevity and the way it blurs lines between fiction and reality, I seriously think the phrase "more powerful than Skynet," could be the funniest thing I've ever heard.