Caught Red Handed

On our way to The Henry Ford Museum, Paul was caught by a Dearborn cop going 64 (m.p.h.) in a 45.....a wee bit too fast. Because of his stellar driving record, Paul was issued a citation for 'impeding traffic' rather than speeding. The result....$125 less in our bank account. When asked if he'd like to comment on his ticket, Paul replied,

I didn't do it...the speed limit is obsurdly low for a three lane highway.

It could have been worse. If he were cited for speeding, it would have been $160 plus 4 points on his record. Ouch! Looks like I'll be the designated driver for the remainder of our time in Michigan (and for the record, I've never been caught speeding and have never been issued a citation).

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Since we're still in Detroit and had a quiet weekend at home, we decide to take Elise to The Henry Ford Museum on Saturday. While I'd like to show you pictures, I can't because we forgot our camera. Bummer! Elise was thrilled to run around and exercise her vocabulary (Train! Car! Motorcycle! Airplane!) She also ran up and down the steps and played with the Tinker Toys and Lincoln Logs in the kids area. It was surprisingly very kid friendly, although it's tough to hold a 2-year old's attention span while trying to walk through a museum. Nonetheless, we ended our tour by looking at the Weinermobile and treated Elise to a $2 wax mold as a momento. She wasn't as impressed as we were. Funny how things that seem cool as kids really aren't that cool afterall.

Weird

Paul was playing with Elise while watching an episode of Smallville. At one point during the show, things started to get a little scary (something about Lex Luther) and as Paul was searching for the remote to change the station, Elise's response was:

Weird.

Perfectly appropriate response. Enough said.

Turkey Day 2006

With my parents out of town for the week and Beth, Jon and Libby in from Memphis, we decided to join the Kurt family for Thanksgiving dinner. We had such a great time! Here are the highlights:

• There are probably very few places we could go where we would immediately feel like part of the family.
• The food was fantastic, especially the turkey. I also thoroughly enjoyed the mashed potatoes and the cranberry fluff (jello). There was enough food to feed an army (of which I made none) and enough dishes to prove it!
• It was so nice out that the kids took a long walk outside with Papa Kurt while the ladies cleaned up the kitchen.
• Elise was very excited to play with her 'cousins' and had a blast running around Papa Kurt's house. She immediately claimed all the toys as 'mine' and was reluctant to leave them behind for next time.
• The Kurt family loves to dance. Who would have thought?! We brought along our PS2 and Dance, Dance, Revolution Game and Dance Pad. They immediately claimed it has 'theirs' and wouldn't let us take it home with us. :>)
• Soon after leaving for the evening, Elise fell soundly asleep and we had a very relaxing and quiet ride home. A perfect ending to a perfect day!

O Christmas Tree

Last Sunday, we decided to bring up our Christmas tree from the basement and begin the arduous process of putting the three pieces together and 'fluffing' the branches. Paul was kind enough to carry it up and build the tree, while I fluffed. After three hours of assembly, we finished with a beautifully fake tree (sans garland and ornaments).

Little did we know that we'd receive a call from our realtor on Tuesday with a new proposed close date for the sale of our home....December 7th! We're pushing for a week later, but if we would have known that putting our Christmas tree up would sell the house, we would have done it about 4 months prior. Christmas in July, right?!

Elise's New Do

Elise had her hair cut today and did great. She sat still and was very patient. As a reward, Lisa (the stylist) gave her a sucker. She was thrilled.


On a side note, she was sitting on the floor playing just now with her zoo animals. As I was working on the computer, I heard her talking to the zebras and lions and other animals and I heard her say, "I'm a big sister." We have a book that we've been reading to her that she really loves that talks about how there'll be a new baby in the house. It's been really cute to see how she incorporates what she's learning into her playtime. Now, if only I could get her interested in babydolls.

Judicial Process at Work

I've been summoned to serve as a juror for the Third Judicial Circuit Court on December 4th. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem serving as a juror. What stinks is that it's downtown Detroit (a 45+ minute drive). While I'll earn $25/day for the first day of service and $40 for each subsequent day, they do not compensate for parking. The timing is also unfortunate. If only we had moved when we were supposed to.....bummer!

Believe it or not, I've served on a jury (personal injury lawsuit) once before in Cook County, Chicago. It was an interesting experience to say the least. Unfortunately, it was declared a mistrial so I didn't get to see it through to the end. This time, I'll remember to bring lots of reading materials and food...there's a lot of waiting around and courthouse food is nothing to get excited about!

Coo-coo for Clementines

It's been a long couple of months but thankfully, my appetite is beginning to come back. My latest craving is clementines. Yum! I just bought a box yesterday at Meijer and have eaten 5 or 6 already....the box will probably be gone by next week.

Brown-eyed Girl

This weekend we were shopping at the mall and a woman looked at Elise and said, "You have the prettiest brown eyes." Elise looked up at the woman in response and batted her eyes. So modest!

New Toy

Here she is....my first computer that I can call my own. She's an HP Pavilion Slimline and so far, she's a very nice addition to our family. The best part about her is that the CPU is so small (9.75" (H) x 4.375" (W) x 13.125" (D)). Oh, and she also has a ton of harddrive space, which means all the pictures we've taken of Elise will actually fit on one computer, rather than partially on an external drive. Happy day!

By the way, I have no idea who the strange looking man is on the monitor. As far as I know, we are not related....

Stoke of Bad Luck

Because we didn't have anything better to do, having not moved this weekend, we decided to take Elise up to the mall where they have an indoor playground for smaller kids. On our way, we came upon a bit of traffic here in Canton due to a train. After the train passed, we started to inch forward when all of a sudden we heard a loud bang from behind us, followed by a sudden jerk to our own car. Yes, we were rear-ended....again! This is actually the third accident we've been in since moving to the Detroit area. I find this a little bit ironic, considering we've lived in the Chicagoland area for 7 years without any problems and there's a ton more traffic there.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. And our car came out without a scratch. I can't say the same thing for the two cars behind us though. It wasn't pretty.

Elise was so good during the whole thing, especially because we had to wait several minutes for the police to arrive. She was a bit startled when we were hit and whimpered for a few minutes, but after asking her if she was hurt, she said "I'm okay, Mama." She followed that up with, "I'm sorry, Mama, I'm sorry." I'm not sure why she felt she needed to apologize, but it was sweet nonetheless.

Oreo Cookie

I learned while growing up that you should always sandwich bad news (e.g. no sale on our condo) with two pieces of good news. Here they are:

#1-Not selling our condo means that we won't have to spend the holidays in an apartment. That's good, right?!

#2-Elise is going to be a big sister! Baby #2 is scheduled to arrive around May 21st, which puts him/her about 12 weeks old. Here's the baby's picture debut (at 10 weeks):
For those of you who are having trouble deciphering the picture, the baby is actually upside down. You can see the head, body and 4 small white blobs which are the arms and legs.

I'm excited to be moving into the second trimester, which hopefully means some better days ahead. Stay tuned....we'll know the flavor (boy or girl) around the first of the year!

Bad Day

It's not been a particularly good day for a number of reasons. Let me just tell you about the BIG one: we received a phone call this morning from our realtor letting us know that our house is back on the market. WHAT?!? Yes, that's what I said too! The sale of our buyers' house, which was supposed to close tomorrow, went sour and thus the trickle-down effect began. UGH!

I know that there is a reason that this happened, though it's hard to see it now. Being in limbo-land is very hard and when a lot of our belongings are in boxes, our house hardly feels like home to us right now. Elise, thankfully, has been a trouper and for the most part has been going with the flow of things. I wish I could say the same thing for me....I've never been very good about dealing with changes in my plans.

Trick-or-Treat

Last night, Elise and I went over to Dan and Kris' house for a little Trick-or-Treating (Dan is my brother-in-law Jon's brother, but we're really all one big happy family!). Elise was a wee-bit shy at first but after seeing Matthew, Andrew and Stephen transform into a chubby clown, Anakin Skywalker, and Harry Potter, she was ready to join in the fun. At 6:00, we headed out with the boys for Elise's first 'real' trick-or-treat experience.

All in all, she did great. She got the hang of saying "trick-or-treat" and with a little encouragement, even said "thank-you." She tried really hard to keep up with the boys, but after about 3 houses, we parted ways so that they could hit the neighborhood at a faster pace (and who could blame them, there was much to be gained!). The funniest part of the whole night was Elise's discriminating eye for candy. If she received something other than candy or chocolate, she would take it out of her pumpkin bucket and hand it to me. This included 2 bags of microwave popcorn, a bag of chips and a Halloween cup filled with three mini-containers of playdough. Oh, and a package of Raisinettes. Lucky me. I was hoping for a Snickers bar (and as my mom used to say, they were calling to me after Elise went to bed).

So, we had a great time! Elise loves her pumpkin bucket (Thanks Kris!), especially since it's filled with all kinds of yummy treats. We ended up trick-or-treating for about 40 minutes and then spent the remainder of time sitting on the front porch with Kris, passing out candy to the kids and throwing a plastic ball into the grass. By the end of the night, she was quite happy with being at "Miss Kris' " house and even let Mr. Dan carry her out to the car. Impressive. As we were driving away, she said "Bye Apple Jon"....I guess Mr. Dan reminded Elise of someone else.

Next year will be the big year where Elise will really understand what it's all about and it'll be Daddy's turn to take her out. I've been lucky....two years of moderate temperatures without precipitation. It'll probably be frigid next year with several inches of snow on the ground. So sorry!