Weekend in Chicago: Both a Success and a Failure

This weekend we traveled to the Windy City to visit friends and go to the Purdue/Northwestern basketball game.

With Brian all set for the weekend, we took off.

Don't move, buddy!

The day started out fun with Catchphrase and Ride the Bus as per our usual pre-drinking activities.

In every Catchphrase game, there are always rounds that we continue talking about the rest of the weekend. In this case, the words were: 1.) Iwo Jima, which Jill thought was an island by Cuba. 2.) Lineskeeper, which I did not know what that was until someone made me read it as lines keeper, not line skeeper. Is it scary that I thought skeeper was just some word I didn't know? 3.) Chin Music, which Lower thought was anything that comes near the chin, not just a pitch near a batter's chin. He ended up being right. His reference to "Sweet Chin Music" has to do with Professional Wrestling. You can imagine the fun we had with that. 4.) Funnel Cake, which Lower thought was a breakfast cake.

After that we jumped on the L train and headed out to Evanston.
Since we can't go very long without drinking, we brought some beverages on board. With all the announcements of everything else that was illegal, we thought it might be best to hide the bottles.

Pretty inconspicuous, huh?

Not hiding so well anymore...

Not obvious at all.
















Yep, that was on the way TO the game. We needed it more on the way home (but more on that later).

There were some nice signs on the way to Evanston. (You will probably have to click on the picture) Volunteer to Fight Poverty AND Tooth Decay!













Did I mention anything about Lower's pink overnight bag?? Oh I didn't? Oh. Well he brought a pink overnight bag.

Okay, okay, I'll get to the game. I didn't take any pictures at the game but that was because we sat at the top of a small high school gym and it was completely dark. See the dark area near the ceiling in the picture below?

No? Yeah, we couldn't see either. It was awful. We couldn't find our seats. Then when we did, we still couldn't fit everyone into the seats we purchased. We had to rotate at least 2 people at a time from standing in the back. Sad.
Then the game started out okay but quickly turned sour.


As told by the headlines, Boilers Lose 3rd in a Row and Purdue All Fouled Up. So yeah, we lost. We left before we had to watch the Northwestern student section rush the floor. Ugh. Gross.

But don't worry, Painter's not mad or anything...

Asked if changes were coming to the starting lineup, Painter said, “I’d like to start E’Twaun Moore, E’Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel, Robbie Hummel and Robbie Hummel. No one else deserves to start, but with that being said, E’Twaun Moore needs to get some rebounds.

So as a very positive fan, hopefully things will start to look up. Gotta look at the silver lining, right?

We still had a blast this weekend. We went to the Red Ivy for dinner and to watch the Colts game. The Colts won, thank goodness for the people we were with. I think at least one member of our party might have had a breakdown. Then the Red Ivy turned into a bumpin' club with terribly loud music and we had to get out of there. We walked down to the Piano Man just north of Wrigley. Wow, that place reminded me of a couple scary bars in Lafayette. Plus there was no Piano Man. Not even a piano or a stage or anything. Weird. We of course got obnoxious and played Zoomie Zoomie as loud as humanly possible. Because that's just what you do when you're nearing 30 and you don't want to admit it.

All in all, we had a blast (except for the game). I didn't take many pictures so I'm going to need to step it up for next time.

Yes, there are more January birthdays!!

Happy Birthday to Maria Bia, my favorite Gal.... bo.

Also sharing the same birthday is my brother Brandon.

Happy Birthday to both of you January 16th-ers! Hope you live it up!

Photobombing is Fine Art

I meant to do this post a (Capital L) Long time ago but I never got around to it because my aunt took awhile to edit and send me her pictures.  Then once I got them I forgot for another few months until today.

Well today is the day.

So the subject of today's post is Photobombing.  What is photobombing, you ask?

1. photobomb December 5, 2009 Urban Word of the Day (verb)- to drop in a photo unexpectedly...to hop in a picture right before it is taken. sarah: hey why is jimmy in the background of our prom picture? ryan: idk, he must have photobombed it at the last second.

 When we went to Disney we tried to master this skill.  We failed.  Miserably.  You see, normally the bombed photo ends up in the camera of the bomb-ee, not the bomb-er.  So you don't usually get to see the finished product. You just have to hope it ends up on this website.  But in this case, we took our own.  You will see the not-quite-website-worthy results... (but still funny of course).

 This is the Chip and Dale bomb.  This could have been better had I waited for them to pose but I get really nervous with these bombing situations! (This picture was taken due to Brandon's love of the Moth Podcast about Dale.  He told my mom, my aunt and me to listen to this podcast before we left.  None of us did. Had I heard it, I might have posed differently. If you haven't heard it, you need to listen. NSFW due to cusswords.)

Photobombing Alice in Wonderland. So we've got the pose but now we don't have the right angle.  Getting better.

Belle bomb! Again, did not wait for the pose.  But the little girl was taking too long! Had to give the thumbs up and get outta there!












So our attempts were futile but we did have some success getting photobombed by Disney characters!

Check it out! We're getting photobombed by NEMO!!

What a little clown.... fish.

Here's Grandma getting photobombed by a Lego Dragon. He got ya, Grandma. 















SERVED by Disney.  Oh well.  What can ya do?

Well you can go see Kool and the Gang.  Yes, that's right.  We saw Kool and the Gang perform at Epcot.  Are you kidding me?? Awesome. 

No photobombing Kool and the Gang.  You just don't do that. 











Now for a couple of my favorite photobombs from This is Photobomb.

 

This is by far my favorite for obvious reasons.

This needs no explanation. Photobombtastic!

A+ for prop use!










Okay last one. I promise.

So now that's my goal.  Next time I go somewhere I hope to bring home some photobombed pictures to show how I've improved.  We shall see!!

More January Birthdays?

Happy Birthday Meeghan!
My Sketchy-Paint-Made Birthday Hats are getting weirder!

Happy Birthday Mandy!
Hope you enjoy reliving these costumes!














Happy Birthday January 10th-ers!! Hope you enjoy it!

New Year, New Birthday

Happy Birthday, Megan Casey Glover!
Hope you have a wonderful day!





I hope you can tell why I picked this picture! What the heck is the dude with the tiara doing in the background? I fixed the red eyes and that just made him look cross-eyed.  Couldn't possibly make him look less creepy!
But HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Twenty-eight is the BEST YEAR YET!

Happy New Year!

We went to Brookston to visit Travis, Katie and Wyatt on New Year's Eve.  Travis made us some tasty steaks and Katie made potatoes and we had ourselves a NYE feast.

Wyatt was ticked he wasn't getting any of the steak! 

See, look how happy he is now.  Give that boy some steak!

Andrew and Wyatt bonded most of the night.

Real men hold hands.

Wyatt in his boppy.  He always sleeps with one hand near his face.  So cute!

Travis's parents, Kevin and Susan, stopped by so we rang in the New Year with the 7 of us.  Actually we  almost missed it because we were too busy playing with the baby.  But with a minute to go, Travis ran to get the champagne.  There was lots of spillage but it was a happy festive New Years. 


Happy 2010 everyone!

Oh, so this is what they were talking about.....

Morgan and Andrew: Welcome to the Great White North!!

We went over to our neighbor's house yesterday to watch the Purdue game and hang out.  We heard on the news that we might be getting a foot a snow.  Yeah, right, we thought.  When we walked out to our car to leave....

Andrew thought it was an appropriate moment for some metal head banging and thrashing.








Of course, not believing in our local weather people, we had prepared nothing to clean off our cars.  Andrew improvised.

That snow was stacked up!

Of course the snow plow hadn't been through our neighborhood at that time of night yet so we plowed through the deep snow with our all wheel drive. 

Yep, that's a foot of snow!

Brian couldn't get his paw wet since it was bandaged so he had to have a plastic bag on his foot when he went out. Again, poor guy.

Deep snow! It was so deep, it was up to Brian's nose.








The next morning, since we don't have a snow blower like all the other people in our neighborhood, we had the shovel ourselves out.

Mission Accomplished!












Andrew's friend Nick went snowmobiling in Michigan and he left his truck at our house.  Hope he doesn't mind hauling some South Bend snow back home!

We had to shovel out our deck too so Brian could go potty.

You have to admire how beautiful a foot of snow can be (after you cuss mother nature for all the shoveling you had to do). 

It's just amazing!

Here's our grill somewhere in that snowy whiteness....








Speaking of the Boilermakers, did you see that game yesterday? Wow.  Go Boilers!! 

These guys were cracking us up during the game.

The signs were pretty good this game.

Ahh, wish we could've been there!

Go Boilers!










So our new year started off with a Boiler win and a foot of snow.  Both ended up being tons of fun.  And by tons, I mean, my back hurts.  Too much shoveling.  Time to go lay down.