A trip to Chicago

Yesterday we were able to sneak away with my family to Chicago. We were blessed with nice weather. We walked Michigan avenue and State Street and just had a wonderful day.

We ate lunch at this little chic restaurant across from the art gallery called Cosi. It was delicious. They had a new fangled pop machine which was a little box where all you did was push a button and your pop came out. ( I was going to take a picture and then I forgot! )

1 thing I will remember of the day is Jonathan dancing on the sidewalk for money....which he got....from Hunny.....who then asked for his money back.... ;)



Don't ask..... :)






My parents were engaged on the top floor of the Prudential building in the 60's. At that time, the Prudential building was the tallest building in Chicago with about 40 floors. They wanted to visit it again yesterday, but it is no longer open to tourists. When we went to the lobby, the security guard said we were about the 5th group that day who came in wanting to visit the building.













We went to Maggiano's for dinner. We had a lovely time together. It is so good to sit around a table and just laugh with each other.




This picture of Joanna STILL makes me laugh. She started busting up at something she and Jessica were talking about and didn't realize she had a giant wad of lettuce stuck in her teeth. The whole table just roared in laughter. Good times....


We also celebrated my Birthday. What a better way to celebrate then with those you love so dearly.


The piece of cake they brought out was MASSIVE and fed our entire table. It was so rich and chocolaty and YUMMY!!!!

Christmas pictures

Christmas Eve was spent at the Hunny's parents. We had a lovely time. We had dinner, opened presents and then Hunny and Jeff couldn't wait to watch the traditional movie, A Christmas Story. Brother was laughing right along with it!!







Christmas Day was spent opening presents at home, and then going to Joanna's house for lunch and more presents. It was great to have my whole family together this year.

( Our kids big present this year was a hamster. They have been BEGGING us for 1 and we decided that we would each get them 1. Dada's promptly bit her. And now Dada has been nervous to play with it. I will have to admit that it doesn't like to be messed with. All it does is lay in the cage. I haven't really seen it play at all. Hopefully it isn't sick. :( Brother's on the other hand is pretty gentle. Harry is his name, and Harry will let Brother pick him up and play gently with him. Hunny says we should just put up a sign in the yard saying...petting zoo. )

A scary week....

Last week, my friend Lorrie had her sweet baby boy. After spending a couple days in the nicu fighting an infection Peter was finally able to come home.

Since they got home, Lorrie was having a hard time breathing and was having fluid building up all over her body. She contacted her dr. And they told her to go to the E.R. they thought she had preeclampsia. (sp?)

Come to find out, she had fluid slowly making its way up to her heart and was building up into her lungs. The Dr told her she had a type of congestive heart failure. They put her on a diuretic and gave her some magnesium to prevent seizures. In a matter of 24 hours, she lost 13 pounds in fluid.

Thankfully the Lord was watching out for Lorrie.

Today, she was released from the hospital and is doing just fine. She is on blood pressure medicine for a while.

Please keep the family in your prayers.



Here's proud Papa and little Peter.



What a wonderful Christmas present for the Wolf family to have a healthy MOM AND BABY home for this Christmas.

A day with Erica

The other day, I was able to visit my friend Erica. She was visiting her parents in our home town.

I was so excited to be able to see her.



We of course met for lunch at Monicals Pizza. How good it was!!! How I miss Monicals. :)



Once back to her parents house, the kids were quickly thrown into their snow clothes and sent outside to run their energy off....I mean, play outside. ;) After 4 hours in the van, my kids were more then ready to play.




Erica and I eventually wandered outside and told the kids of all the fun we had growing up.




We told them of how we used to slide off the roof of this barn and land into the snow piles. And how Erica played so long in the snow she wet her snow pants.



Cade wanted to jump off the roof then, but we talked him out of it. Their are now holes in the roof. And it looks like it could fall down.



This is Chase. He is so cute. He is Erica's Brother Ryan's baby. He is 6 months old now. He enjoyed watching the kids that day. He would just laugh and laugh at them.



The kids and I stayed long enough to go to church at our old church. It was so nice to come back for a visit. I recognized most people there and it was good to catch up for a minute.



I always loved our church at Christmas time. The church was always decorated so beautifully and there was always a beautiful cantada and a children's program. The cantada I remember most was called "Born to Die." I don't know why I remember that 1 so much. But even as a child I listened intently as it was performed. Those were such happy times for me.




Erica, Erica's Dad and the kids all sang a special that night. They sang Away in the Manger. They did a nice job.



Erica and I have known each other our whole lives. There isn't a memory, especially the times at at church, that doesn't have Erica in it. Whether it was giving our Sunday school teachers a hard time, or trying to beat each other in who could learn the most verses in vacation bible school, or dying each others hair (against our Mother's wishes) or running into a tree branch during our annual church Christmas caroling, or just spending HOURS on the phone with each other each night. So many happy times we had with each other. I am blessed to have her in my life still.