Mary

For the record, we're betting on Becca and John getting married the last Saturday of Spring, 2007...

Turned out to be 8 months early... oh well. :-)

It's been a big weekend.

On Tuesday night Josh's parents and sister arrived. I stopped on my way home from work and purchased a 24 Piece Pyrex Bake Ware set from Bed Bath and Beyond, which included (among other things), several flat baking dishes with Tupperware-like lids. We already had several flat baking dishes, but not lids, so I've been wanting this bake ware set for a while, and Thanksgiving seemed like a good excuse to actually buy it.

On Wednesday, we visited, made pies, made sour cream rolls, made peach ice cream, and went to see Harry Potter.

On Thursday we made and ate a really yummy dinner of Turkey, stuffing, gravy, mashed potatoes, yam, sour cream rolls, corn bread, broccoli, cranberry sauce, pie, and ice cream. We made it all ourselves except for the cranberry sauce. Though I suppose one could argue that God made the broccoli and yam, as we had them plain... if one believed in God or was speaking metaphorically. Anyway, it was all really yummy, and the most amazing thing was that we got the whole kitchen cleaned up in like 20 minutes after finishing dinner... thanks to many hands, the dish washer, and the wonders of my new Pyrex--baking, serving, and refrigerating in the same dish. We played games in the evening and went through the ads for sales on Friday. Josh's father found a few things he wanted to go out and buy at 5am, and Josh and I found a nice looking projector at Best Buy for only $450 after mail-in rebates, so we also made plans to wake up in time to be at Best Buy when it opened (since there were only guaranteed to be two at each location).

Friday started at 4:10am with the BBC courtesy of NPR... not very often we wake up before Morning Edition starts! We were at Best Buy by quarter to 5am, but the parking lot was full and the line was already stretching half way around the store. Bare in mind that this is at 4:45 in the A. M. and 25 degree weather. Right, so we didn't even bother to park. We drove to Circuit City, since they also had a projector on sale and we figured maybe they were a less popular store. But then we decided we weren't really interested in the more expensive but less shiny projector from Circuit City and went home.

We went back to bed around quarter to 6, but then got up again at 8 so we could go to the outlet mall with Josh's parents and sister. I had hoped to find some turtle neck wool sweaters in nice colors, but no such luck. Almost all the stores had the same colors of turtle neck sweaters, and I didn't like them much... and the wool turtle necks were few and far between, and generally pretty ugly. I did find a nice royal blue turtle neck in cotton and got it. I also found a nice soft replacement Dr. Who scarf for the scratchy Dr. Who scarf that I purchased for Josh for his birthday last year. Then we went to the Corning/Corelle outlet store just to look. Oh my God, that store is so awesome! All this wonderful kitchen stuff, and you can buy single pieces rather than sets! I got Tupperware-like lids for our Pyrex that we had before I got the 24 piece set, and Tupperware-like lids for our Corning bake ware too. They also had our "china" (Corelle) pattern, so we got ourselves another little serving bowl. Anyhow, the store was awesome! All our bake ware (except the loaf pan, pie pans, and muffin pans) now have Tupperware-like lids! Which is totally awesome because now we can refrigerate stuff we made in them without putting it into other Tupperware and without doing the plastic wrap thing, which I hate for two reasons (a) it's wasteful of plastic, and (b) you can't really stack anything on top. So yeah, the Corning/Corelle outlet store *really* made my weekend.

Then we came home and changed and drove down town to see Wicked. We gave ourselves an hour to get there, which should have been plenty on a normal day, but of course we were trying to drive around down town Chicago on the biggest shopping day of the year. We spent literally 15 minutes in the same block waiting to turn right a mile away from our destination (the corner of Ohio and Michigan--so really in the heart of it). We ran for the play and made it only because it started 10 minutes late: we ran in, sat down, and the lights dimmed. Wicked was awesome. Okay, the plot and the songs I thought were mediocre, but the performance was amazing, as was the singing, set, lighting, etc. When we got out it was snowing. We walked to Giordano’s for dinner, then drove back and had black berry pie for Becca's birthday.

Today was more relaxed. Josh's parents and sister went to Ikea, and Josh and I went to the hardware store for some odds and ends, mailed my camera back to Minolta for repairs, and got the oil changed in the car. Then we all came back and played some card games. They Josh's parents and sister went to see Josh's local Aunt and Uncle (who were in California seeing other relatives all week before Thanksgiving) for dinner. We didn't go along because we were pooped.

We've now said goodbye to Josh's parents, and we will be taking Josh's sister to the airport in the morning.

It's been a big weekend.