Thanksgiving in Florida

Thanksgiving was really fun this year.  Morning of, we flew down to Miami super early.  We got in town just in time for Thanksgiving dinner with Dave's parents.  

It got chilly fast in Chicago, so it was really nice to be in the sun.  So much so that Dave and Nico got some swims in at the pool.  The water wasn't heated (LOL).  Nico did not mind.  Dave did, a little.  I was excited to read and relax in a chair in the sun.  

On Saturday, the boys went to do judo at a big judo place down there.  I got to see one of my good friends from grad school (Ursula) who lives with her family in Cooper City.  We got our nails done and had a blast just hanging out.  

We also spent the afternoon with a family that Mike and Gay know.  They have a pretty sweet house with a pool and 4 kids, three of whom were pretty close to Nico's age.  Of course Nico had a blast.  We also got to see Dave's best friend and their family.  They have a son who is about Nico's age.  They hit it off.

It is comforting to know that we can take Nico places and he can figure out a way to get along and even have fun with other kids.

The Bishop-Royses go to Royse City

 We had a really fun Thanksgiving Holiday.

The Friday night before we left, I scooped up Nico and got him out of the house so we could run some errands.  This entailed dinner down in Lincoln Park.  We were headed towards the train when we stopped by the DePaul Athletic Center and caught a DePaul volleyball game against Butler.  Nico and I watched for about 30 minutes.  He seemed to be pretty into it.

A new development, which will get it's own post probably next week, is that Nico has just taken off with the reading and the writing.  It's pretty amazing.  He has filled up a composition book at school with "work" and he brought it home before Thanksgiving.  And he is just so smart.  It's fantastic.  He is reading street signs and signs at the store and everything.  It's awesome.

 

For Thanksgiving, we drove down to Texas to see Nico's cousins.  They had an absolute blast.  Nico was so excited to have other kids to play with (NOT AT SCHOOL), that he showed his tail a bit.  He was totally over stimulated and off his schedule, so I guess I can cut him a little slack.  Plus, Nicole and Cody's house is amazing.  Seriously- they have a zipline: 

I know, right?

We stayed with Nicole and Cody Monday-Saturday and had a good time hanging out.  I got in a little shopping and had so much fun.  The weekend before we headed out, we got Nico a couple of new pair of shoes (blue adidias with flourescent orange stripes and blue pumas).  Whenever Nico was not wearing the shoes and becks found them, he would bring them to a grown up and ask for the shoes to be put on his fit.  What does it say about an 18 month old's feet when they can fit in his 4 year old cousin's shoes?  Yeah.  Big honkin feet.  

On the way back to Chicago, we ran through Royse City, Texas. A town founded by Dave's people.  It's pretty non-desript.  The depot has a sign that was clearly spelled Royce City, but that someone had to fix, which I found very funny.  

We got back on Sunday- and have been back on the grind since.  While we were gone, someone stole the catalytic converter off of Dave's 4Runner- which is annoying.  Have you ever driven a vehicle without a catalytic converter?  So annoying. It's loud.  Not like, man- that is a souped up engine loud.  But rather, who doesn't have a muffler on their vehicle loud.  Normally its a $2200 repair job, but luckily, we had comprehensive coverage on the 4Runner... so Progressive is handling it- and all we have to pay is our $500 deductible.  It's always something... but it could have been a lot worse. 

All for now.  

Getting caught up

So, a rare blog post from Jessica Bishop-Royse?  I know.  Isn't that crazy?  Life has been pretty out of control during the last couple of weeks.  Soccer, travel, work, illness, etc.

I guess we should pick up with Thanksgiving.  We went down to Miami for Thanksgiving with Dave's parents.  This was pretty fun- if you dont mind being in the car all day.  Seriously, I wish Florida would get their act together and get a train.  That drive is LONG and BORING.  Nico had a really great time at the grand parents house.  They live pretty close to the ocean, so I walked or ran on the beach pretty much every day while I was there- which was nice.  

Dave got a pretty nasty stomach bug while we were there :(  He started getting it on Thanksgiving night and brought it home.  Here is Nico helping me whip cream for pecan pie.  

Also, for some reason, it seems to be okay to let Nico run around in just his underpants.  Here he is taking the garbage to the schute (Grandma and Grandpa live in a condo on Bay Harbor Island.)  Getting to put the garbage in the schute was pretty much Nico's favorite part of being there.  

Dave and I got to go see Lincoln- which was really good.  

When we got back, Dave caught some flu bug from someone at work.  Last weekend he tried pretty hard to kick it, loading up on Vitamin C and sleeps.  Meanwhile, I tried to keep Nico away from it as much as possible.  On Friday, we met Nico's friend Ovid at the Mall, to play on the indoor playground- which was pretty fun.

On Saturday, Nico and I went to the story to get the goods to make cookies.  For some (unknown) reason, I got nostalgic about the old crank cookie press that I used to make cookies with in Mom's kitchen.  So I, feeling a bit spry, thought, "I am going to get one of those- but instead of getting the old junky kind, I am going to get something new and sleek- maybe something from Williams and Sonoma."  15 bucks later, I was the proud new owner of a cookie press from Williams and Sonoma. Once I figured out how to work it- it was pretty cool, except for the fact that the canister held about enough dough for 5 cookies.  Not everything that is newer is better.  It seemed like mom's old crank cookie press held enough dough for 34982795872 cookies.  Oh well.  

These cookies werent that great either.  Maybe their only real purpose is to act as a frosting delivery device- in which case, these would be amazing.  But they just werent real sweet or appetizing.  Maybe I will have better luck next time.  

Saturday night, Nico and I had a date for the Nutcracker.  I got tickets on Groupon a while ago, and I was thinking this would be amazing.  Especially since it had been, literally 20 years since I had seen the nutcracker and I had mostly forgotten most of it- I do remember there is the dance of the sugar plum fairies, which was cool, but that was about it.  

The plan was that we would go to the nutcracker and if Nico was really good, we would go have dinner at Cracker Barrell (he loves the crap out of the store) and Dave was supposed to play Crazy 8s (coed soccer on Saturday night).  Well, Dave was sick and he didnt go to that.  And the hour wait that Nico and I had to partake in to get to the place to sit and watch the show wore Nico down.  With the show starting at 730 pm, Nico decided at about 728 pm that he was done and he did not want to see the nutcracker afterall.  And Mama dont play that, so we left.  I guess it will keep another year.  :( Up until 7:28 he was wonderful.  

This weekend, we also started our advent calendar.  I was particularly pleased with myself, because I have been buying Christmas books since September for this project.  Every week, I would buy 1-2 books on Amazon.  Friday night I stayed up late and wrapped all the books.  I didnt number them because I wanted Nico to be able to choose which one he wanted.  So every day, we have been unwrapping a "gift" and reading the book.  This has been a fail on two fronts- one is that Christmas books aren't really that great.  I mean, seriously, we have an emergency vehicles book that Nico has asked me to read roughly 234900 times.  He loves it.  Christmas books? Meh.  Also, we made the mistake of letting him watch the Caillou Christmas special- and they do an actual advent calendar.  Where you open the window and everything.  So that is Nico's refence point.  He thinks I should get a calendar with the windows on it so he can open one every day.  Seriously.  

Sunday night Dave was still Sicky McSick, so Nico and I went to the soccer field.  I had a coed game and rocked the face off of the first half.  I had two PK saves.  Do you know how rare it is to have one PK save? Yeah, I had two.  That game goes into my history book as one of my best games ever, second only to the time I scored while 3.5 months pregnant (the night I felt Nico move for the first time).  I was sort of incredulous that I made the first save.  I "guessed" right (I say "guessed" because I don't really guess, I try to play the ball) and got down and got a hand on it.  I popped the ball up into the air and it hit me in the head and stayed out of the goal.  On the second PK, I was even more incredulous (seriously, what kind of team gives up two PKs in one half?)  I made the first save against a REALLY good player- but it went back to him. He hit it back to me- and I couldnt get both hands on it, so I basically swatted it back to him.  Unable to get a good strike on it, he hit it back to me.  On the ground, I couldnt catch it, so I hit it back.  At this point,  some other player got it- who hit it back to me.  Finally, a defender came in and cleared it out.  BTW- four shots.  That is how many shots an attacker can take on you before your defense can get into the area (on a PK) and clear the ball out.  The best part of the whole exchange?  For the last 2 saves I was sitting on the ground on the goal line laughing.  Hysterically.  But then the first half gave way to the second half wherein I got megged (and gave up a goal) and tripped over my own feet to give up another goal.  We ended up losing 6-5.  Seriously. And we definitely blew a four goal lead.  I also made a save off my face- and got a good piece of the second PK shooter (that is just frosting).  But it was a great game.  

Holiday!!

What is this, you say? A blog post from Jessi? Unreal!! Weird!

Well, I am back on the grind... dealing with soccer games being rescheduled and moved and work. Bleh.
The thanksgiving holiday turned out pretty awesome. Nicole and Cody and the kids drove in last weekend and rented a house. Mom and Dad came to town and JJ too, and they stayed there, which beats the hell out of the LaQuinta, which is Spanish apparently for Bleh hotel.

They came to our games last week (versus Rickards and versus Florida High). The Florida High game was a hell of a game- we played our asses off!! And won... whoot!! Nico's cousin Max got to be a ball boy for both games, which while fun for him was a little bit of a beat down for his dad.

The kids all got along pretty well... Nico was mostly interested in playing with Max and Emme was mostly interested in playing with Nico... but there werent many fights... except when Nico colored in one of Max's books. To be fair, it looked like a coloring book :)

I made four pies for dinner... pumpkin, apple, lemon meringue and pecan. I dont know why I was convinced that we needed an pumpkin pie (maybe I thought Gay liked it). But the only piece that anyone ate out of it was Emme. The pecan and lemon meringue pies were gone on Saturday (which is what happens when you eat pie for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks). Here is a picture of the kids helping me make the apple pie:

Dinner was pretty good, I think, although I made ALOT of food. We ended up having a ton of leftovers, which I cant decide is good or bad. I guess its good because we dont have to cook this week... maybe bad that I have no idea how to judge how much food is needed? Or maybe I didnt account for people filing up on snacks throughout the day? I don't know. In any case, I layed down to take a little power nap at 7pm on Thursday and didnt wake up till 8am on Friday morning (yikes!!). I was worn out!!

Friday evening, we tried to get some photos for christmas cards done (plus Nicole and Cody need a new family adoption photo). Of about 400 pictures that were taken of us, JJ and Max ruined a majority of the pictures. Can't say I am surprised really... JJ has been ruining family photos for 28 years, dont know why he'd stop now :)

Overall, it was a pretty good holiday. I read two books. I know. How crazy is that? I read the hunger games and the second book (Catching Fire). Both were pretty good. Am looking forward to getting the last one.

All for now. Have a great monday!!