Friends & Formal Wear

After my reunion on Friday, Eric and I headed Peoria on Saturday evening. We attended a formal dinner/award ceremony for Scottish Rite. Eric wore his tuxedo, and I was happy to have an excuse to buy a fancy dress. I didn't get out my camera, but I have to say that we looked good... we clean up well. Eric looked especially handsome in his tuxedo.

We stayed at his place in the QC on Saturday night because on Sunday after church we headed to Geneseo to see my good friend Jenn, and her girls, Sidney and Abby. There were visiting her brother and his family, and since they were so close we made it a point to go see them.

So Jenn and the girls are living in Omaha, while John has already reported for duty at his new post in Colorado Springs. Jenn and the girls will join him as soon as their house in Omaha sells. In the meantime John has been staying with a variety of their friends out in the Springs... including the family of Brittany... who used to babysit for Sidney and Abby. Well Jenn told us that being separated is hard on everyone, and that the other day Abby told a random stranger, "My Daddy left me and now he lives with the babysitter!" Thankfully they were on base so the stranger was military so he understood after a quick explanation by Jenn. You know if you were not aware of their situation you might think they need to make an appearance on Jerry Springer.

It was great to catch up with Jenn and the girls and the rest of the Roome family. I hope all my loyal blog readers will keep John and Jenn in their prayers that their house sells soon and that this separation is a short one.

20 Years, 20 Beers

Friday night was my 20th high school class reunion. We had a pretty good turn out at Jupiter's Pizza & Billiards, and I think everyone had a pretty good time. I think after 20 years everybody realizes that high school wasn't as awesome or as horrible as we all might have thought at the time. I think my classmates and I have finally had enough life experiences to realize just how blessed we were to attend Gibson City High School... no metal detectors or bomb threats.

Here are a couple of photos. One is a group photo that includes a banker, a fighter jet pilot, a state's attorney, a meeting planner, a technology company founder, a couple of radiology techs, a respiratory therapist, a teacher, a brick layer, an education program director, financial analyst, wrestling coach, a waitress, a stay at home mom.. just to name a few.

Eric snapped this picture of me regaling my classmate, Mike (he is the state's attorney) with some fascinating story. I did this a lot in senior year study hall too... regaling Mike with stories... and unfortunately he got moved to the other side of the room. There is also picture of me with Dianna and Susan. We think Eric did a great job with this photo, I don't think we look like we are at a 20th reunion... the 10th tops! Dianna was a cheerleader with me, but we resisted the urge to break out the pom poms.

Okay, so you are probably wonder what the 20 beers reference is about... no, I did not have 20 beers at the reunion. I refers to my World Beer Tour at Chicago. A couple of weeks ago I reached 10, and collected my WBT playing cards. On Saturday Eric and I started a mini-tour of international beers, when I get through that I will get a mini-tour t-shirt and be at 20 total beers. The mini-tour means we will be stopping by Old Chicago pretty much every night of the holiday weekend coming up for a beer or two... but sharing a brew with my sweetie is one my most favorite things to do. Plus, I am bound and determined to get a t-shirt!

A Date With A Much Younger Man

I had a date tonight, and it wasn't with Eric... it was with a much younger man. I met John & Jeremiah Todd out at Dodds Field this evening, for a hot date with Jeremiah. John had a softball game to play, and Marla was out of town... so, I got to hang with Jer. Nikki came out to join us.

Jeremiah was a very good boy... there were just a few tears when John headed towards the dugout but they faded pretty fast. He had fallen asleep in the car on the way to the game, so it took a couple innings for him to warm up. It was so funny, he hadn't seen Nik or I since Super Bowl Sunday so it is not like we are part of his regular posse, and during the first few innings he kept turning to each of us about to say something, then would realize that he didn't know us that well and then would just casually turn back and watch the game., and not say anything.

Jeremiah knows a few sign language signs and he definitely put the "more" sign to use. I did countless renditions of "This Little Piggy" and "10 Little Monkeys Jumping on a Bed"... after every one... "more". After the game we all headed to Za's for dinner... no date is complete without dinner. Jeremiah managed to charm the staff and guests, waving at everyone. He totally cheesed for my camera as well.

It was a fun time... hopefully Eric won't be too jealous!

Happy Birthday Eric: You have come a long way from Keewawa!

June 17th is my nephew, Eric's, 17th birthday. Happy Birthday Eric! He is 17 on the 17th.

When Eric was little he had the cutest little "bowl" haircut. Hopefully I can find a good picture of it. I am sure Eric is hoping I can't put my finger on one.

It is hard to believe that Eric is 17. I remember his younger years just like they were yesterday. When Eric was about 1 or 2 he became very attached to his little baby quilt that had eyelet trim on it. For whatever reason Jan and Larry didn't want to refer to it as "blankie" so somehow it got named "pretty cover". Now when I say attached, I mean attached. If Eric was upset or crying for whatever reason you could hand him "pretty cover" and he would clutch it, stick his thumb in his mouth and all was quiet. When he was learning to talk Eric couldn't say "pretty cover" and it came out "Kee-Wa-Wa" instead, so then we all started calling it Keewawa. When Jan used to wash it Eric would sit and cry at the top of the basement steps whimpering "Keewawa! Keewawa!"

Eric has a completely different personality than his older brother, Lane, but they actually get along very well. I always used to joke with my sister, Jan. When I am old and in the nursing home: Lane will come and visit me everyday, and tell me he likes my house slippers... Eric will make sure I have the biggest and best TV in my room, and will spring for cable! Between the two of them all I know I will be well taken care of at the old folks home.

Eric loves to joke on my Mom. He always jokes with her that she "went to the bakery" when she shows up with homemade rolls, pies or bread. No family dinner is complete without Eric razzing Grandma about her "bakery" rolls.

You may have noticed that last month was Taylor's 17th birthday. Yep, they are just 5 or so weeks apart in age, and have been best of buds since the beginning, even though Eric referred to Taylor as "Trailer" for the first several years.

Now that I am dating an "Eric" there are multiple Erics. Kind of like we have multiple Ja(y)nes in my family.... nothing is simple.

Anyway Happy Birthday Eric! I hope you have a great day that is Keewawa kind of happy!

Water Blogged!

So my weekend was full of water. I went to Eric's this past weekend and the QC has had lots of rain. After a big downfall on Thursday night, Eric woke up to water in his garden level apartment on Friday. The landlord did a once over with the wet/dry vacuum on Friday and again on Saturday, and brought in a couple of extra fans. He left the vac with us on Saturday and we gave the wettest spots another couple of runs. It is slowly starting to dry out and is a little stinky be we made the best of it. On the plus side we realized we work well as a team in semi-crisis situations. I was so proud of Eric, he so easily could have been a "grumpy gus" all weekend, but there just wasn't much we could do other than vacuum, strategically place fans and remember not to walk across the room sock-footed... so he just chose to make the best of a very soggy situation. Luckily there wasn't enough water to do any real damage; however, depending on how well the place dries out new carpet may be in order. The baseball cards got a little damp but we managed to lay them out on the kitchen table a few at a time to dry out and relive baseball of 1982 in the process. I was glad I was there for the weekend to help out and keep Eric's mind off the sogginess.

On Friday night we headed out to the River Bandits game. Modern Woodman Park is located right on the Mississippi River in Davenport and it was surrounded by water, but amazingly the stadium remained dry the result of some incredible engineering done when the park was renovated several years back. The City of Davenport constructed a wooden pedestrian walk way that the baseball fans used to cross up and over the flooded river banks to the sand bagged stadium. It was completely nuts, but really cool. Hopefully these pictures do it justice. The game was lots of fun... they played the theme song to Gilligan's Island and kept referring to the "island that is Modern Woodman Park", plus the eventually changed the smashing windshield sound effect for the foul balls that exit the stadium to splashing water as the typical parking lots were under water.

Water affected the weekend in another way as well. Eric and I were planning to go to Des Moines to meet Jenn, Sidney and Abby for the day... since it is nearly the halfway point between QC and Omaha. But I-80 was closed near Iowa City, and it would have taken us way more than the regular 3 hours to get to Des Moines. Plus Des Moines was experiencing some flooding as well so we decided to try again another time when it wasn't quite so wet.

Despite the abundance of water it was still a great weekend. We went to Eric's brother and sister-in-laws house on Sunday to celebrate Fathers Day. Alec and Katie requested that Eric and I sit with them at the kitchen table. We felt special, and we definitely got our money's worth when just as we sat down to eat Alec blurted out "Uncle Eric, you should marry Jane!". Eric nearly choked on his pork chop, and I couldn't help but laugh... 4-year olds don't edit anything they say... I love it. I laughed and told Eric "No pressure, honey", and then Eric and Katie mimicked me so then then said "No pressure, Uncle Eric, no pressure." All in all it was a fun time.

Happy Birthday Phoebe... I mean Al

Today is another birthday blog. It is Allison Hocker...oops I mean Allison Durand's birthday. Happy Birthday Allison!

Allison is yet another one of my Assembly Hall buddies. She just got married about three weeks ago, and I usually call her "Al". One of my favorite Al stories is when Nikki and I flew to Florida to visit Al for a long weekend when she lived in Daytona. She worked for the Daytona Cubs at the time. We headed out to a bar out on the beach one night, and were loving the fact that we had our feet in the sand as we had a few drinks. We decided that we were not likely to meet any potential "Mr. Rights" that night so we decided to play a little game and give fake names to anyone who came up to talk to us... what fake names did we use... we are big fans of "Friends" so we went with Phoebe, Monica and Rachel. I know I was Monica... we share the same anal retentive tendencies. Al is blond, so I think she was Phoebe. Not that I am a proponent of lying, but it was fun being a bit mysterious that night. Of course after a drink or two the real challenge was trying to remember what every one's new name was.

I don't get to see Al all that much, but she is one of those friends that you can just pick up right where you left off... whether it was last week or last year. I love those kind of friends.

Al is a Cub fan, but she has had a forever long crush on STL Cardinal, Rick Ankiel. When she got a chance to meet him at Winter Warm Up she couldn't speak to him, just said thanks for the autograph and moved on. She was so disappointed that she couldn't speak that she went and bought another autograph ticket for the next day, with the express purpose of speaking to him this time. She got all flustered again and couldn't talk.. all she got out was "Blue would be wonderful" in response to Rick's question as to what color marker he should sign with. I wasn't there to witness all of this, but have heard Nik tell the story a million times.

Al, you are the best! Happy Birthday!

Thrillville

Eric came down to visit me this past weekend. As always it is always great to spend time with him. Eric brought down his PS2 and introduced me to playing video games. I am not much of video game player... not since I had my Atari 2600 back in high school and pretty much rocked at River Raid and Frogger.

Anyway Eric introduced me to a fabulous game Thrillville... you get managed an amusement park. It was lots of fun, and a good way to get used the the PS2 controller. Not surprisingly my favorite parts of the game were chatting with guests, and even finding a date at the park and picking up trash and cleaning up the park. I so love to clean. Needless to say I think Eric has created a monster because by Sunday I was designing my own mini-golf course.

Besides the PS2 we went to see Prince Caspian at the theater, and took in worship service at Quest on Saturday night. On Friday we met Nikki and our friends Karen and Ben for dinner.

Oh, and on Saturday Eric said to me "Were you born this cute, or do you have to work at it?" So very sweet. Later that night when playing the video game, and chatting with a park guest and then having them find a date I realized he totally stole that line from the video game. I still think it is adorable though.

A Little More Cowbell

So I haven't been very on top of the bloggin' of late. I think I have two weekends of various and sundry activities to catch you up on.

A couple of weekends ago, Nikki was with me as I navigated the CR-V through the worst thunderstorm I have ever had the pleasure of driving through... for about 10 or 15 miles it was wicked. We were on our way up to Chicago that Friday evening to see country artist Billy Currington perform at Joes's Bar. Once through the storm the drive up to Chicago was relatively uneventful, and thanks to good directions from Lindsey there were no incidents to report.

The concert was very enjoyable, however hearing Billy Currington sing "Good Directions" without my buddy Nathan, it just wasn't the same. That is "our" song, and Nathan was supposed to go with us, but he had a better offer and went to DisneyWorld with his girlfriends family instead. The opening act, Lee Bryce, was pretty good too. He wrote Garth Brooks most recent hit, "More Than A Memory" and has a new song he wrote that Tim McGraw has recently recorded.

The only problem with the concert were a few concert-goers that were not following your basic general admission concert etiquette, such as pushing Nik and I out of the way, or just standing right in front of us, after we had clearly staked out our little spot for quite some time. Also, we had the pleasure of standing right next to a 50ish couple that really needed to "get a room". I am all for a little hand holding, perhaps a kiss or two throughout the evening, but really folks I do not need to see the tongues... pulease! Thankfully they left before the encore, because one of the songs Billy sang was "Let's Get It On".

Billy introduced a guy on the side of the stage towards the end of the concert, he said the guy had written Honky Tonk Badonkadonk. It was hysterical because at the exact same time Nik and said to each other "Ok, was it just me or did that guy look just like Nathan... a little shorter and rounder than Nathan, but other than that very creepy how similar they looked.

After the concert Nikki and headed west from Chicago and drove to Eric's place. We got there at about 2:30 in the morning. Needless to say we all slept in on Saturday. After breakfast/lunch we ventured out to see the highlights of the QC... Isabel Bloom studio store, and the John Deere Pavilion. Nikki kicked my but at the planting and combine simulation game... I definitely brought shame to my farmgirl status. We found a Model B tractor and Nikki took a picture for her Dad (Captain Map) because that the kind he drove as a kid on the farm. We grabbed some eats at Huckleberry Pizza in Rock Island and then headed to the River Bandits game.

It was Cowbell Night at Modern Woodman Park. I am not sure if y'all are familiar with the cowbell skit from Saturday Night Live... if not take a look... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZOHY7Z5eaQ&feature=related

It is one of my favorites skits, and they played it a couple of times on the jumbotron. Nikki, Eric and I all got souvenir cowbells as well. They were lots of fun. The River Bandits lost the game, but Eric and I got to have a pint of Bent River Uncommon Stout so we got over it, and the soundtrack at the game was pretty much personally designed for Nikki so we all had a good time. After the game we stopped a martini bar in Rock Island where Nik and I tried a few new martinis. After a lazy Sunday Nikki and I headed home that evening.

It was nice to have company on the drive home, and great to get to see and concert and still fit in a visit with Eric too.

Editors Note: The first picture is entitled "Rally Cowbell"... I love this picture of Eric, he was wearing his rally cap in the 9th trying to get a Bandits victory

Birthday Hugs

Happy Birthday Anne Ahrens!

Today is my friend, Anne's, birthday. I met Anne at my church, Quest United Methodist. She actually helped lead an Alpha class I took when I first started attending Quest, and that discussion group eventually evolved into our small group. She and her husband, broke off from our group awhile back to start a new group. I miss Anne, but I know they were being called to spread God's word to others.

Anne is like no other person I have ever met. I think she approaches life with a great combination of childlike delight and sage wisdom. Some of my most favorite conversations have been with Anne. She has such a strong faith, and she has encouraged me in my walk with God, and we have had some great conversations about that. However, at the same time we have had some completely ridiculous conversations too about such topics as McDonalds, hugging, bowel movements, and the inability to stop singing "Good Morning Baltimore" for days after seeing Hairspray (both the movie and musical).

I have Anne to thank for introducing me to High School Musical. I have lots of 7-year old girlfriends and now I have one more thing to talk to them about. When I was sporting a cast last spring and unable to drive, Anne came over to my house one night and made me dinner. It was awesome, I think it was chicken strips and mac & cheese... very simple but something I could not do for myself.

The title of this post refers to Anne's hugging issues. A couple of years ago she decided that she was going to make a point to hug more often in an effort to become more comfortable with random hugging. She even made a t-shirt to that effect... I think it said something like "Arms are for Hugging".

Happy Birthday Anne! I hope you have a great day filled with lots of hugs.

Seven is Magic

So the title of this post refers to the title of my first grade reading book. For some reason I never forgot that title, and I have to admit being seven was pretty good times.

The post title also refers to today's birthday blog. My pal, Sidney Marie Thomas, turns seven today. I hope Sid finds that "Seven is Magic" for herself. Happy Birthday, Sidney!

For those you not in the know, Sidney is the oldest daughter of my dear friends Jenn and John. She currently lives in Bellevue, Nebraska, but will be moving with her family to Colorado Springs, Colorado soon. She, along with her younger sister, Abigail, are the only children that call me "Aunt Jane" other than my own nieces and nephews.

I love Sidney, she has a zest for life. She never settles for the ordinary. She is also a bit of shopper... gotta love that. You could tell from an early age that she had the shopping gene... check out this picture of her camping out in the Marshall Fields shopping bag.

I have lots of Sidney stories, but will limit it to just a few for this blog. One of my favorites is when I went to visit the Thomas family when they lived in Colorado Springs. Jenn took me to Golden for a tour of the Coors brewery, and Sid was about 2 and behaved quite delightful on the tour. John was away for work that week, and was kind of disappointed to miss the tour since he is one of my beer buddies. Anyway at the end of the tour we were enjoying our complimentary drinks, beer for me, a soda for Sidney. She was asking about her Dad, and Jenn reminded her that he went "bye bye for work" or something along those lines. At that point Sidney responded with a classic line of "No Beer for Dad!".

Another favorite story was approximately 3 years ago. In the days leading up to Sidney's birthday Jenn's parents were visiting and they were asking Sidney if she was excited for her party, and looking forward to turning "4". She proceeded to tell them that she was definitely looking forward to turning 4 because as she put it "3 was SO boring!" I am not sure what 4 brings that you don't have available at 3... perhaps occasionally drinking out of a cup that doesn't have a lid... yeah that's got to be it... lidless drinking... living on the edge... drinking with a lid is very boring.

Sidney is also one of my best little Illini fan buddies. Her Dad and Grandma are Illini alums and she is being raised to cheer for the Orange and Blue. I taught her I-L-L... I-N-I when she was just 2, and she knows Oskee Wow Wow too. She is a good little fan, and has taken a particular interest in football. Last fall when Nikki and I met the Thomas family for the Illini football game in Iowa, Sidney sat between Nikki and I the entire game and completely soaked up all the football knowledge we could send her way. She got the whole 10 yards in four downs concept, and when Nik explained why we were bummed after Rashard failed to make 1st down on 3rd and 2, she confirmed that 2 was just 2 of the short lines (hash marks) and then replied..."Well, that isn't very far, I could run that far!" She also asked why the Illini had to sit in "time out", referring to a penalty flag that had been thrown against our team... she remembered us telling her that a penalty flag meant that your team did something against the rules and that you had a punishment for it.

So Sidney, Happy Birthday Girlfriend!!! I hope Seven IS Magic!