Pecan Pie

Two nights ago we were talking to Erin and Ross on the computer using a web cam. Erin had just made a home-made pecan pie!! It made me want one too, and not just any pecan pie will do! I want one from my Aunt Carol! She makes the best pecan pie ever. She made two over Xmas especially for me. In my Thanksgiving blog I mentioned we didn't get any for Thanksgiving so she made some for me at Christmas. MMMMMMMMMMMM was it good! Thanks Aunt Carol!

Wicked

This was the last weekend for Wicked in Chicago. John and I have already seen it twice and love it!! There is a drawing two hours before every show for front row seats. You enter and if they draw your name you get front row seats for $25 each (originally over $200 each). I have entered three times and we finally won yesterday. We got to go to the 2 pm showing on Saturday and it was awesome!!! Front row... We could see their makeup, their tears, their costumes...OMG it was so awesome! John loved it too. I'm starting to make him cultured! If Wicked is coming to where anyone lives I suggest you see it! It is the story of the two witches in the Wizard of Oz.

John's Birthday

John turned 27 today. We both went to work so we decided to celebrate with a nice dinner out. We went to Ron of Japan. It is a Japanese place where they cook in front of you. It was really good, but Benihan's is better. We were going to go to Benihana's but there aren't any in the city. For dessert I went to cheesecake factory and got our favorite slices of cheesecake and a slice of carrot cake b/c John has wanted some lately. Anyway, Happy Birthday to John!!

Date Night

John and I decided to have a date night last night. We went to dinner and a movie. We realized that we hadn't seen a movie in the theater in a year! The last movie we saw was Vantage Point. In Chicago there are no HUGE movie theaters like Tinseltown. There are a lot of theaters all spread out and each theater shows 6-9 movies. John wanted to see Gran Torino but it was showing really far from our condo. I wanted to see Marley and Me. It was showing on the Mag Mile so we went. It was so so so so good!!! I cried and I even saw a little tear out of John. We definetly recomend it!

Something Interesting about the cold

We have had two days of wind chills below -30. The actual air temperature hasn't been above 0 in over 3 days. Unfortunately we still have to go to work (and walk our .5 mile walk to get to the train). I learned two things on my .5 mile walk yesterday that made the walk a little more interesting than usual. First as I was walking (with my face mask on that only your eyes are exposed) my glasses fogged up from my breath in about a minute. Usually when my glasses fog it will un-fog quickly if I start breating out of my nose. I pulled my mask down under my nose and then I noticed that not only had my glassed fogged, but the fog had frozen. They showed on the news last night that in this weather a socking wet shirt will completely freeze in 1 minute, so it shouldn't have surprised me. I had to put my glasses in my pocket to deal with later and the rest of the trip I hade to walk without them. While I'm trying to take them off and put them in my pocket my nose went numb. I didn't realize that my nose had started running from being cold. When I went to breathe in there was snot frozen to my face and in my nose!!! It was sssoooooo crazy! I put my mask back up and had to walk like this the rest of the way. As I was walking home today into the wind my eyes started to water and little icicles formed on my eyelashes. They say that you can develop frost bite in as little as 15 minutes in this weather. So today I made sure to have kleenexes with me and didn't even put my glasses on so I wouldn't have to worry about any of it. When I walked over the river this morning it was one solid (and I mean solid) mass. It wasn't just a small layer of ice, it was completely white like you would see in the Arctic. Also they said that it was colder in Chicago yesterday than it was in the South Pole! Did you know that Alaska warmer also? They were in the +20s and +30s. Anyway, it is supossed to start warming up to the teens tomorrow and we are WELCOMING it!!

Linda and Adam

The tiny cheesecake and wine.
John and I
Look at all the snow!

John and Adam look miserable!
Linda and I
All 4 of us.
Linda and Adam
Linda and Adam came to visit us for a week. I met them at WSU. They were both GTA's when I was there. Linda and I shared an office with two other girls and Adam was in the office next to us. We got lots of snow in December but we had one warm day so most of it melted. Linda and Adam landed on on January 6th. After that we have had snow for 5 out of the 8 days. We even had one day where we got a foot b/c it snowed 22 hours straight. I'm so glad they were able to come, but I feel bad becuase they had some NASTY weather while they were here. Linda and Adam went to all of the tourist sights while John and I worked. We had a great time hanging out with them on the weekend though. We went and saw Grease on broadway and it was wonderful. Linda and Adam won front row seats for $25 each to Wicked. They do a raffle every day because Wicked leaves the end of this month. John and I have seen Wicked twice and loved it!!!
Anyway we had TONS of snow while they were here and on Saturday night Linda wanted to go listen to some jazz music. John and I have never been anywhere in Chciago to do this so we went to someplace we found on the internet. We get there and it is FANCY!! We stuck out so bad. Also John and I ordered a TINY cheesecake and it was $10. Then we both ordered dessert wine at $12/glass. The wine comes out and it is the size of a shot glass! It was so funny and we are never going back there again.

Friends

Allyson and John
Kee and I
The 4 K's and A. Kerri, Kirsten, Kristen, Amy, Sophia, and I
Shes so cute!
Don't they look good together? (Maybe one day)
Allyson, Sadie, and I
Brandy and Sadie
Sadie opening a gift
Sadie and Allyson
Everyone at Hooter's
George, John P, John, and I
Kerri and I
Debbie, Kerri, and Brian
George, Bridget and Amanda
Me and Eddie
Erin, Ross, John, and I
Erin and I
Erin, Ross, John and I
Here are all of the people we got to see when we were in Dallas.

Tarver Xmas

Nice Hat!
All of us
Greg, Deana, and Adam
John and I
We saw John's Dad's family as well. We realized that it has been about a year since we have seen them last. That is way to long!! I guess we need to move back to TX soon.

Debbie's Xmas

Debbie and I
John and I
John, Debbie, and Amanda
All of us.
Peppermint Blue Bell Ice Cream!! My FAVORITE!
We spent December 21st-24th at John's mom's house. We had a great time.

Dahir Xmas/Bday

Aunt Linda, Grandma, and I
Kerri, Brandy, and I
John and I
Mom, Dad, Kerri, Brandy, John and I.
The girls in our yearly photo.
We celebrated all of our Bdays on December 24th and Xmas on December 25th.

Work Xmas Party

John and Irene
Me and Natasha (She is a twin also)
Me and Alex
John and I
Pooja and I
We had a work Xmas party in Sri's basement. It was so much fun. Here are some pics.

Keri Russell

In downtown Chicago we have a HUGE tree!! Keri Russell did the lighting of the tree this year. I tried to get good pics, but this is the best I could get.

I'm the worst blogger ever!!

I'm the worst blogger ever! I'm bad at keeping up. I'm going to post a lot of blogs today and I am going to try to do better in the future about posting them spread out.