Magazine Pages

Weird. I guess Blogger has revamped its main page. It always throws me off when things change like that, and I always wonder, what's the point? Ugh, weather.com used to do that all the time. It drove me nuts.

So a little bit ago Anja was pulling all the magazines out of the magazine basket. Then she started flinging one around and all of a sudden--riiip!--out came a page! She looked absolutely shocked. It was hilarious. And since then (it's been like a half an hour) she's been carrying her magazine page around with her everywhere. What a funny baby!

Anja's been in a great mood the past two days. Yesterday we went to the Farmers Market in the morning and Anja took great naps both in the morning and in the afternoon. Martino and I just kind of hung out; I intended all day to make pie crust, but never really got around to it. We also intended to go to the Pilgrimage mass in the evening, maybe even do the end of the hike with them, but Anja fell asleep again right around 4:00 so we weren't able to do that either. We didn't eat much for dinner because we'd bought a box of Cheez-Itz earlier in the day and Martin ate the entire box. Well, ok, I helped him out a little bit, but I seriously only ate maybe 15 crackers, and then went back later in the evening to eat some more and the box was only full of crumbs. While he filled up on Cheez-Itz, I gorged myself on this delicious loaf of toasted garlic bread from the Klein Brot Haus and green olives. I felt so Italian.

Of course later that night when it was time to drive Anja around to sleep (as usual) I was so incredibly thirsty from all the olives I'd eaten (and, oh my gosh, that bread with butter and salt dipped in the olive juice was AMAZING) we stopped at my favorite drive-thru gas station and got a giant Powerade. Yummm yum.

This morning we were late for the 7:30 mass, but we made it. It was actually my fault we were late. Usually I can blame it on Anja, but this time I fell back asleep while Martin was walking the dog and didn't get up until almost 7:00. Anja woke up right after me and Martin got her ready and they were all set and waiting on me for a long time before I finally got myself out the door. Anja was sooooooo happy all through mass! And afterward we sold Germanfest tickets. We didn't think we'd sell any--but we sold FIVE!!! Isn't that incredible?!? And the big sales gave Martin this huge surge of confidence and he started talking about all the people he's going to try to sell to in the next week. So we'll see how many we get sold! We also got to sit behind Andy and Kristin Korty and their new little baby Anna who is sooooooo cute. She smiled at us over her daddy's shoulder! She is so tiny with big brown eyes. You can tell she's going to be another one of those really pretty Korty girls.

After mass we went to brunch with the Schap side of the family! Very fun, as usual, except for the part where we all had our eye on the same dessert, which we all thought was something different, which turned out to be nothing more than jello. Isn't that lame? They had these delicious looking desserts in sundae cups on this iced tray that was surrounded by blue lights. So in order to really see what something was you had to pick it up and study it away from the blue lights, which distorted everything. I took something I thought was chocolate (after I realized the first dessert I'd had my eye on--thinking it was oreo mousse--was jello) and got back to the table only to discover it was blueberry pie filling with a dollop of cream on top. Very disappointing! But the brunch itself was delicious, as always. We went to the Trails.

This afternoon we went out to Prophetstown for their Front Porch Sunday. Not many people were there, but Aunt Anna May was; she was working on her super cute baby blanket on the front porch. Definitely the way to relax. We wanted to show Anja the animals, and today she was most interested in two sheep who were chasing each other around. She thought they were very funny. The pigs came right up to their fence to say hello to us, and while I was patting one, another one bit me!!! It was so funny!!!! And I was covered in mud and pig spit, which was only a little bit gross, but definitely worth the experience of getting bit by a pig. I guess he more just kind of gummed me... but still. VERY funny. The cows and horses were not in the barn so we didn't get to see them, but there was a very friendly kitten lounging around and the chickens let Anja get very close to them, but wouldn't let us pet them.

We were going to go from there to Columbian Park to see more animals, but Anja fell asleep in the car and by the time she woke up we'd kind of lost our enthusiasm and Martin wanted to mow the lawns and so we decided to go on Wednesday after I pick Martin up from work. I'll have the car because Anja has a doctors appointment! Not as exciting as usual though, since she got weighed at the emergency room and that's the whole reason I look forward to her appointments. My wonderful neighbor Tara called me though and asked me if we'd had dinner. When I said no (I hadn't even thought about it yet) she said she'd make us a homemade pizza and bring it over! So she did and it was delicious. And very funny because I've been meaning to look up a dough recipe and was planning on making homemade pizza one night this coming week. Now I know I can just call Tara for the dough recipe!

Oh, another thing that happened last night when Anja was refusing to go to sleep, was we decided to go to the Frozen Custard. It was really fun. Anja was so happy and there were other little babies there that she liked to look at and one very chubby dog. I got a chocolate soda, just like my mom always used to get when we would make Custard runs when I was a kid. On the way home we talked about the fun times when Martin and my sister and I would all hang out, back when I lived with them and there was only Christopher and Gracie and for some reason we all seemed to have a ton of free time. What happened to those days?! Anyway, one night specifically we were remembering was when we had that wonderful Sally girl as our waitress at Luxies and it was just the three of us and Martin was kind of flirting with Sally, so Sarah and I pressured him into asking her out, and he did!! He said, "I was wondering if I could take you out sometime?" and she handled it beautifully. She said she was so flattered but that she had a boyfriend, and could she buy him a drink to thank him for the offer? Isn't that wonderful!? She was such a nice waitress. I miss that place sometimes.

And then another time the three of us went to the Main Street Ice Cream Shoppe and got grasshoppers, except only Martin and Sarah could get them because I wasn't 21 yet. So those to got to enjoy their deliciously minty alchoholic beverages together while I just had hot chocolate. But it was a fun time anyway.

That's another place I miss. I had a lot of good times at that Ice Cream Shoppe... like the time Matt Spencer and I roller bladed down there and Kim was playing. Or the time Martin and I went there during the ice storm after throwing rocks on the frozen river. *sigh* Good times.