Christmas in Illinois

No white Christmas this year. But fun all the same. It was a nice week home: spending time with family (and those like family), visiting friends, eating delicious food, and enjoying some rare mid-western winter sunshine. What a treat!

{Christmas sweater party}

{Christmas Eve before church}

{Christmas morning}

{later Christmas morning}

{extended family Christmas}

That Just Happened

That's right. I scored a 200 in bowling. After scoring two games in the 80s. And it's legitimate. Not one person bowled for me to help me out.

Let me back up and give a little history of my bowling skills. During college I participated in the Big Brother's Big Sister's Bowl for Kids Sake Challenge. It's a fundraiser event for the organization where each participant collects pledges before bowling. The donor can choose to give a flat amount or a per pin pledge. I tended to get mostly per pin pledges, and maybe that's because people knew just how bad I was at bowling. That remains unknown. Anyway, since it's a fundraiser, the organization realized they would need to set a minimum if they wanted to raise substantial money, so they automatically bump you up to 100 if you score below that. Let me just say I consistently needed the help. I could never score a 100 by my own accord, so I would get bumped up to the minimum in order to make my pledge collections worth anything.

As is evident by my first two games this particular night, I have not improved much. However, something happened and I clearly found my groove (I think it was the Christmas socks; I'll explain in a second). I don't mean to brag, but did you notice I only had one open frame the entire game. And even in that frame I only missed 2 pins! That's pretty outstanding, if I do say so myself, especially when you consider who bowled it! Of course I had to have them print my score so I could remember this bit of history. Because it's sure to never happen again.

So about the socks. Apparently this bowling party was a Christmas sweater party, but someone forgot to tell me that detail. So I show up and am the only one without a sweater. If you know me at all, it is not like me to miss out on an opportunity to dress up or have some fun, so I was a little bummed when I realized this. But then - good news - as I was putting on my bowling shoes I realized I just happened to be wearing gaudy Christmas socks. Lucky me! So naturally, I rolled up my jean bottoms just enough for my Christmas socks to show and for myself to look like Steve Urkel. If you're wondering why the magic didn't kick in until the third game, it's because I didn't roll the pants until part way through the second game. But I think that was definitely the key. Whatever it was, it was fun!

Christmas Greetings

I think I found a new hobby.

Today, as a special treat for the Christmas season, we had a fun activity during our meeting at work. We got to make home-made greeting cards! I loved it!! Truthfully, I'm not all that creative, and I got most of my ideas from "piggy-backing" off someone else. So they were kind of my own creation, but inspired by others. Anyway, check out the ones I made...

The next few are my favorites.

Sadly, I never got around to sending them out, but that just means I'll have a few Christmas cards to get me started next year! Yay.