I saw Ella kissing Santa Claus

Baking with some amazing women

Last Wednesday, I had the pleasure of baking Christmas cookies with Ella, my Mom and my Grandma.

Ella rolling out some dough

Helping Mom measure out the flour

She's giving me "the look"...notice there is more flour on her than anywhere else

I guess she had an itch

Her magic clothes...just add a little water and they'll stand on their own!

Four generations...I'm so blessed!

She knew just who to ask to get a cookie

Some of the fruits of our labor

We made a total of 7 kinds of cookies. I believe Ella consumed a record-breaking amount of sugar that day. I hope its a tradition that we can continue for many, many years to come!

Weekend anticipation

I just had to take a minute to share how excited I am about this weekend...here's the breakdown...

Friday night - Rob is taking me to the Royal Dumpe Dinner Theatre. I've never been there, but I've heard its a lot of fun. Its been SO long since Rob and I had a date night. I can't wait!

Saturday morning -My graduation from SIUE! I have to be there at 8 AM and graduation is at 9. It still seems surreal that I'm actually done.

The rest of Saturday - Schudel Family Christmas. Every year, this time is filled with lots of fun and laughter. I'm sure this year will be no different! We are even blessed to have Rob's cousin Brandon and his wife join us from Guam! They definetly get the award for traveling the farthest. Ella will also get to see Santa that night. I'll be sure to post pictures later.

Sunday - Rob has basketball at SIUE in the afternoon, so I plan to hang out at my parents house and help prepare for my graduation party that afternoon/evening. In a previous post, I mentioned that I thought my Mom and Rob had something up their sleeves for that evening. Well, "the cat is out of the bag". I'm so excited to have an evening with all of the people that I love the most in one location to help celebrate.

I hope each of you has a great weekend ahead as well!!!

Prayer Request

A quick prayer request...please say some prayers for my Mom. She has a job interview tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10 AM. I know that God has a plan for her and if this company will be her next employer, I pray that the transition be a smooth one for her. If this is not the next step in her life, I ask that she be encouraged by the interview and feel prepared to face whatever comes her way next. Either way, I'm super excited for her and thankful for her to have this opportunity!

Dear SIUE,

I don't like you right now. I don't care that you are having budget issues. I don't mean to sound unsympathetic, but I've paid my dues over the last 8 1/2 years. You see, one of your people called my house the other day and informed me that the hooding ceremony (for those of us who have completed our masters degrees this fall) has been cancelled. WTF?!?! Her excuse included that part of the reason was because of the budget crisis. You have let me down. I was looking forward to celebrating my accomplishment with some of my fellow graduates. I was looking forward to a nice evening and dinner with my husband. I was looking forward to enjoying what every other semester before me has done to celebrate. I know that to some graduates, the hooding ceremony didn't mean anything or they didn't care to attend. I, however, was looking forward to it.

Luckily, since we had already arranged for someone to care for our daughter, my gracious husband has agreed to take me out that night to celebrate.

Also, could you kindly remove the $25 parking fine that you have put on my account FOR A DAY THAT I WASN'T EVEN ON CAMPUS?? Your cooperation is greatly appreciated.

Sincerely your infuriated graduate,
Julie

Ideas needed

Well, I'm certainly not good with coming up with ideas of things to do. I've always been a "go with the flow" kind of girl. That is why I'm turning to the blog world for help.

I need suggestions for something fun to do when you combine the following: two moms, an (almost) 4 year old, an (almost) 2 year old, and a 7 month old.

My friend Jamie and I would like to plan something to do with our daughters but we aren't coming up with any ideas. Help!?!?!?!

Da Bears!

A few months ago, I decided to surprise Rob with tickets to a Bears game in Chicago for Christmas. Despite being a Bears fan for quite a long time now, he had never been to a home game. After searching high and low for tickets which can be rather hard to come by, I found some on Ebay and managed to win the auction. My surprise was almost ruined as Rob walked into our laundry room (which also is home to my desktop computer) just as the auction was finishing up and I was watching it to make sure I was the winner. Luckily, I was able to cover up what I was really up to. When the tickets arrived in the mail, I couldn't keep it a surprise any longer. I also wanted Rob to be able to share in my excitement as the game drew closer. The expression on his face when I gave him the tickets was priceless.

So, this past Sunday we left Alton first thing in the morning after dropping Ella and Payton off at Rob's parent's house. We stopped in Springfield at the Hen House for breakfast and then continued on to Rob's cousin Holly's house in Batavia. After some yummy pizza and time to visit with them, we finished our trek to downtown Chicago. We booked a hotel room for downtown Chicago in hopes that we could walk to Soldier Field and enjoy just being downtown. It was a bit of a hike to get to the stadium, but little did we know that the true exercise was yet to come. Our seats were in section 436 (right on the 40 yard line), row 32. Translation - about 8 rows from the top of the stadium. I think we had to climb the Stairway to Heaven to get to our seats. We found our seats with over an hour until gametime, but decided that we'd had our fill of exercise for the night and enjoyed people-watching for the next hour.

The game didn't turn out as we hoped since they lost to the Eagles 24-20, but we still had a GREAT time.

Here's a few pictures from our trip...