Christmas is Almost here!

Twas the night before Christmas when all through the house, not a creature was stirring - except our little mouse...

Christmas is coming the goose it getting fat...

Well, we broke out our Christmas music, went out and got a tree, and we even have half of our Christmas shopping done! Thanks to Kyle all the presents we have are even wrapped!

A little more Halloween

Well, Halloween has come and gone, and it's the second year I've spent it at a candy company. At Tootsie Roll the IT department takes it pretty seriously. This year I took a bit more of an active role than last, making my cubicle up to look like a crypt. Mary helped a ton with the coffin I made for the crypt. I don't think the picture shows the wood-grain look well enough. People were commenting about it for weeks at work. Anyway, here's the pictures.
Mary and Alexandra show up at my work, to see my desk, and the coffin we built....



..and the other side of my cubicle.



In the middle cube there was a torture chamber. The rack Dan built for last year is obviously the centerpiece.



But Dan outdid himself by building an organ for this year, they keys move up and down for full creepy effect. It turned out pretty well.


And the old staple, our graveyard




For Alexandra however, we thought the biggest treat was going to be getting her first (and so far only) taste of candy, but she didn't really take to it.


Happy Halloween until next year.

Halloween!

Well, we had a great halloween! Alexandra and I got to trick or treat at Tootsie Roll! How cool to trick or treat at a candy factory! The place was so well decorated - to me it looked better than most haunted houses. They even had the NBC and ABC new crews film some footage about it.

5K Race and Times

Well, Lesley and I did another 5K this year. We managed to improve on our times from the last one.



131 Lesley Behnke West Dundee IL 529 35 13 F 30-39 31:18.6 10:06/M
241 Mary Schmitt West Dundee IL 748 34 42 F 30-39 41:18.1 13:19/M

Out of 424 5K participants.
Cool huh?

Music Instruction

Alexandra gets so excited every time we get the Ukulele down to play.

It's awfully cute, so we encourage it, and even let her hold it, while trying to get her to strum and not bite it. She still gets pretty frustrated when it doesn't make noise for her like it does for us, usually because she's still holding the strings. Sometimes though, you could swear she has already figured out how we do it.

October

Well, it's October again. For us this year it means getting into things!
First off, we are getting into a house!!!! Yay! Finally.
We have been going back and forth with everyone involved, and now we are almost there.

Second, Alexandra is getting into things now. She is rolling here and there, on all 4's ready to crawl, and when we help on her feet. Interested by everything once she see's a target, she is headed for it one way or another.

Mary