glingdidit March 29th, 2008
So yesterday Jared and I decided to head over to O’Fallon for yet another delicious meal at 17th Street Grill. After that we swung by Home Depot to pick up some waterproofing materials for the basement. And then…we headed off to see a movie. To start with, the movie started at 10:30. I haven’t seen a “late” movie since college…I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the whole thing! I did though…whew! Anyway…so here’s the situation. You walk into a movie theatre…it’s empty…and you pick out the best spots in the whole place. (Higher up…since the screen is huge…and right in the middle.) After you enter…another group of 3 guys comes in…and picks some seats up about 5 rows in front of us. Then…another couple comes in….and looks around…and appear to also be looking for the best spot available. Mind you…there are over 100 seats available…all with a great view of the enormous screen. Needless to say….the perfect spot for them were the 2 seats RIGHT in front of us! Who just does that?! I was tempted to move…but we didn’t. It was fine…but seriously…we must have smelled really good or looked really good…because they just had to sit right in front of us. The movie was great though…”Run Fat Boy Run”. Definitely a potential buy once it comes out on DVD.Â
glingdidit March 28th, 2008
Whew…these past few weeks have flown by! We had an amazing Easter…even though we didn’t get to travel back home to be with family. Instead, we were able to celebrate our Saviour with our church family. It was a great afternoon with food and fellowship…and of course, an Easter Egg hunt. This past week I got the chance to stay over at my parent’s house on the way to a college fair in Peoria. As always, it was nice to snooze in my old bed. The college fair was really good too…always a bonus! I stopped by my grandma’s house…where she had saved me a bag full of ham loaves from Easter. (One of my favorite meals there!) I was super excited to prepare them for Jared last night…since he’s never had them. At first he thought the texture was a little strange…but then he gave them a thumbs up.  If you’ve not had ham loaves before…it’s almost like meatloaf…but with pork products and a tangy tomato sauce…quite yummy with mashed potatoes! (Thanks grandma!) On another note…since we’re still cleaning up the basement (thanks to the crazy amounts of rain in our area), we’ve been having fun camp-outs in the living room. We pulled out the sofa bed and have been watching lots of fun movies. Not something for every night…but definitely a fun little “retreat” for a few days. It’s raining again here…and there’s more water in the basement again…so that will probably consume a chunk of our weekend. Otherwise…I’m looking foward to sleeping in tomorrow…finally! Adios!
glingdidit March 19th, 2008
It’s been raining here in Greenville this week…a lot. Thanks to what was apparently close to 10 inches of rain…we now have a soggy basement. So lots of moving and soaking up water with the shop vac…and not-so-exciting things like that. We’re having a guy come in a few weeks to give us an estimate on what it would cost to put a “dry system” in our basement. Please pray that it’s affordable for us! And now back to the cleaning up of our “swamp”…
glingdidit March 17th, 2008
So Saturday morning I had to crawl out of bed and work on campus for an hour or so helping out with a Free Methodist Bible Quizzing competition. Did my admissions speal…gave away t-shirts…the usual. I grabbed some yummy McDonald’s breakfast and was home early enough to crawl back in bed for a few more hours. We slept in until noon or so. After that…we managed to crawl to the couch…reheat our now chilled McDonald’s food (I had put it in the fridge)…and there we stayed until nearly 4:00 p.m. Yes…we sat around watching crappy Saturday television for that long. At 4:00 I got up and rented a few movies…ran to Value City (snagged some great new shoes) and came back in time to sit around on the couch watching movies for a few more hours. It was seriously one of the laziest days I’ve had in a LONG time…and it was so great. Nothing like sitting around in your jammies all day…cozied up next to your hubby…eating girl scout cookies…and watching movies. Speaking of movies…one of the movies we rented was “Into the Wild.” If you haven’t seen it…I definitely recommend it. It was one of the most emotional movies I’ve ever seen. It was so chilling towards the end…but it was so good. I won’t go into more details…because if you don’t know anything about it…I don’t want to ruin it. So that was our Saturday…and boy was it great!Â
glingdidit March 14th, 2008
Another beautiful day in Greenville. Sunny skies and a high of 62! It’s torture being stuck in my office all day! I had a student visit today…so I made the tour extra long…hopefully they didn’t mind. It’s been a great week…with lots of relaxing at this point. The Dugan’s came over for some of my baked potatoe soup last night…which was a blast as usual. I ate way too much soup and drank way too much sweet tea. We squeezed in a game of trivial pursuit pop culture…which had some pretty crazy questions. It makes me wonder who actually comes up with the questions for those games?! Anyway…it was still great…and a fun night with friends. Tonight we’re heading over for more fun with friends in Alton. Pizza and game night with Steve and Nicole…which is always a treat. I’m also hoping for the weather to hold out over the weekend. Our yard could use some attention in a MAJOR way. We’ll see! 2 hours until I can be outside again!
glingdidit March 12th, 2008
So last night a few fantastic (or not to fantastic things happened). I had a college fair…same old same old. Afterwords I felt adventurous and tried my very first White Castle burger. It was bad…but I certainly don’t understand why people crave those things. Either way, I brought a few home for Jared…who happens to be one of those cravers. He was pretty excited about it. After all of that we managed to watch this week’s American Idol performances. I was especially excited about it this week…as they were singing Beatles songs. There were some really renditions on some of my favorite tunes…but some of them were just aweful. The worst for me was a country version of “Eight Days a Week.” I’m pretty John Lennon was rolling over in his grave. My favorite was a rocked out version of Eleanore Rigby. Even though it was different…it still felt relevant…and I loved it. Another crazy happening from yesterday was the removal of the filter from our cat’s watering fountain. No…we didn’t remove it….the cats did. They used their little feline paws and claws and opened the back portion of the fountain…heisted the filter….and hid it. Jared looked in all of the usual hiding places…but it was nowhere to be seen. So as we’re getting ready for work this morning…Jared found a little present sitting in the living room next to our coat rack and some shoes. Jared’s pretty sure they were mad at him for no refilling the water at lunch like he promised. Either way…we have some smart kitties on our hands.Â
glingdidit March 10th, 2008
I’m just a bad blogger this past month or so…I guess I’m too busy! (Our sermon at church this week was all about time…and to priortize…so this is a bit ironic.) At any rate, things are good in Greenville. After a busy week trying to finish up papers for class and one nasty final…I finished one more class on the road to my master’s degree…with an A…thank you very much! It feels so good when one more class is done…if only they were all done…right now! Friday night I cleaned around the house and got caught up on laundry. Jared had his friend Steve over and they played games, ate pizza, and sat in front of the X-box until midnight or so. It was great though…Jared and had fun…and I actually got time to clean aroud the house and get caught up on some tv shows. Saturday morning came early…and it was a scholarship award day on campus…so it was early to work. The day went well though…and Jared and decided to just sit around and relax for the rest of it. We rented some movies and got thin mint blizzards from DQ (a local treat this time of year!). We rented “The Darjeeling Limited” and “Michael Clayton”.  Both were great…very different…but great. Sunday morning came way too early. Time change plus early morning wake up to set up for church equals two very tired Smiths!   Church was great though. I was up to sing this week…and for the first time…I wasn’t nervous at all. A much welcomed feeling! After a quick trip to Wal-Mart…Jared and I took our movies from the night before back and rented another…”Death at a Funeral”. It was hillarious. I even got ambitious and finally cooked for the first time in I don’t know how long. I fried pork chops…made homemade mashed potatoes and gravy and biscuits. I love cooking…so I get bummed when I’m too busy to do it every night. Anyway…that was the weekend…early mornings and lots of movies. Good times.Â
glingdidit March 3rd, 2008
So on Friday Jared and I took off for our churches yearly marriage retreat. It’s always a blast…and this year was probably better than last. It’s a great time to just get away from Greenville…and work…and to just focus on us and connecting with other married couples from our church. Bill and Pam Farrel spoke again this year…and they are simply amazing. They wrote the book “Men are Like Waffles, Women are Like Spaghetti.” Anyway…it was great….and I completely recommend any of their books to marrieds or unmarrieds. They have some really great things to say about relationships. The retreat got over Saturday afternoon and we made use of the rest of the day since we were already in St. Louis. Lunch at P.F. Changs (yum), shopping at the Galleria, picking up some new house goodies for the front porch at Gordman’s, Guitar Center (for Jared), and some oh-my-delicious sourdough french toast from Cracker Barrel. It was just a really good two days away. Yesterday church was really good. Jared had the week of from praise band…and I was actually in a drama. I haven’t done any acting since high school…so I was nervous…but ended up going really well….and I think the congregation enjoyed it as well and got something out of it (which was the whole point). I took advantage of the AMAZING weather we had yesterday (nearly 70 out!) and finally got the last bits of Christmas greens and bows off the front porch. I tidied up a bit and put up some new Easter goodies. I also had a chance to run out to Value City (where things are finally getting cheaper…nearly 50% off most of the store now.) Anyway…I limited myself to $50…and wow…I did good! I got enough things to completely redecorate our guest room. No longer does it look like my college dorm…it actually looks like a cozy little retreat for our guests. What a blessing to find so many good deals. Anyway…that brings us to now….it’s cold again…and rainy…but that’s ok. It’s warm and cozy in my office. Adios!
glingdidit February 27th, 2008
Seriously, I’ve seen more snow this winter season…than I have any other year. I live in Southern Illinois for goodness sakes…it’s not supposed to be this “wintery” down here! (At least that’s what I’ve been told.) Now don’t get me wrong…I absolutely love snow…and the fact that we have 4 very distinct seasons. It’s just that the weather here right now is crazy. One day it snows…the next day it all melts…then the next day there’s an ice storm…and then it somewhat melts…and then it freezes again…and then it snows on top of it. I’m so ready for spring right now. I never thought I’d say this…but I’d give anything for it to warm up enough so I could go for a long run outside. I’m even starting to wish it was warm enough to ditch my coat and just wear a sweatshirt. Until then…we’ll continue to curl up in our jammies night after night with a warm cup of cocoa.Â
glingdidit February 25th, 2008
So life has been busy…which means I haven’t blogged in awhile. In the past week or so we’ve managed to go home to visit my family for my dad’s birthday…which was a lot of fun. While we were there we got to try out my brother’s family’s new hot tub (as they now live like 2 steps away from mom and dad). Anyway…we give the hot tub 2 thumbs up. If we had a bigger house…and a lot of extra cash laying around….I’d buy one. (Donations for the hot tub fund are always welcome!) We also got the chance to see our oldest nephew (Doug) play in a basketball game…which was also a good time. Even better was the fact that I haven’t been in my old gradeschool in I don’t know how long. The rest of the time was spent just hanging out with mom and dad…and eating…which was great as usual.Â
Another exciting thing happened this past week. After much thinking and concentrating on the matter…Jared and I bought I-phones. I was apprehensive after the initial shock of purchasing them…but woah…they are too cool! Jared’s pretty much attached to his…and I’m pretty hooked on mine as well. It’s pretty much the coolest cell phone/PDA that I’ve ever experienced…and it’s all mine!!! (Woah…totally just sounded like the youngest child in the family there.) Anyway…it was a fun purchase.Â
 Other than that…I’ve been busy with work and getting the house back into order. The cleanliness of the house took a major nose dive when I had the flu….and honestly…I’m just now catching up with all of the laundry and cleaning. It’s almost back at 100% though! We did take some time to relax this weekend though. We ordered some pizza from Mario’s (our favorite local place) and watched “The Good Shepherd” (not so great) and “Once” (an AMAZING indi-modern day musical).Â
 Anyway…now we’re caught up…for the most part. Adios!
