Last Week of 2009

The last week of 2009 was great. My mom drove up to visit us and surprise the kids. It was so great to have her here. She really enjoyed the snow, sub freezing temperatures, and even asked to shovel our driveway. The only explanation for her craziness is, that she was heading back to sunny Georgia and wanted to get the full experience of living in the arctic Midwest.

I realized sometime that week that I didn't know how many weeks pregnant I was. Scary! From the moment I started feeling better (around week 14-15), I feel like life has been on fast forward. Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas just flew by. Since then I have gone back and counted how many weeks I was to discover, I was in my 3rd trimester! This is a good and bad thing. Good because I will get to see our sweet baby soon and bad because I have a lot of things I want to get done before that sweet one arrives. Anyone have any boy name suggestions?

I have been feeling pretty good other than feeling more tired than usual. I'm also feeling bigger than I did with the other kids.

Probably one of the reasons I feel bigger, is that Rick and I went to Table 52 on a date night, while we had grandma here. Art Smith is the owner (Oprah's old personal chef) and he was also on Top Chef Masters this season. The restaurant is small, really pretty, in downtown Chicago and serves southern food. Well, there aren't a lot of opportunities for southern food in Chicago, so I was excited. It did not disappoint. This is what I had for dinner.

Appetizer - shrimp and cheese grits

Pecan encrusted catfish, with collard greens, cheese grits & a hush puppy

with a side of maple syrup sweet potatoes.

Rick had fried chicken, mashed potatoes and we shared the sweet potatoes.

Can't get more southern than that!

While we were eating Rick said "I'm surprised Oprah wasn't bigger than she was, if she ate like this everyday."

It was delicious!! I am still thinking about it, can you tell?

The other fun thing we did the last week of the year was we went to another Globe Trotter game. I'm starting to think that we're Globetrotter groupies because we have been 3 times in less than a year. Rick's company is a sponsor so we get free tickets. We love going (especially Ben) but this time was different. This time we had backstage passes. This time I was more excited than Ben. The reason was that I got to meet Flight Time and Big Easy!!!

Here is the back story:

I love to travel and thankfully so does Rick. Since we have been married we have been able to go to some really fun places. In the past few years though most vacations have revolved around babies births, kids schedules and family vacations. Let's be honest, with 2.5 children, I'm a few years from being able to travel the world, so I live vicariously though the contestants on Amazing Race. Last season on the Amazing Race, two Globetrotter players, Flight Time and Big Easy, were racing around the world only to get fourth place. I still don't like those brothers that sold them out.

They were both so nice and funny, which is exactly how they were on the show. Anyway, it was fun to meet them and the game was great. I kind of wanted Phil to come out, cue Amazing Race music, and say "Rick and Susan....long dramatic pause........you are team number 1!
Here is our group picture together. I know I'm short, but good grief. I even had heels on!!

Thanks to mom, Chris, Aidan and Mia for coming with us.