WHERE IS MY UNCLE KEN!?!?

I'm pretty sure my dad called out his brother... and he has still failed to offer an account of this Chicago debacle.

Please elaborate.

Valentine's Day

Hi everyone!

What did everyone do for Valentine’s Day? Any creative spouses/friends out there??

We started a crazy tradition last year with our adult bible fellowship group. Carl was out of town and I had nothing to do/nobody to do anything for, so I cooked dinner for the couples in our group. Well, they all decided they wanted to repeat it this year - even wanted the same menu. Last year we had 4 couples. This year…….10 couples (20 people)!! So I made a very fancy 3 course meal for everyone. We served it in 3 separate rooms at a friend’s house, each room intimately decorated and each with their own server. We had a special meal (copy cat recipe) from Macaroni Grille, fancy salad, and 2 choices for dessert. Everyone had a great time. And they went home holding their overstuffed tummies!

Of course, the children here at home would not let me forget the tradition we have as a family, which is chocolate fondue on Valentine’s Day. They did let me delay it for 24 hours, so Friday evening we had our chocolate fondue and stayed up until 1:00 watching movies!

I was exhausted already Friday morning, so this morning (Saturday) I slept in. Sure did feel good. We have a 3-day weekend thanks to the Federal Holiday, so we are planning to take it easy and spend some good time as a family. The “cherry on top” is that I don’t even have to work this weekend!

We really would love to hear from more of the family members on this blog. We had thought it would be a good way to connect but it seems to have too few visitors! Molly and Caitlin, I need your email addresses!

Hope you all have a nice President’s Day!

Auntie

We Spent a Weekend in Santa Fe!

Greetings family,
We delayed part of our Christmas this year. Jan 18-21, the five of us went somewhere we'd never been.

WHY SANTA FE, NM?
The cultural section of the family heard that NM has high emphasis on art, artist's work, artists in residence etc. - besides that, the town is architecturally, "Pueblo," sits at an elevation of more than 7000' and has few mowable lawns.

Here's a Cathedral in Santa Fe

WHAT DID WE DO THERE?
Arriving Friday evening and during our fifty mile drive from Albuquerque, we talked some and basically got settled in our house for the weekend and went to bed. Saturday am, we made breakfast and went out to explore Santa Fe. We visited only a few of the many galleries there. Several told us that next to New York, Santa Fe is the largest market center for Art in America. We saw paintings, sculptures, castings, statues. jewelry, antiquities, strings of peppers, Pueblo architecture, stucco style fences. Some other fences were made of cedar poles w/each pole wired one next to the other and about every 6 or 8 feet, a pole was sunken into the ground.
Unfortunately, the Georgia O’Keefe museum was unavailable as the collection was being changed while we were there. We learned how she become associated with Santa Fe.
Then, having made prior contact with Al and Wendy Aman, they joined us in Santa Fe on Sunday afternoon.

We watched Packers get beat!


HOW WERE THE ACCOMMODATIONS?
In Santa Fe, we rented a 3 bedroom house. The house had not been built for cool weather so when the outdoor temp. was in the 20’s there was plenty of fresh air coming in and the furnace ran frequently. Two bedrooms were in the house; the third bedroom was in an adjoining house – that might have once been a garage. Molly and Pat took the sunken bedroom. Kathy and I took the smaller one. Andy took the outside apartment. The house was comfortable but had rather uneven central heat.





WHERE DID WE EAT? We could have cooked all our meals in the house but with all the restaurants available, we decided to skip the cooking and to try some of the restaurants. Tapas are part of the southwest culture.The car was equipped with a navigation device – which was nice. I’d never seen one so I was the least familiar with that unit. It took me awhile but I felt like I was comfortable with it by the time we left.

A great time was had by all.TomTom

ChicagoTheaters Accept Expired Tickets??

Dear Ken,
Greetings from Boise! I re-read that message about your attendance at Cirque Dreams in Chicago a month or so ago. Could you give us just a little detail as to how tickets for your family for a performance that were dated 48 hour past were able to be used in a theater situation?

I was intrigued by your daughters partial description -- and thought it would be best to ask for details direct from "the horse's mouth" on how that could be accomplished -- just in case any of us ever run into a situation like that.

Thanks!