Before Children I would have gone shopping after getting a tax return. Now, we get a larger tax return, because of kids, but then we go and buy new stuff for the kids. By kids I also mean husband. Yesterday we went and bought the fanciest swing I had ever seen before. This thing does everything. I highly suggest this swing to all new parents. I wish we'd gotten it when Bella was first born. We then went and bought a 52 inch LCD T.V. for Nick to watch March Madness on. We paid two guys from Sears to come out and install it for us and run the cords behind the wall and flip the electrical outlet to be on the inside of the wall. I'm glad we ended up having them do it because it ended up being much harder then I had originally thought. Nick has been waiting for this T.V. for three years. Of course the size of the T.V. has gone up every year he's had to wait, but I think he's happy that he ended up waiting so he could get the 52 inch. Tomorrow the direct t.v. people will come so we can get the HDTV box and new satellite. It's pretty fancy and so I guess I too will benefit from the T.V. as well.

Yesterday we all got up and rode the train to downtown Chicago and experienced the St. Patrick's Day lake dying and the parade. The train ride in was an experience all in it self because of all the people who had already started drinking. Elmhurst college is, obviously, right in Elmhurst so there were quite a few students on the train as well. Many of them had shirts made up for the day. We made it downtown with a slew of other people who had the same idea that we did. To take public transportation into the city and walk to the lake. It wasn't too bad until we got to Michigan Ave. and then it was SSSSOOOO crowded. In some of the pictures you can see all the people lined up on the sides of the lake. At 10:00 they die the lake green, by using an orange food coloring, and it turns the lake a color of green like I've never seen before. It almost looked like antifreeze. It took about twenty minutes to walk across the bridge to get to the Tribune building because of all the people there. We finally made it and found the people we were meeting. We then went to the Sheraton hotel and ate and had some green beer and a Bailey's milkshake. We then headed over to the parade route and sat to watch that. We were at the end of the line so we didn't really get to see too much of the parade but it was the people watching that ended up being the most entertaining. We all had a great time and the weather even cooperated. As long as we were in the sun it was really nice. If we hit the shade the chill came back to us. The train ride home was uneventful and we made it home without losing any children, or adults for that matter.

I'm getting political

I went to a town hall meeting for the first time ever!!!! I went to speak my mind about the lack of city help when it came to the sewer back up. There were over 40 people at the town meeting wanting to speak about the problems people were having. One man said he'd never seen that many people at a town meeting. Everyone got three minutes to stand up and speak about what's happened to people in their basements with water coming up through the sewers. I have never heard so many people stand up and speak about one problem and have a group of elected officials just stare blankly. I was very angry that we all pay property taxes and these people were not saying a thing to us about how they would be helping us. I felt like we were all groveling to these people who are no better than me. I will now be making this my new mission. They soon will all know who Errin Mendibles is.