Halliday Family Blog

Today we worked hard to get the house clean because Angela was coming back home from her Vegas trip!  While we were cleaning, Kirstyn went over to a nearby middle school and took the PA math test to see if she could advance two grades ahead in math next year instead of the one year ahead that she is right now.  Good luck Kirstyn!

After we got everything cleaned up, I finished up all our daddy-daughter and father-son dates by taking Brittany to see Avatar in 3D.  We still hadn’t seen it, even though it’s been out for awhile.  What a GREAT movie, and I got to see it with a GREAT daughter!

Thanks Britt!

After a day of working at home and hoping Benjamin’s brain wouldn’t turn to mush watching TV while I worked, Sarah and I drove into downtown Chicago to go to the Chicago Auto Show!  We had a lot of fun just hanging out, looking at all the new and concept cars, and enjoying each other’s company!  One of Sarah’s highlights was that she got to sit in a black version of Edward Cullin’s Volvo!

She absolutely loved it!  We saw a ton of cool cars, including a Mercedes that was $456,000 to buy!  Yikes!  I couldn’t even believe paying that much money for something like that!  Here are some of the other pictures we took while there…

The one below was Sarah’s favorite car!  It was a total Scion concept car.  The roof opened up into side speakers, and the back was a full open dance floor with a mixer and stereo system that could be operated while standing up in the back.  There were also speakers in the front of the fold-out roof for a total party-mobile!

The Scion concept “pimped-out” car below was one of my favorites!  Whole back of the car slid out and turned into a full gas grill, and the sides of the car slid out and on one side there was a fridge and the other was a sink.  It was a total tailgate car which was really cool!

As you can tell, the Scion area was one of our favorites!  We also loved the Audi, BMW, Mercedes, and lots of other displays.  We were there for about 4 hours, after which we had a quick bite of nachos and then drove home, picking up some McDonald’s along the way because we were starving!

Thanks for a great daddy-daughter date, Sarah!

Today, Angela and 4 other friends left for a “girls vacation” and flew to Las Vegas for 3 days!  They are staying with the parents of one of her friends and going to a show, check out the strip, go to Hoover Dam, attend the temple, do some shopping, and just relax!  We’ll give a full report when she returns!  We’re sure she’ll have a lot of fun!

My motto is “while mom’s away, dad will play!”  That said, tonight I had two dates:  1 with Zach, and one with Kirstyn!  🙂  I have dates planned with each of the kids while Angela is out of town.  Stay tuned for the others…

Zach and I went out to dinner at a little restaurant called Choo Choo Johnny’s.  We had a great time together.  You sit around a long table (kind of like a bar) on bar stools and order your food.  When it’s ready, a train comes around tracks mounted on the bar and brings you your food in baskets!  Zach was REALLY excited to be there!

We had chicken nuggets, grilled cheese, pop, and ice cream.  After that, Zach played with all the games and such and watched the train bring other people their food.  He was in heaven.  He kept saying that he wished the Grandpa Halliday was there to see the trains (Grandpa and him have a train thing going)!  🙂

After Zach and I were done, I took him home, picked up Kirstyn from a band practice, and we went out to see “The Tooth Fairy” movie.  It was actually really funny and we had a lot of laughs.  We filled up on a large popcorn and candy.  It was fun spending time with her as well.  She really wanted to see the movie.

We didn’t get home from the movie until about 8:30 and then Kirstyn was up until about 10:30 or 11:00 finishing her homework!  😐  She didn’t tell me how much she had before we left.  Oops!  🙂

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!

I wasn’t very creative this year but I did give Angela a dozen long-stemmed roses and some chocolate.  She enjoyed them.  We had a long but good day at church and then had  a nice Valentine’s day dinner.

What an interesting holiday that has no real explanation of where it came from (lots of legends), other than to commemorate St. Valentine.

One legend has it that Valentine was a priest who served during the third century in Rome. When Emperor Claudius II decided that single men made better soldiers than those with wives and families, he outlawed marriage for young men — his crop of potential soldiers. Valentine, realizing the injustice of the decree, defied Claudius and continued to perform marriages for young lovers in secret. When Valentine’s actions were discovered, Claudius ordered that he be put to death.  Sounds romantic, doesn’t it?  🙂

While some believe that Valentine’s Day is celebrated in the middle of February to commemorate the anniversary of Valentine’s death or burial — which probably occurred around 270 A.D — others claim that the Christian church may have decided to celebrate Valentine’s feast day in the middle of February in an effort to ‘christianize’ celebrations of the pagan Lupercalia festival. In ancient Rome, February was the official beginning of spring and was considered a time for purification. Houses were ritually cleansed by sweeping them out and then sprinkling salt and a type of wheat called spelt throughout their interiors. Lupercalia, which began at the ides of February, February 15, was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, as well as to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus.

Strange…

Today was a VERY interesting day!  A big storm hit us and we got about 8 inches of snow overnight.  It was cold and blowing so it wasn’t very pleasant.  To add to that, at about 4am, we woke up to the house shaking.  For about 10-12 seconds, the bed shook and immediately we knew what it was!  Fortunately it wasn’t a very strong earthquake, measuring about 4 on the Richter Scale.

The epicenter of the quake was located in Virgil, Illinois, about 15-20 miles away from our home.  Fortunately, there was no major damage and no one was hurt.  Some of the residents near the center said the rumble felt like an 18-wheeler rolling through their living room. Others assumed a train derailed.  Crazy stuff!  Things like that don’t usually occur out here!  We have our fair share of tornadoes, but not earthquakes!  🙂

Well, another year has come and gone, and I’m trying to stop counting the birthdays now.  From now on, they will just be anniversaries of my 30th birthday!  🙂  Most of my birthday was spent at church and in meetings, so I didn’t get to spend much time with the family, but we did have a fun dinner and little family party together tonight.

For dinner, Brittany shoveled the snow off the patio, fired up the grill and cooked burgers for me!  That was very sweet, considering it was about 20 degrees outside.  They also bought me a wonderful raspberry cheesecake ice cream cake from Coldstone that was absolutely wonderful!

As part of my birthday present, I got to watch the entire Super Bowl!  🙂  Sarah actually was excited to watch it as well and she stayed with me the entire time!  It was fun!  We especially loved the commercials.  They are always a hoot!  We liked the Doritos and eBay commercials the best!  Unfortunately, the Colts lost to the Saints.  🙁

Today Kirstyn turned BIG 11! She now recognizes herself as an official TWEEN! Wow! It’s hard to believe how fast she’s growing up! We had a party for her and she loved her cake! This time (from the picture) you know her dad didn’t make it for her! 🙂

We had a birthday party for her with the family and it was good to have Grandma and  Grandpa Hobbs there.  Zachary spent a ton of time in the basement decorating it up with his personal birthday touches which was really funny!  Kirstyn got a woven purse from the Bahamas as well as some nail polish from Del Sol which we also picked up on our trip.  It goes on clear, and then when you go outside, the UV rays turn it a dark shade of pink!  It’s actually pretty cool (we have a bag that does the same thing).  She got a bunch of cards and other gifts from family, and her Primary teacher even gave her a large vase of yellow tulips!  🙂

Happy Birthday Kirstyn!

Today we docked in Miami, packed up, left the ship, went to the airport and flew home.  We were excited to see the kids, but VERY sad to leave the warm weather.  It’s hard to believe that we lived in shorts for the week and then we would be back to bundling up the next!  🙁

We got VERY lucky and things timed perfectly in getting off the ship and getting home.  We got to the airport with 6 hours to spare before our flight took off, so we asked them if we could fly standby on an earlier flight.  She said yes, and told us that we could go at 12:55 instead of 3:45!  We got our standby passes, went through security and headed to our gate.  In looking closer, the boarding time for our flight was at 10:25!  We went to the front desk, asked if they had called our name, and they said yes and gave us our boarding passes for the 10:55 flight!  We were in shock!  That is the shortest amount of time either of us had EVER spent at the airport.  We arrived just after 10, got through security at 10:20, boarded at 10:25, and were off at 10:55!  🙂  What luck that the ticket agent selected the wrong (and earlier) flight which she probably thought we wouldn’t make!  🙂

We ended up getting home at about 1:30 and were able to surprise the kids when they got home.  It was great to see them and we had a great talk with them about our trip and how much fun we had.  We gave them their presents and they were pretty excited.  Zach and Ben got shirts and flutes, and the girls got necklaces.

We’re still adjusting to the cold and are sad that we have to bundle up again!

We are excited to be back to see the kids, however, but deep down inside, we can’t wait to get back out and go on another cruise soon!  🙂