In the Life of Jamie...: November 2008

Christmas tree 2008

And now a third year of living in Chicago and STILL having a real tree! I miss my yearly Christmas tree search with my Dad so to honor that special tradition we had going I will NOT accept a fake tree! Joey, being the supportive guy that he is, goes along with it for me and is starting to like it....at least he acts as he is (maybe just to make me happy, but I'll take it:-) Luckily we found a winner at the second stop!

Ollie checking out the miracle of bringing the outside....in!

Our beautiful finished product! Merry start to the Christmas season!

Ollie's new friend

Meet Tor. Tor is Marit and Benj's dog. I was lucky enough to see them this weekend while they were in town for Thanksgiving and Joey and I got to keep Tor at the house for a few hours while they went downtown. Now as you can see, Tor is quite large. So incredibly gentle but still....quite large. Luckily, Ollie AND Tor enjoy playing with other dogs and the evening showed just that. We started out by bringing them to the tennis court to get some energy out (or so we thought). Yes, they did run, run, and run some more....they were NOT tired yet.

Apparently they needed to play some more to get that energy out. Now although some of these pictures may look like one of the dogs is about to kill the other, I can promise you that they were being gentle and playing as dogs should play:-)

Finally.....tired.

Come visit again soon, Tor! Or maybe Ollie will have to come visit you! She has always wanted to go to Michigan!

Out for a walk

We are blessed enough to live in the city but also have quite a few nice parks and forests nearby. After work each day Joey and Ollie take a walk. On one rare day I was home early (professional development day...no kids!) and I was able to join them. A few days prior they had discovered a great hill about a mile away. Sounds boring but in the city, it's hard to come by. Ollie loved chasing us up and down and did a wonderful job posing for some pictures:-)

Ollie the ladybug

It was Ollie's first Halloween and although she may not appear to be enjoying herself....she did. I promise.

We brought Ollie with us to Joey's parent's house to help hand out candy. She sat very nicely and waited for us to take pictures:-) She's such a good listener!

Pumpkin carving 2008

This year Joey and I invited Luke and Alli over to carve pumpkins. We had pizza, and of course watched the Friends Halloween episode:-) After making an unexpected run to the store to get Joey another pumpkin (we found his to be quite rotten inside) we were hard at work....