Trips, Trains and Tumbling

Megan and I spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday in Chicago at Accenture's "sell" weekend, where they did their best to convince us that accepting their offer was the best choice we could make. To be honest, we were leaning that way to begin with, so it probably wasn't that hard of a sell. We used it more as a "confirmation" weekend, to meet more people at the firm and to meet some of the people that I might be working with.

We took Max with us, but Ali and Kaitlyn spent time with the Hughes, McLaughlins and Sorensens who were incredibily gracious and kind for taking them for a couple of days (and for suffering through various meltdowns from each child).

Megan and I had a good time as well--when we weren't worrying about the girls. I think our highlight was eating at the Signature Room on the 95th and 96th floors of the John Hancock building. The views were incredible. Megan's parents were also very kind as they volunteered to drive up to Chicago from Indiana to watch Max so we could attend the dinner in the John Hancock building, although we ended up hiring a local service and everything worked out great. This picture is from our hotel at night, and doesn't really do justice at all to the kind of clear and amazing view we had.



Through it all, Megan decided she's not much of a big city girl. She didn't enjoy taking taxis everywhere or waiting in traffic. On the other hand, I decided that I'm not a huge fan of bitter cold made worse by blowing wind and airport delays due to impending blizzard conditions. That said, it looks like we're taking the job and will be adding Indianapolis to our list of places we've lived.

Max keeps getting bigger and bigger. Today he weighed in at 15 pounds. To put that in perspective, at 20 pounds (and 1 year), by law you can change the carseat from rear-facing to forward-facing. I'm guessing he'll hit the 20 pounds well before he hits the year mark.

Prior to our Thanksgiving and Chicago trips Max was sleeping about 6 hours straight at night, making both Megan and me (but especially Megan) very happy, and less tired. But, since our trips he's gotten out of the rhythm and has taken a few days to get back into the swing of things. I've been getting less and less sleep with an increasing workload at school (given that I didn't do anything during our trip to Chicago).

Kaitlyn is getting more and more creative. The other day she laid out all of the blocks in a long procession and declared it a train. I like how she grouped like-colors.

Kaitlyn is also getting smarter. We had stake conference yesterday. After following the directions to "get on Route 33 and drive over the mountain" we made it just in time to sit in the cafeteria of the high school where the meeting was held and which was being used as overflow. There were 2 closed circuit TV's which were set up so that we could watch the proceedings going on inside the auditorium. The girls didn't pay much attention, so on the way home we thought we'd see if they retained anything.

We asked Kaitlyn, "What did you learn at church today?" Kaitlyn's response, "The earth." Apparently, we missed that because they talked about Christmas and attitudes to have, and about the newly reorganized stake presidency. I followed up, "Anything else?" Her reply, "Monson." I guess church on TV (regardless of the location) means general conference, and I guess we've quizzed them all a little too much on who the general authorities are.

Alison is enjoying various and sundry adventures. The other day before bed, I walked in to find that she had set up the grocery shopping toy as a hurdle between her bed and Kaitlyn's bed and was leaping over it by springing from one bed to the other. I thought it was pretty funny and ran downstairs to get the camera. (What a bloggable moment!) However, perhaps I shouldn't have been so encouraging. A couple of jumps after taking this picture, she didn't clear the hurdle and ended up with quite a bruise on her little behind (which is still there).

I guess I should have shown her better technique. Use pillows.