So long, November!

Sadly, I did not end November fulfilling my daily "what I am thankful for" Facebook post. This. Is. Tragic.,  I know. Ah, trends.. they come with their appeal and they get left by the wayside with their neediness, er, my lack of commitment. Perhaps, next year I will rethink jumping on the bandwagon.

Though, I did see a few clever bloggers posting "Thankful Thursdays."

Anyhoo, I hope you all wrapped up November with a stellar Thanksgiving, full of love and goodness.

Our Thanksgiving kicked off with an awesome (insert sarcasm) kitchen mishap.

The day before Thanksgiving our kitchen faucet broke! Luckily, this occurred after I had maded10 lbs of mashed potatoes. Well, 5 lbs made and 5 lbs on the stove, boiling away. Yes, 10 lbs.. I'm the youngest out of 6 kids needless to say family affairs are with the masses. Back to the kitchen mishap... the cliff notes version...

The cold water knob busted off and water was everywhere!! It took me a few minutes to process that I needed to turn off the cold water valve for the water to stop. Of course, maintenance wasn't available to come and fix our sink, but they did call to see if we were OK. The voice mail I left may have been a bit dramatic.. "HELP! Kitchen flooding! Sink is broken! HELP! Water everywhere! HELP!

Ugh, renting! I was thankful that we didn't have to fork out money to fix, but on the other hand - we didn't have a kitchen sink until Monday morning!

Come May we will be in another place. Don't get me wrong, our apartment is lovely and the area is a gem. However, the apartment it's not without it's many flaws. Such as; a window in. the. shower. in the shower! That is NOT waterproof. I am constantly cleaning to prevent any kind of mucky built up. The bathtub has the depth of a foot bath! Light switches that don't turn on lights! The thing is we needed a 2 bedroom quickly and saw our current place with desperate eyes. Everything looked amazing when we first saw it. But now living in it for a bit, we are starting to see all the defects. I digress...

Once I finally got the water shut off I snapped a quick picture to send to Bryan. The picture does not do the damage justice. You can't really tell, but water was EVERYWHERE!

After the clean up and finishing up the taters, I decided I needed some silly in my life. So, we watched Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Oh, and the taters... were yum yum! Though, they did provide their own controversy, but I'm not getting into that. But I will give you a beautiful photo.  

Thanksgiving Day. My sister, Maura hosted. She lives in Montgomery. A million trillion miles from the city. No, no. no. 44 miles west of the city. Our friends, Kristen and Laura were headed to the same area as us.. correction same subdivision, so naturally we were all travel buddies! Bryan and I grabbed an iGo car and scooped the lovely ladies up. 

Thanksgiving was good. I came home with a full belly and thoughts of reflection. I think my favorite part about Thanksgiving was when Bryan had a sing song and we all gathered around. I only snapped a few photos. I'm bad with capturing the moment at family gatherings. There is usually SO much going on! Here are the ones I did manage to get. 

Bryan, me and brother-in-law, Dan

Happy Thanksgiving! My husband is Irish so this Thanksgiving business is all new to him. He calls it "practice Christmas" I love it. 

My niece, Ava with her guitar. 

The table 

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Music Mondays: Free Record Store Performance

I love social media for a plethora of reasons one being that it offers real-time event information. Riot Fest posted to Facebook that Laura Jane Grace (formerly Tom Gabel - read about it here) front women for Against Me! would be playing a FREE in store performance at Reckless Records in Wicker Park on Friday, November 29 in part of Black Friday. Oh, heck yes! The Mr and I have been long time fans of Against Me! And, I am STILL kicking myself for turning down the offer to see them while I was studying abroad in Dublin. I digress. We had planned to head to the record store a few hours before the gig started, but errands and not keeping track of time got away. We arrived less than an hour to gig time and to our surprise it was crowded, but not jammers. We ran into some people we knew and landed ourselves a pretty sweet spot. No fashionable late arrival for this punk rock darling, the show started promptly at 5pm. She played about 10 songs. She did hang around to sign autographs and chat, but we didn't stick around. Laura Jane announced that she moved to Chicago recently, so hopefully that means more gigs! I took some videos, but they are being stubborn and not loading correctly. Here is a video from YouTube and a photo. Enjoy!