At last, the new house!

As usual, I'm starting with an apology for my tardiness.  Sorry!  As you can imagine, our lives are continuing in a state of transition as we move from wandering grad school students to fully employed, home-owning adults.  With this move, into a home we intend to stay in for years (plural!), it's been fun to review where we've been.  In the last 10 years, since I graduated from East High and my address changed from 457, I have lived at addresses (or PO Boxes) 312C, 512, 410, 290, 5155, 5404, 2138, and now 5232.  That's a total of 8 moves in 10 years, in 5 different states in 2 countries.  Katie follows closely with 7 moves of her own.  Even Scout, who celebrated her 3 year adoption anniversary a week ago has 3 of her own!  So we are quite ready to not make any changes to our address numbers for a while, and thereby avoid the DMV too!

We've enjoyed looking at houses for years, thinking about what we'd want and what we could afford.  But it became a real endeavor kind of by accident when we were walking through open houses and found an agent we liked.  For the geographically minded, we were looking at mostly inner-ring suburbs on the north side of Chicago.  We probably saw around 50 homes, in 7 or 8 different cities, however we couldn't shake Skokie.  We initially met our agent just over a mile from our current house and the home we put in an offer on but lost was 2 blocks from there.  The very first house we walked in to during open houses on our own is less than a block away from our current address.  I don't know Hutchinson's housing stock too well, but Skokie compares well to Wichita just east of College Hill.  It was begun in the early 1900s, grew steadily through the second World War, and then was built out quickly during the postwar era.  It's a fascinating development pattern as some 1930's 3-flats sit next to 1960's ranch homes in places.

The architectural diversity is complemented by really impressive social diversity.  While Skokie used to be known as a hub for Chicago's Jewish culture (and still is institutionally speaking), it has become known as a city with a mix of everyone.  Across the street, we have a family who lives in the house the mother's grandparents grew up in, while next door on either side are a first generation Indian family and a Hispanic-Asian couple and their kids.

We're about a 7 minute walk to the downtown core of the suburb, which has an exciting restaurant scene, and about a 12 minute walk to the Yellow Line el stop.  It's also an 8 minute drive to my work, which is across the parking lot from the hotel everyone stayed in for the wedding.  Needless to say, we're really excited about the location.

But that's not what you want to see, is it?  Well here you go, pictures!  We're going to do it in a before -and-after style, with the original pictures from the listing followed by ones I took today.  Apologies for some of the rooms being less than ideally presentable, we do live here after all!

 Let's start with the front of the house (Google Street View):

Screen Porch off the back of the house:

The basement family room:

3rd Bedroom/Office:

The kitchen is pretty much the same:

And without further ado, here's what took so long! The living/dining room:

Check out behind the mirrors!

And our biggest addition of all:

Our address is 5232 Madison St. Skokie, IL 60077.  If you're in the Chicago area, we have 2 extra bedrooms, so bring your friends!  We're hosting Thanksgiving in a couple weeks so it's our first run as hosts of a big family gathering (14 people!).  Hopefully we can share some photos from the holiday!

Love to all!

Andrew and Katie 

Broadway or Bust

Hello again!

Boy does time fly when you're having fun. This will be a quickie as there is lots to get done this week with another opening of another show on Broadway!

Mary has been tremendously busy with tech, rehearsals, previews and hard work for Allegiance. This is her newest full time Broadway show that opens this coming Sunday. It has George Takei (from Star Trek) and Lea Salonga (Tony winning Broadway star and Philippine icon) If you would like to see some of the process of how they got to Broadway for this production, they have been making a mini-series called Trek to Broadway;

 http://allegiancemusical.com/explore/trek-to-broadway/#0PJlD2F4EviGgPiO.97

Mary has also been keeping up with her day work at Jersey Boys, her original home on Broadway that celebrates its 10th year on Broadway this year. Though she is sad to miss out on Christmas at Radio City this year, it is an exciting Fall of change.

Kurtis has been successfully working at Hudson Scenic, building big Broadway sets, Disney clocks and touring sets since April. Last week, he hit his dollar qualification for his first year toward Local 1. This is the first of three years consecutively that must be hit to be able to join this very prestigious union. We are routing for him! In September, Kurtis joined the Jersey Boys family officially as a swing for the show. He has been putting in double duty for nearly two months as he learns new things on the automation crew there. It has been very enjoyable and rewarding!

For us, it's been all about Broadway, all Fall! We Love it! As we head in to the holiday season we look forward to a bit more time together and a slightly more predictable (if not entirely jam packed) schedule. 

 We are always thinking of family and certainly sending lots of love your way for a wonderful holiday season!

Mary and  Kurtis

Fair + Fall = Fun

Greetings from Givanland:

We have had quite a fun couple of months.  Of course, one of my favorite things of all the Fair occurred in September.  For the second year in a row, I took off the entire week and actually added another half day so I could arrive shortly after the opening on Friday.  The draw was the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.  They were very cool to see.  We didn’t see them hitched up but the next day spent some time in the horse barn watching the draft horse hitching contest.  They were awesome.  Talk about spending hours on hair-those horses had every hair in place!  I’m sure they spend more time for one show than I do in years.  We did several new things this year and I sucked in as many people into them as possible.  For example, Kate and I entered pictures “painted “ by Benny’s buns and Ellie Mae’s tail.  They won  red and white ribbons respectfully.  Another new adventure for us was the Lego Team competition.  It was a whole family plus one adventure and we came home with a red ribbon and a premium check.  Of course, there were always the standards such as the train rides, picking up free stuff, the butter sculpture, people watching and etc.  It’s only 11 months until the next fair-I’ll be there if anyone wants to join me.

We had our second annual Givan Fall festival.  It was a beautiful day for the pumpkin patch, corn maze, apple cider slushes and supper.  I had never done the corn maze so that was a first.  Sure glad Christopher was along to read the map or I might still be there.  The “holiday” tree (so named for getting decorated 4 times a year) is decked out again.  We added a second string of lights this year.  If we add a string every year, maybe in about 5 years we might have enough to cover the entire tree. 

Kate’s birthday celebration was part of our Fall fun.  We had supper out with friends and then ice cream cake and gifts.  Benny gets so excited over presents she can hardly get them open undisturbed.  This year she opened them at Grandma and Grandpa’s so she got to do it all by herself.

To conclude our Fall events, Tim and I dressed up the pooches and took them to see Kate and her friend.  Ellie Mae didn’t mind her costume much but Liza wasn’t impressed.

Happy Fall to all and a few pictures.

At the Fair

At the Fair

Art by Ellie Mae and Benny

Sorting Legos for the Team Competition

Designing and practicing for Lego Competition

Winning Second Place- The Ole Mill

Inside the Ole Mill

My Cinderella Pumpkin

No caption needed1

The Holiday Tree

The unhappy queen

Is this the real porker or is .....



 this the real porker???

Welcome, Fall!

Hello All!

Fall is my FAVORITE time of year. I wish it would last so much longer than it does. I’ve been known to put up Fall decor as early as the first day of school. This year I was feeling sick to my stomach and pretty exhausted, so I didn’t get it done until late September… probably the longest I have ever waited!

August was rough for us as we had to say goodbye to Bruce. We still think about him a lot and I still miss him, especially in the evenings which is when he would demand to be petted, and I miss him anytime we open a crinkly bag. When he lived with me and my parents, my dad would eat cheese curls and Bruce would wait patiently to lick his fingers when he was done. So, that taught him to come running when he heard a bag open. As he got older, he became much less patient and he would just lick the seasoning straight off of your face!

Steve has been a great addition to our family. We have had him two weeks and he reminds us a lot of Bruce. He looks like him and has a similar personality. Once he learns to be nicer to Bella, that will help us out. They are getting there though. He just has to learn that she doesn’t want to play all the time. He has a lot of dog-like characteristics, and seems to really like Dave. He wags his tail when he is happy, and he chases balls if you throw them. He is such a big boy! If you notice in the picture below, when he is stretched out, he is as long as my legs! He is only 1.5 years old. His meow sounds like a very loud kitten, which is funny because he is so big.

Adelynn started her last year of preschool this September! She loves it. She will be the first to tell you how much she loves her teachers and the jobs they get to have. She loves show & tell and playing in the sandbox. She talks about the friends she is making and one of her church friends is in her class too. She always tells us what the snack was that day and which kid had to stay inside for a few minutes. I especially liked it when she said “Riley had to stay inside today.” (Riley has to stay inside often.) And she continued: “But Connor had to stay inside today too, so she had some company.” Oh, Adelynn. Always the optimist.

Dave worked at the Fair again this year. Here are some pictures from the Fair:
 
Train waving.


Ava’s dream come true.

We have been excited about baby #3! The girls have too. I’m feeling much better. I hadn’t been feeling well anyway, and in addition to strep and severe allergies, there were a couple of rough months! I’m still tired and easily worn out, but it’s manageable :) I’m 16 weeks today. We will find out the gender this time, so that will be a fun change of pace since we haven’t found out before. We will let you know at Thanksgiving since that is the week we find out!
 

I’m in the beginning stages of planning our IF: Gathering again this year. IF is a women’s conference that is so much more than a weekend women’s gathering. We hosted one last year, which was the second year they did it. This year, their 2,700 seat arena sold out in 4 minutes!! They are Austin, but they live stream it out and - literally - women all over the world are watching. We are considering a bigger event this year that is more of a community event instead of a church hosted event, so it will be a challenge, but a challenge I’m up for! :)

As always, Ava keeps us busy and laughing. Here are some of her adventures:

Getting into Nana’s lipstick.

Not happy about waiting on the blankie to be washed. We finally just gave it to her soaking wet and that was all she needed!

She put on her goggles before killing flies. She is the fly whisperer. No joke. She kills every one she goes after. Most often with her hands!

And then there was the night that Dave put her to bed and thought she was sleeping, but she had actually gone into the bathroom to give herself a haircut. (I was at a meeting). Her room is right across from the bathroom, so if she is sneaky – which is always – you don’t know she is in there. She walked out to the living room with the scissors in one hand and her hair in the other. Oh, Ava. I’m still not sure how we are going to fix it, but I’ll hopefully get some help with it this week! (Her hair was all the same length before).

                

Happy Fall!