We spent the afternoon yesterday at Shedd Aquarium right on Lake Michigan. We saw some amazing creatures including this HUGE crab, pacific dolphins, beluga whales, penguins, sharks, tropical fish, a bunch of different fresh waters fish and lizards, and a 7' foot long komodo dragon. 
The snow started right on time at 9 am and we made our way to our 10:30 snowboarding class while it continued to fly. Below our instructor helps Brian learn to use the heel edge of the board to stop. And Brian and I stand by the tow rope before we make our own down the hill. Brian's take on snowboarding: "It's harder than I thought!" My take on snowboarding: There are many muscles in my body which have laid dormant and unused until this very day. And now they have been pushed past exhaustion to complete spaghettification. 
Our first afternoon: we took the train to the bus to the Lincoln Park Zoo. Here Brian stands on a frozen lake where we watched the geese land and butt-skate to a stop : ) 
Yesterday we got our rental car and drove into Wisconsin where there is plenty of snow to go tubing on Sunburst Hill. We were having a great time ...
until Brian bounced off his tube half way down the hill and landed on his face : ( He's got scrapes down the left side of his face and his eye is swollen shut. The Ski Patrol people were very nice and bandaged him up. So we're having a quiet day today and will see Jackie's cousin Paul and Aunt Eddie and Uncle Mary. Tomorrow we take a snowboarding lesson... on the baby hill.
A friend of mine at work let us Tarantula-sit for "Gabriela" the other day and wow-- what an interesting creature! Her little feet felt like a combination between a tiny sticky pad and a little hook, and she spun a silk thread that looked like smoke snaking through the air. Cool!
I love these pictures. I was going through an old SD card and found them. They're from last year when we bought plants which included catipillars and watched them every day as they crunched through leaves, grew bigger and then finally transformed inside the chrysalis. This one is resting on Brian's arm before we took it out to the front yard where it stayed for a few minutes and fluttered away.
Over the past week Sunshine has laid four eggs and spends most of her time keeping them cozy and warm. We checked the first three and they don't seem to have been fertilized, but we'll keep an eye on them...
We had a little Halloween party at the house this weekend with Carolyn, Christopher, Jules and PJ. For dessert we had Jello brains and dirty worms--- yum!
This is Snowbell and Sparkle-- our two new parakeets who bring the aviary population up to six. Patrick picked out and named Snowbell and she (?) is a total albino with pink eyes. Brian picked out and named Sparkle and she (again, gender isn't easy to tell at their age) is a light powder blue with a faint yellow head. It took the birds just a couple of days to get accustomed to the gang. Their wings were clipped at the store so they crawl up the walls to get to the branches but you can see how they watch the other birds flying around that they want to, too ; )
We decided it would be really nice to build an aviary for our parakeets so they would have room to fly around. It turned out to be a great project: the boys learned to measure, saw, hammer and use a staple gun. 
We had our first vegetable garden two years ago and we've decided to give it another try this year. We went to the nursery and got tomatoes, eggplant, sweet potatoes, and romaine lettuce already sprouted. We planted two rows of seeds for sweet peas and you can see they're coming up already. Brian demonstrates here how to water the new garden using the rocket-spray water toy-- works very nicely.
We've done a lot of cleaning up and re-arranging lately and this has turned out to be a really comfortable room. With the two windows there is a lot of natural light for reading and drawing. Bri is on the left reading a book in the big bean bag chair.
This is Jackie's muse /reading lamp which spoke to her from an aisle at Home Depot. She appears to be a representation of a fabulous Hawaiian babe and she will provide a lovely overhead light.
This is 'Punk', our four month-old guinea pig we adopted a couple of weeks ago as a companion for 'Tom'. He's been a bit skittish in their cage but likes to be held and is crazy about carrots.
