Why I Oughta...

Next up in the parade of Lemax Christmas Village structures is this Lubbock's Bar-B-Que With An Attitude from the Harvest Crossing collection .  It came out in 2015, but I don't believe that Menards carried it last year.   Here's the official product page on Lemax's site . Menards is selling it for $39.99 (see photo below), but I don't think that the town of Mantleburg is quite ready for a rowdy Bar-B-Que joint.  I mean... they just got their first tavern in town back in 2012 , right? For those looking to keep up with all things Mantleburg, you can check out the tag page here .

We were at Wannamakers in Downers Grove for their Christmas open house over the weekend and while the rest of the crew was waiting in line to see the Big Guy, I took the Bird and the King of the Ball Tossers into the store to wander around the Christmas lights department.  And that's where I came across these National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation LED light sets. If you look at the box, you'll see that they bill them as being 'twice as bright' and have bigger/brighter/more bulbs than normal strands of lights. Kind of interesting licensing at play here and I suppose it is a cute concept, but I wonder if anyone is actually buying these things?  They're more money than comparable sets and it seems like there's very little bragging rights in these once they're out of the box, right? As for the brightness, I think there's some upside there.  We've put big C9 LEDs on our annual Elmhurst Front Yard Christmas tree every year and I always notice

We now have this little robot assistant living on our countertop in the kitchen.  Thus far, we've built out a shopping list, asked it 'Do you want to build a snowman?', had it play some Disney music and even asked it to play some YouTube videos on our Chromecast.  Kinda nice.  It isn't sending things to our phones yet, but having it create a 'shopping list' on Google Keep is pretty nice. I ordered an orange base (or course, I went with orange!) and we'll be outfitting it this week. Oh, and not that I'm attached to Google Home yet or anything...but I *did* say "Hey Google...see you later." as I left the house this am.  And she replied "goodbye".

On Thursday, I shared some photos of the gifts we received from the Reddit Disney Gift Exchange this year and above shows the gifts we 'gave' as part of the program this year. Here's the post showing what we 'gave' last year in 2015 . The person we matched with lived in Nevada and professed their love of Cinderella and a specific set of Disney pins - which made it easy.  We went with a Cinderella Mickey ears Christmas ornament and that set of five princess pins.   She seemed happy as the pins helped her complete a set. The girls had fun picking out the right items from the Disney store and I had fun teaching them about random acts of kindness.

A few days ago, I posted a couple of photos from our visit to the Legacy Lounge in the Northwest corner terrace of Memorial Stadium down in Champaign that included finding one of the team photos that I was in from my days on the Fighting Illini squad in the late 90's.  But, this was our first trip down that we were able to enjoy the *kinda* new Grange Grove. The Athletic Department christened the Grange Grove for last year's season and it has been a big hit.   From FightingIllini.com : Grange Grove has transformed what was previously Lot 36, the parking lot directly west of Memorial Stadium, into a free, high-energy tailgating area, which Fighting Illini fans of all ages can enjoy. When we arrived a few hours before kickoff, the place was jumping!  There was a band playing on one side and the beer garden was loaded with alums and students.  It was Dad's day, so it appeared that a few Fraternities had their "Football Block" on site in the Grange Grove and

Have been here for more than 15 months and never paid much attention to this doorknob before Halloween this year.  That's when I spent a bunch of time out on the front porch of Vic and Equation Boy/Man's house handing out candy.  In fact, I don't think I've sat in that front porch ever.   Their house is old - not sure exactly - but likely the early 1900's or 1910's or 1920's.  And the front door *has* to be original.  On it, is that knob.  And, it is a beauty and one of the relics that is remaining from the house when it was built originally.  Just look at that knob and think about how many hands have been laid on it.  Very pretty door plate, too, with that huge keyhole.

For the second year in a row, we participated in Reddit's Disney Gift Exchange with the girls being the 'intended audience' of the gifts being sent and received.   Here's my post from last year's exchange where we gave away some Peter Pan and Wendy gear to a Redditor .   I'll post the details of what we 'gave' at some point, but here's the details on what we were sent.  I posted the full note here on RedditGifts, so you can see the full story .  Our "Santa" was super thoughtful and asked a bunch of questions.  Turns out, they were in couple in Kansas who are Disney fans (just like us) but don't have kids, so they loved (so they said!) being paired up with our girls.   The day the box arrived, we let the girls open it.  And on top was a sweet little note from their pal Mickey: And under the little tote bag was this bounty!   Ermahgerd ! Tons of stuff for both girls.  They were in heaven! And some pins f