Jet Pack

Happy (belated) Monday everyone! (This image from here had me totally smitten while packing...!)

We're out (and cold!) in Chicago, but it's warm and toastie in this Skokie fortress with all the siblings and cousins filling up these large empty modern spaces of my childhood home! Packing for this weather was so very far from an easy feat. There was just no way to keep to a packing method or system - much too much gear, layers, cold-weather-accessories to keep it light... Left me feeling very out of control! :)

Our flight here was lovely - JetBlue always manages to keep it pleasant! Freida and I inhaled one too many bags of the complimentary Terra Sweet Potato Chips (apparently they moved up and on from the blue tubers), and Manasseh enjoyed the (all kosher!) contents of their ShapeUp box. While those super-cool seat-back TV's are highly convenient (and we enjoyed plenty of Food Network, ESPN, HGTV, and TVland; Freida is still feasting on Yo Gabba Gabba, so we made sure to download a few new episodes on iTunes (and print out a few Gabbaland themed coloring sheets, as well). Also, I make sure I got at least the bare minimum of these in-flight favorites!

Now that we are finally here and settled in, it looks as though the weather will be shacking us up for quite some time.... I'm quoting the news-folk here, "potentially the biggest storm this country has ever seen."!! While we will be trekking out to the wedding on Wednesday night (someway, somehow!), we most definitely will not be getting out much before then. Tonight we stocked up with the makings for s'mores, grilled sandwiches, soups, plenty of Netflix and magazines, and, of course, hot cocoa. And I'm being real thankful my mother kept all the great retro toys we played with as kids - the basement is grandchild-grand-central!

P.S. If you've ever been delayed while flying JetBlue and found yourself wondering why.... :)