Slow Down!

Well...my parents just left today. They came in to visit on Tuesday and left this morning. So, obviously I forgot to post on Thursday. I'm hoping now that all of our visitors have come and gone life will start to settle down a bit more. I'll try to post about their visit later, but for now I'll provide you with a (late!) list of Thirteen Cool Things That Happened This Week.

1. Saw some action scenes being filmed in downtown Chicago where they're shooting the latest Transformers 3 movie. It was cool to walk down Michigan Ave. and see piles of rubble and carnage and flipped over cars burnt to a crisp.
2. I went shopping for clothes with my mom! I cannot recall the last time I went clothes shopping for myself. It's been a couple years.
3. Had a normal Humira injection and I'm really hoping to continue with this trend and the weirdo reactions are a thing of the past.
4. Alan's interview for the church position went really well. So, we'll see if we hear back from them.
5. Rich officially bought his ticket to Chicago and will arrive on August 11th. Alan is really excited about this!
6. I applied for a job that I'm hoping to get an interview for some time soon. It's actually Alan's old job, hehe...
7. We found a ramen noodle place near our house in a Japanese market. We will be frequenting this place a lot, I think.
8. We finally ventured over to historic Long Grove since I kept seeing the sign for it on days I take Alan to work. It's totally cute! We missed strawberry fest, but are looking forward to apple fest in the fall! It has converted school houses and old buildings into candy stores and antique shops.
9. I paid my first loan bill. Well, not sure paying bills is exactly "cool," but I guess it's one step closer to paying off debt.
10. I was disappointed to find out McDonald's no longer sells big packs of their shortbread cookies they put in the Happy Meals. Well...Pepepridge Farm just put out a lemon shortbread cookie that tastes EXACTLY like them. Yay!!
11. Since putting the bird feeder outside, we've seen so much more wildlife including chipmunks, squirrels, finches, sparrows, robins, woodpeckers, cardinals, doves, rabbits, and toads! Ok, so the last one probably has nothing to do with the bird feeder, but I haven't seen a toad in a while!
12. We finally got rid of some big, bulky items that have been taking up room in the new place. I'm hoping now that that stuff is out of the way our recycling bins won't be overflowing anymore.
13. Alan finally reached his maintenance doses of allergy shots, so we have one less thing to do every weekend AND we synched it up so we go in on the same day now.