Oh, what a week!

Most of my weeks seem to blur together....usually each week consists of the same old stuff -- work, sleep, eat, hang out with my family, being lazy on the weekends. Well, this last week was great. Lot's of pretty major stuff going on. Here's a quick recap.

Monday night, we finally, finally got our new car! We finally got the payout for our old car from the insurance company, so we went out right away to pick up the car that my uncle has been saving on his car lot for the last several weeks until we had the money. It's quite a beautiful car...a 2001 Audi A6 quatro. If you're ever looking for a quality used car at an affordable price, go to my uncle's lot, Bob's Auto Ranch.

Tuesday was a great day too. I could hardly concentrate on work as I had to wait until the afternoon to go vote (but I got to leave work 2 hours early). I completed #7 on my 101 in 1,001 list. Voted for Barack Obama as President of the United States.

My dad came over to watch the election results with me. Dave came home after school and got to watch most of it with us too. My mom was an election judge, so she was working. Before my dad left, we invited our next door neighbors over to help us eat this:

It all hasn't fully sunk in yet -- that Barack Obama is our President Elect. I keep finding myself at random moments just thinking about the achievement he's made and also just a little bit more hopeful for our future. On Wednesday, for some reason I was thinking about the War in Iraq, and finally, for the first time, the end of that war is in sight. On Friday night, Dave and I watched the movie Glory, and once again the historical significance about this election was made evident. The movie is about the Civil War's first African American volunteer company. In the beginning of the movie, the soldiers are just getting to know each other. Here's the conversation:

John Rawlins: Where about you from?

Trip: I'm from around Tennessee. I ran away when I was 12 years old and I ain't never looked back.

Sharts: What ya doin' since then?

Trip: I run for President. [laughter]

Trip: I ain't winning, though.

You really have to watch the movie in order to fully grasp the meaning of the conversation. But there was quite a bit of tension between these guys as they all came from different places and had different philosophies of their place in life. Denzel Washington's character (Trip) pointed out in a sarcastic joke that they did have something in common. And today, no one really can say a comment like that. It's just amazing what's been overcome.

On Friday, I woke up to this. No joke.

Hmm...there will be plenty more of this to come. The good thing was that it melted by lunch time.

This weekend's been good. We went to Andee and Bryan's house last night, for Andee's welcome home party with her family. It was fun to see all the Dobosenskis and the Reeses, who all came down from Duluth or up from St. Peter. Hopefully Gigi will post some of the pics that Gavin took. We missed seeing Jody (she was at her Aunt's wedding in Ohio). But it made me super excited for our scrapbooking girls' weekend that's just in a couple of weeks now!

Another cool thing we're doing (actually Dave is doing) is that he is coordinating sponsoring a battalion that's in Iraq for Christmas at his work. His co-worker's husband is one of the soldiers in the unit. He's asking the gym members to bring gifts (like toiletries and non-perishable food and DVDs and magazines), so that it can be sent over there in time for Christmas. I'm proud of Dave for supporting the troops. I thought it was a pretty good cause, so today at church I made an announcement asking members of my congregation to donate stuff and help contribute money for the shipping. Just today, I got $40 to go towards shipping. And hopefully next week people will remember to bring items to give. I just sympathize so much for the troops that have to be away at the holidays and for the families that are missing their loved ones at Christmas. Anything that I can do to ease the homesickness a little bit for the troops, I'll gladly do.

For this week's grand finale, we went to see the musical, Wicked. It was my first time seeing this show (although I've been listening to the CD), and it was WICKED FANTASTIC! My sister, Becky, and brother-in-law, Steven, got Dave, Rachel and I tickets for our birthdays this year. And before the show, they treated us to Famous Dave's for dinner first. Yum and fun!