2013 Year in Review

Sorry for the hiatus.  I have spent the last two weeks, in no particular order, shoveling snow, celebrating Christian, pagan, and non-denominational holidays, making corned beef, freezing my ass off, and consuming winter beers.  But alas, I'm back in the swing of things (i.e., back to work), so you can count on regular posts for the foreseeable future.

So 2013.  What a year.  I went to Bloomington for Game Day and watched a top 5 matchup with a bunch of great friends from IU, at Nick's.  

The family and I moved into a house.  I went to the zoo a bunch of times.  The Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup again, and I actually got to go to Game 1, which was the first Stanley Cup game I've ever been to.  Pretty awesome, even if our tickets were standing-room-only, and the game went into triple overtime and I blew out my flip flops.

I lit off like 30 smoke bombs on the Fourth of July.  

I accidentally discovered that my boys can still swim.  I threw out the first pitch at a White Sox game (and threw a strike, at that). 

I rode on a couple boats.  The whole fam damily went out to Colorado to visit my dad, marking Lollipop's first and second plane rides.  We saw a shitload of prairie dogs and mountains.  

 Daughter started preschool.  I took an awesome trip to Brussels, Amsterdam, and Munich.  I sang "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" at karaoke while dressed as the grim reaper.  

We bought a fish.  Harley turned 70.  The Hoosiers brought the Old Oaken Bucket back to Bloomington.  KISS was finally elected into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  I drank all 12 beers of Christmas at Rocks, twice.  Jester bought an Alf doll, which we made into Alf on the Shelf, our cat-eating, Elvis-loving alien who flies to the North Pole every night to report to Santa whether you are good or bad that day.

2014 promises to be equally as awesome, as my third -- and, in all likelihood, final -- spawn will enter the world.  We got the Winter Olympics and the World Cup (even if the US is in the Group of Death and Lindsey Vonn is a scratch).  A couple very good friends are getting married -- not to each other, but to their respective fiancés.  I will finish recapping the BAM trip.  I'm gonna go to the zoo a bunch more times.  Probably New Orleans too.  Daughter will be taking a swimming class and Lollipop will be taking a gymnastics class, so look for them in the 2028 Chicago Summer Olympics.  I'm gonna order a bunch of stuff from Amazon.  The Hoosiers are going to both a Final Four and a bowl, which will be a nice complement to their ninth NCAA soccer championship, the Blackhawks' third Stanley Cup in five years, Derrick Rose's knee completely healing forever, and the Bears going undefeated.  Perhaps most amazing of all, Ted Mosby will finally meet his kids' mother.