This weekend was our 10th wedding anniversary (yeah!) and we celebrated by going to Galena, IL. On Friday, we dropped the kids off at my brother's (who lives in Rockford) and got to Galena around 9 PM.

We've become very spoiled by living in some very nice older homes... especially our house in Homer. (Someday, I'll put up a couple of pics).. so we've stayed at places that felt like a let down. But the Stillman Inn was very nice. Granted, the hot tub was barely deep enough to cover our legs and took about 20 minutes to fill up and the rooms were not up to date. But, it was very enjoyable.

Saturday, we spent the day shopping around downtown. They have something like 88 shops and 20 restaraunts. Very nice.

The kids had a great time with their Uncle Trent and family. They weren't ready to leave when we got there on Sunday to pick them up!

For an anniversary present, I got Holly a very nice 3 diamond necklace. I actually bought her a ring first, but I forgot that she already wears a ring on each hand, so we took it back in and exchanged it for this. I am pretty happy about it... looks very nice.

We paid off the van last week, so we are looking to trade in my truck on a better family vehicle. We've been looking for awhile now. We took a Honda CRV, Jeep Liberty, and Jeep Rubicon Unlimited for test drives today. We weren't fond of the Liberty. Holly liked the CRV although it felt small to me. I liked the Rubicon Unlimited, but it is pricey (about $31K). Tomorrow we are going back in and test driving a Jeep Cherokee, a Crysler Sebring convertable, and the Jeep Unlimited (non Rubicon) to test those out. We'll also head to the Honda dealer to drive a newer CRV.

If anyone has any suggestions for a good small van/suv type vehicle, let me know! We want something that the 4 of us can fit into comfortably and still have room for groceries, etc.

Oh! I bought a new laptop the other day. It should arrive tomorrow. I've been thinking about getting one for about a year and this one is a great deal at Best Buy. Unfortunately, they were out of stock, so I had to order it online... but it is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

Bridget gave a speech for her class last week (regarding St Bridget). It went well and she got an A-. She volunteered to go in the first group (4 kids/day) and then volunteered to go first in her group. We are so proud of her!! Her teacher had great remarks for her on the summary.