The Car Ride

We found out shortly before Christmas that a friend at the Chick-Fil-A Foundation was able to get our family tickets to the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl in Atlanta. So on December 29, we packed our bags and hopped in the car to head to the Peach State.

With gas costing less than $2 a gallon these days, our journey ended up being quite economical!  We drove through states that some of us had never ventured through before…

We stopped at a Cracker Barrel in Tennessee for comfort food and peg games. The kids got a kick out of everyone’s southern accent.  Y’all want some more Spraht?

We passed the time in the car with an audiobook. We still have several hours left to listen to, as the book is a whopping 19 hours long.

Jeremy was getting a little stir-crazy in the backseat and got creative with the glow-in-the-dark thinking putty.

After 12 hours on the road, we made it to our destination!

We’re going to rewind to before Christmas here. Jim and I celebrated 19 years of marriage by going out to eat and…

visiting the puppy store.

The bulldog brothers grabbed our attention right away. No matter how homely the animal is as an adult, they all start out cute as babies. Bulldogs are no exception. They snuggled their way right into my heart, and if it weren’t for the not-so-minor facts that 1. they came from the puppy store, and 2. they cost a mere 3800 dollars each, I would have considered bringing one home.

When we came home and showed the pictures to the kids, they oohed and asked to go see the dogs in person. So we obliged and went back the next night.

Jeremy took to the one that was especially cuddly. Takes one to know one, I suppose.

Alas, we had to leave the store empty-handed once again. But when I think back nearly six years ago to when Molly was a young pup, soiling the floors, nipping at our pant legs, and requiring third-shift Molly duty, I’m content getting a ‘puppy fix’ at the pet store and leaving it at that.

After our morning with the immediate family, we headed into Chicago to celebrate Christmas with the Giere clan. If there were ever grandparents who love their grandkids to pieces, here they are.

Once the kids filled their bellies and opened their presents, they had some energy to burn. Thankfully, the city of Chicago had just opened a new park down the street from my parents’ home. The kids had a blast running and sliding and swinging to their hearts’ content.

It really is a unique playground, at least according to suburban standards. As you look beyond the playground equipment, you see the Chicago skyline packed with skyscrapers.

The kids spotted green space and exclaimed with delight, “Let’s run!”

Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12)

We began Christmas morning by lighting the center candle of our advent wreath.

We had had the stockings hung on the fireplace mantle since Thanksgiving, and whenever we mentioned the word stocking or presents, Molly would trot over to her own stocking and sniff it. On Christmas morning, she was quite anxious to see what toys and treats awaited her in her stocking.

She was not disappointed.

The kids are learning the joy of giving and planned for weeks what gifts they wanted to give each other. It warmed my heart to hear one of them say that he was more excited to watch his siblings open the gifts he gave them than to open presents himself.

They gave in proportion to how much cash they had, so the bigger kids were able to spend a little more, while the little kids made a trip to the dollar store to pick out their gifts.

Ruthie giggled every time she thought about Jake putting on the gift she got for him.  She was not disappointed.

Derek put some thought and creativity in to this on for Jake.  He had a topographic map printed at Costco of the mountains they visited together last summer.

After all was said and done, there was a hush around the house as the boys all sat reading the new comic books.

No big news from the day to share with fellow family members. Just enjoying one another’s company around the dinner table.

Thanks to one family member, though, ordinary is rarely without some form of humor.

It’s important to establish family traditions, so this Thanksgiving weekend, we embarked on a new one: the Thanksgiving morning Giere 5K Classic.

Peter and my Mom baked the post-race (or for those of us who couldn’t wait that long, the pre-race) meal.

Then we strapped on our running shoes and got ready to run. My mom brought official bib numbers, which made us all feel Very Important. (Next year, timing chips?)

Since we didn’t really know the area, we had to study Google Maps to figure out where we should run.

My Dad (the race official) sounded the whistle, and we were off. We ran two by two…

The weather was quite snowy, which made for a beautiful backdrop, however not ideal conditions for running. I don’t think anyone followed the agreed upon course since visibility was a challenge through the big snowflakes. But everyone made it back to the house, excited to have participated in the first ever Giere Classic!

The wet snow had an effect on our bib numbers. Next year we may affectionately rename the run the Smeary Classic.

Peter was assigned to bring the pies for Thanksgiving dinner this year. He found just the right recipes for apple, pumpkin, and pecan pies. He even tweaked a couple recipes according to how he thought they could improve. Then he made a shopping list of the things we didn’t already have on hand.

And off we went to the grocery store to gather ingredients.

Check that list.

He thought it would be way more fun if his cousin Hannah could come over to help him bake. So she did. And it was.

They ran the kitchen like a couple of professional bakers, with minimal parental intervention. In fact, I even left to run to the library at one point, and when I returned, all six pies were out of the oven AND…this was the big surprise…the kitchen was perfectly cleaned!

The proud bakers.

The hungry bakers.

The eager audience.

A little too eager.

Can you blame them?

Here’s a video of the action:

We all got the eeby-jeebies (Molly included) when we found a big spider by the front door. And then there was Jeremy–undaunted by the eight-legged creature–who tried to catch it by its leg.

Baby Derek had his inaugural ride in the double jogging stroller.

He and Jake logged countless miles during my marathon training days.

And now…it’s all I can do to keep up with him as he runs alongside me.

There’s just something about a soft, snuggly dog that brings a smile to the face.

The geese are back.

And the BB guns are loaded.

They have no idea what they’ve flown into.

We went to the Shedd Aquarium last month with a big homeschool group. Derek hung out with the big kids…doing silly things like wall sits

while the rest of the kids hung out with cousins.

We got to pet fish

an watch sharks swim by. How thick is that glass, anyway?

Jeremy imitated the puffer fish.

And Ruthie discovered her life calling: penguin caretaker. This woman sat on a stool petting the penguins one at a time while the rest waited their turn at her feet. It was all I could do to keep Ruthie from jumping in and joining her.

Yesterday we visited the Museum of Science and Industry. They have a new exhibit called Numbers in Nature, all about the patterns that we see in the world. A “highlight” of the exhibit was a mirror maze that was so confusing that some of us began to feel sick to our stomachs trying to find the end. Here’s the crew at the beginning of the maze:

If I had taken a picture of the same crew at the end of the maze, you would have seen relieved faces, and one teary-eyed Jeremy holding his forehead after running slap-bang into one of the mirrors.

Jeremy found an outlet for his crazy faces.

Ruthie visited the tornadoes.

Here the kids were waiting for lightning to strike.

Hanging out…

The boys had some fun in the farm exhibit, trying their hand at milking a cow.

You can make just about anything into a competition these days!

As one of the boys’ friends said, these field trips are for “a lot of fun with friends, with a little bit of education added.”

I don’t know many dogs who actively watch what’s playing on the television. Whether it’s college football or Monster’s Inc., Molly is tuned in.

These boys. They keep me on my toes. Thanks to some well-placed clear Thinking Putty, they got my heart rate going the other day when I saw this.

Peter is proving to be quite a renaissance young man. He goes from the football field

to the kitchen without missing a beat.

I signed him up for the free kids’ cooking classes at Williams Sonoma, and last Saturday he learned to make mashed potatoes. He put his new knowledge to practice by making a batch for the company we had over yesterday.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23)

We had a triple birthday celebration at the end of last month. Ruth, my mom, and me…three generations all born in the same month. On the morning of Ruthie’s birthday, Peter made pink birthday pancakes. He even went a step further and carved a pink princess out of one of the pancakes.

We took the pumpkins that grew in our backyard and carved them to look like…us. Can you tell who’s who in this Johanik pumpkin family?

On Halloween day, we added to the packaging of the candy we distributed to trick-or-treaters.

We likened it to scattering seeds throughout the neighborhood ‘garden’.

Jeremy was at a birthday party, and Jake was busy finishing up school work while the rest of us put labels on all the candy.

Then we waited for the trick-or-treaters to come.

We also went trick-or-treating. Even the big boys. Don’t be fooled by Jake’s serious face in this photo. He (dressed as a runner) was more excited than everyone else to stockpile as much candy as he could.

Molly welcomed everyone back and was happy to help them sort their booty.

Derek has officially renamed trick-or-treating to “Trading Candy”. He observed that we buy candy and give it away to the neighbors, then we walk around  and collect candy from those same neighbors. We trade.

We ended the night (and the month) by going to Sonic for 50 cent corndogs and Chipotle for $3 burritos.

I think it’s pretty remarkable that we can know when solar eclipses will take place, not only to the day but to the hour.

So we had written on the calendar on October 23 at 4:00 that there would be a partial solar eclipse. While I was putting dinner on the table (it was a football night, hence the senior-dinner-hour), Jake was setting up the telescope with the sun filter attached. He set it up in hope that the cloud cover would dissipate before the sun set, for the clouds were completely covering the sun with no break in sight.

After about 30 minutes, Jake ran in and announced that he saw not only the moon partially eclipsing the sun, but also some massive sun spots. So we all fled the dinner table and lined up at the telescope to see this marvel in the heavens.

(Good job, iPhone camera!)

I commented to Peter and Jeremy how awesome it is that God would allow us to see two unique phenomena in space–a partial solar eclipse and a lunar eclipse–the very same school year we decided to study Astronomy.

And as if that wasn’t enough, Jeremy snapped a pic of this rainbow in the sky as we were driving to football practice that night!

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.

You’ve heard of the Ottoman Turks.

We have an Ottoman Dog.

In order to reinforce the Louisiana Purchase lesson we read about a few weeks ago, we make a Louisiana Purchase cake.

Derek, who is the expert cartographer in the family, carved the USA from the cake Peter baked.

Jeremy and Ruth mixed the colored frosting.

Each territory was frosted with a different color, then Peter piped the Mississippi River right down the middle.

The result:

Who knew the Louisiana Purchase tasted so good?