abbalicious!

While 98% of the United States saw Batman over the weekend, I saw Mamma Mia twice (Brad didn't go either time, I don't think he wanted to see James Bond singing Abba songs). Due to scheduling conflicts I saw it the first time with Kristin at midnight on Thursday. At first we were really embarrassed, but it turned out to be really fun. The crowd was very vocal and laughed and clapped the entire way through the movie. Highly enjoyable. The second time was with my mom and some extended female family. The crowd was less impressed, but I still had a good time. All in all, I thought the movie was great. The right amount of kitsch and energy. The actors didn't take themselves too seriously, which made the movie surprisingly funny. Meryl Streep is my new hero.

If you plan on going here are a few tips:

- Look away when Pierce Brosnan sings (he doesn't have a terrible voice, he just isn't a great actor whilst singing)

- Stay until the credits really start to roll, the last five minutes are pure gold (it makes me love Colin Firth all that much more, if that was even possible)

- Go with people that love musicals and/or Abba (the man grumbling behind me during my second viewing sure didn't enhance the moving going experience)

PS- I have lots of catching up to do from the last few weeks. More blog posts coming soon, I promise!

wow... really trebeck? really?

This was seriously on Jeopardy last night:

$1,600. Category: TV Women

Are you kidding me?

We move in 20 days??? What?? We have A LOT to do! Does anyone want to:

• buy a '96 Avalon car from us?
• find Bridget a job in St. Louis or the surrounding area?
• finish Brad's final two online GE classes for him?
• figure out if all our crap is going to fit into a civic, a mini van and a 5x8 trailer?
• tell us how to survive in an unfurnished apartment with no furniture of our own? (Scott and Nicole, I hope you enjoy the floor! We won't even have a couch to offer the pregnant one, I already feel horrible!)

Anyone? Pretty please?

we won't be homeless!

So the trickiest part about moving to Illinois is that it's really hard to figure out housing. We got a housing list from the school but beyond those basic descriptions we were pretty much lost. We narrowed down our list but came to a stopping point when we realized that without actually seeing these places we could be signing up to live in a "2 bedroom, 1 bath, dishwasher, washer/dryer, hard wood floors, great location" that looks like this:

Enter Brad's amazing parents! They completely came to our rescue and volunteered to drive down to Alton (about 5 hours away) and look at our list of places and even email us pictures. After their pros and cons of each location and the pictures we decided on the "cute yellow house" with "2 bedroom, 1 bath, dishwasher, washer/dryer, hard wood floors, great location":

This picture is a side view of the house. It is split into two apartments (we live on the main floor) and we enter our apartment through the porch area on the right. What clinched it for us is the storage room, the garage, and the location (this picture was taken on the side walk ACROSS from campus), plus it's yellow and cute and not a dump!

Only 30 days until we move and it's finally starting to feel real!