Here in Chicago, we have done a complete 360. We went from a super mild winter with no snow and warm weather (well, warm for here) to holy arctic air and SNOW!!! I think I want to move to the Republic of Texas Company Store where it is warm.

The snow came in hard and heavy on Friday night. Bill left work at 3:30 and got home close to 9 PM. Yes, you read that correctly. That was his commute home Friday night. Can you say crazy?

Even crazier is that I had to then learn how to use our snow blower. (Scary thought, I know!). I think planning a wedding reception Dallas would have been easier. We have learned that our snow blower needs a definite tune-up. All the problems I had on Friday night getting the stupid thing started, Bill also had on Saturday morning when he redid it. (He didn’t have to redo my plowing job. We had just gotten way more snow, and the plows had gone through and sprayed snow all over my newly plowed sidewalks!).

Seriously, I am ready for warm weather again. Bill wanted to take the kids sledding yesterday, and they wouldn’t go! Can you believe that? They didn’t even want to go out and play in it! Hopefully, I can just eat some Republic of Texas Foods and that will warm me up.

I think we are suppose to get 2 more days of snow this week. I am hoping Bill’s commute won’t be anywhere as bad (we were getting snow at 1 inch an hour which is a lot!).

(For those who are wondering, I think our end total of snow ended up being around 8 inches. However, we had drifts that were over a foot in the back of the house. And yes, that is a lot of snow!).

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Sometimes I love my job. Last night was one of those nights! I was invited to the grand opening of the brand new Walgreen’s store on the corner of State and Randolph. WOW! is all I can say. Why? Well, here’s a few pictures of my experience there:

I was impressed (and a little jealous that my Walgreens isn’t this cool). It is nice to see that the store was trying to deliver both healthy and fresh items to their customers. I really wish more stores would go that route. Granted, they still had some processed meals for those who wanted them. However, they saw what their customers wanted and took their lead. I can definitely see people popping in here for lunch (the workers) and grocery shopping (local residents). For every main product, they had several choices — milk, snacks, even spaghetti! Their prices were in line with what I’d expect to pay (well, except for the $1999 cognac. I’m pretty sure I’m not paying that much). The virtual bartender was beyond awesome. There was just so many new and crazy things in there. My pictures definitely show how awesome it was.

Walgreens really made itself a one stop shop no matter what your reason being in the store. I don’t even live in the city, and I want to go back there! I mean where else can you go and get a prescription filled, eat some sushi, enjoy a wine tasting, get your nails done, and get a flu shot?

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Okay, so this isn’t sooo Wordless. However, I think she did an awesome job at mass today with her part:

1.	Yellow Maple Leaf (w/Linky) report	2.	Catch My Words report	3.	Frugal Plus w/LINKY report
4.	Africa's Blog - brothers report	5.	New Jersey Memories report	6.	New Jersey Memories report
7.	CREATE WITH JOY w LINKY report	8.	Home of OHM - noro scarf report	9.	Shiju Sugunan report
10.	Jidhu Jose report	11.	caiafa craziness *LINKY* report	12.	Chelsea @The Curly Cues report
13.	Why We Love Green *Linky* report	14.	PhotoLifeSite LINKY report	15.	Erika Price {Linky} report
16.	Good Fortune report	17.	clairejustineoxox linky report	18.	Fish Out of Water! w/Linky report
19.	Toronto Teacher Mom (linky) report	20.	Run DMT report	21.	Mom Caboodle w/Linky report
22.	secret mom thoughts report	23.	Busy Working Mama (LINKY) report	24.	Melinda-LWMF report
25.	Baby in Bulgaria report	26.	Life, Loss, and Other Things Worth Mentioning report	27.	EdT. - linky report
28.	Jen ~ Mom of 2 (Linky) report	29.	Jen ~ Mom of 2 (Linky) report	30.	At the mill (LINKY) report
31.	Making Mama Happy w/LINKY report	32.	Amy Blogs w/ Linky report	33.	Naptime Momtog {Linky} report
34.	project alicia report	35.	Because I'm the Mommy {Linky} report	36.	Momma T and Baby E {W/ Linky} report
37.	Momwich {linky} report	38.	Carrie - Young Living Oil Lady report	39.	Everyday Morning report
40.	CoffeeJitters report	41.	Play Time report	42.	Charlotte's Avenue report
43.	Kitchen and Kids w/ linky report	44.	MOW - linky report	45.	The Green House report
46.	Our LIttle Corner - Israel report	47.	Crinkle Photography report	48.	MAMA TO 4 BLESSINGS W/ LINKY report
49.	You're next!

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Robert Scoble wrote a post about why your mom won’t be using Google+.  If you read my post from last week, you know I’ve had the ability to play with Google+ for a bit now, and I have to disagree.  Why?  Well, I’m a mom.  And I use Google+.

1.  I love Circles.  The argument seems to be that non-geeks won’t understand circles and won’t use them.  I can think of many reasons why they will.  Let’s say you want to vent about your inlaws or your job or pretty much anything you don’t want the whole world knowing.  You can easily just send a message to your friends complaining (make sure you disable the share option) and you don’t have to worry about the world knowing.  (Yes, I know they can still screenshot it, but if they are your friends, do you really think they will?)

2.  The mobile app is beyond easy to use.  I downloaded in the car on the way to a camping trip, and used it in the car (Need to add that I was not driving).  I was able to easily have the picture appear in my stream (it was a picture of how full my van was packed!).  It was a great test post and I have even been told how great the pictures looked on Google+ versus Facebook.  They just have a much more crisp look to them.

3.  Hangouts.  If you are like me (a mom) and your family lives far away, this is a great feature.  I can talk to my sister and my parents (who both live 4 hours away) and they don’t have to be at the same house!  We can be a family together even though we are in 2 states.  It just makes it easier to get online and talk.  As long as I can write directions on how to use it, my parents (who aren’t all that tech savvy) can figure it out.

4.  Simple interface.  Makes writing direction to use things much easier (see above).  Remember the saying, Keep in simple stupid?  That’s what Google did with this interface.  Simple makes it much more friendly to nongeeks.

5.  Adults are here.  This is exactly what the doctor ordered for us stay at home moms.  Facebook limits you to your friends.  On Google+, you can expand your horizons and follow those who you may not personally know however find interesting.  You can have adult conversations with people who may have opposing viewpoints and you don’t have to worry about whether or not somebody you knew in high school is going to read your insightful comment.

6.  One stop shopping.  Moms need our lives to be as simple as possible.  We are busy.  I like having my email, social networking, documents, etc all in one spot instead of having 20 bookmarked sites to do the same thing.

7.  Sparks.  This looks for videos and articles it thinks you’ll like, so “when you’re free, there’s always something to watch, read, and share.”  If your bored, have a go in there

8.  With a Google+ account, you get unlimited photo storage on Picasa.  I love being able to take a picture with my phone (which I have available to me most of the time.  I don’t normally carry my camera all too much), upload it, and not have to worry if I’m going to exceed my storage space.  And who doesn’t like free?

9.  You control your privacy unlike Facebook who doesn’t bother to tell you that they sold your information till after the media catches it.  Google Plus also makes it easy to control your privacy settings.  You don’t have to dig through 20 menus to get there.

10.  I’m here, and your mom loves me.  Why wouldn’t she want to hang out where all the cool people are?

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I’d love to remodel my kitchen.  However, Bill won’t let do any big money changes until the kids are older (and can’t wreck it.  Though I don’t know why he doesn’t think they can wreck it when they are older!).  Instead, I keep making cosmetic changes like adding an island kitchen cart (or was it a drop leaf kitchen cart), redoing the counters, buying new cutting boards, etc.  I’ve cleared out the garden window, so instead of holding knick knacks, I can actually put some flowers in there!  We are moving the pictures and the artwork in this room too.  I have hung some of what the kids made at school in one corner of the room.  The other items that were on the walls have just been moved around.  I am even looking at the cupboard paint that I saw on TV.  I can’t decide if painting my cabinets would be a good idea.

My cabinets stink.  They are tiny (which is why we have 20 other places in there that we store stuff).  To put plates in, you actually have to turn them!  The stain job on them is bad and did I say I hate them.  However, I can’t decided if we paint the fronts to make them look better that it won’t look dorky.  I hate to spend the time (and money!) doing it to have them look terrible or worse than they do already.

Does anybody have experience with cupboard paint?  Does it look cool?  What changes have you made in your kitchen?

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