January 28 (Super Bowl Sunday) - Our Super Bowl party was held at our place this year.  It is our tradition that we BBQ before the game, no matter what the weather is like.  We've had snow on the ground during our previous 3 Super Bowls and this one was no exception.  Here is (from the left) me, Eugene and Henk at the grill. Two weeks before the Super Bowl, I made a bet with Eugene that the Oakland Raiders would beat the Baltimore Ravens in the playoffs and go to the Super Bowl.  The prize was a six-pack of Grolsch beer.  This was the ceremonial handover of the beer.     Henk and I supported the New York Giants, while Eugene supported the Baltimore Ravens.  Desperate to win my Grolsch back, Henk and I made a bet with Eugene that the Giants would win the Super Bowl and this time it was for 12 bottles of Grolsch.  Sadly, I have to report that we owe Eugene 12 bottles of beer each! January 24 - Alyssa has started with Gymboree classes.  Vanessa takes her once a week on Wednesdays.  She in the 0 - 6 months group called Gym Babies.  Here she is on the right lying on the stomach.  It seems her friend on the left had passed out from all the exercise! January 20 - Our friends, Susan & Eugene's son, Jean had a birthday party and we were invited.  We tried to take a picture of all the children present, but as many of you parents know, it's not very easy.  You place them on the couch to take the picture, and then you have about and 1.5 second window to take it, before everything goes wrong.  Here is Alyssa with her friends. And at the end of the day, she was just too happy to play with the balloon! January 15 - We went to Gurnee Mills shopping mall.  This picture of Alyssa and I was taken during lunch at he Rainforest Cafè. January 3 - It snowed regularly up to this time.  The snow never got a chance to melt, since the temperature never even got close to freezing point (32F) and mother nature was dumping more snow on top of the existing snow.  It seemed like it was going to stay here forever.  This is our entrance to our townhouse. December 30 - All the snow we had is not always bad news, especially if you enjoy skiing.  Henk and Malie had a friend from South Africa, Pierre, and we took him to go skiing at Alpine Valley Resort.  The resort is about a 90 minute drive from Chicago.  It's not very big, but worth the drive from Chicago.  From the picture on the right you can see that it's nothing more than a big hill. That's me coming down on one of the slopes.  I enjoy snowboarding much more than skiing.  Ever since I tried snowboarding for the first time, I haven't skied since.  In fact, I bought my own snowboarding equipment after only renting it once. This is the view from the top of the ski hill.  It looks much higher from the top and the black runs are really fast.  The only problem that I have with Alpine Valley is that it's runs are very short. December 28 - We took Alyssa for her first walk out in the snow.  I must admit, we were barely outside for 5 minutes.  Not because Alyssa didn't like it, we just wanted to have a look at the snowman that our neighbors built.  It can be seen in the background, just to the right of Vanessa and Alyssa. December 25 - We got together at Henk & Malie's house for our Christmas party.  As was the case last year, I got the task of being Santa Claus.  This is Vanessa, Alyssa and me. December 14 - Some more pictures taken outside in our neighborhood.  The piles of snow on the sidewalks were stacked up very high.  It made it hard to drive, since it was almost impossible to see other cars at an intersection.  You almost had to stick the front of the car in the road to get a clear view. This is how our neighborhood looked for quite some time.  The temperatures dropped below freezing for weeks and the snow wasn't melting at all. December 12 - Our first major snowstorm.  It dumped several inches on Chicago and made for quite a mess during the morning commute to work.  I waited until the late morning hours before I went to work, hoping that the worst of the rush hour would have passed by then.  But I was wrong, it took me almost 45 minutes to travel 1.5 miles (2 km), and that's when I decided to go back home.  When I arrived home, I phoned my work to hear if anybody else made it in, but was told that the office would close at noon due to the weather, and that it was best to stay at home.   This is the pine tree in our backyard after the snowstorm.  Nothing like lots of snow to get you in the Christmas spirit! This is the patio table in our backyard showing the amount of snow that fell.  This was probably after it snowed for 24 hours and it wasn't over yet! The next morning, after about 36 hours of snow, it was all over.  The skies were blue and no wind.  This was taken from our garage showing how much snow fell on our driveway.  I think the official total was about 12 inches.  Lucky for me, we have snow removal service.  When I got back from work that day, our driveway and walkways were shoveled.  What a pleasure! November 23 - Our second snowfall of winter.  Slightly more than the first one, but from the early snow it looks like we'll get plenty more than the previous couple of winters. November 15 - Our first snowfall of winter.  It wasn't much, but it came much earlier than last winter, when the first snow only fell on December 5th.