Friday Photos- small town edition :)

A look back at the week, Monday thru Friday through photos

I was out of state in the beginning of the week. My brother John couldn’t make it to our house for Thanksgiving. He asked me if I would come out to Illinois to see him and to help with a project. So, I went out for a few days. I didn’t take many pictures but I do have a few.

Not so fond of seven hour drives (though it actually did not take seven hours. My car’s GPS always overestimates- it’s weird. My phone said closer to six hours and that was much more accurate).

I love a cute small town and the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois are full of them (likely most state are?). When on my way to IL, I got off the interstate and stopped for gas in the town of Veedersburg, Indiana (population 2180). The gas station was so small that it had no parking in front of the building. I needed to use the facilities so after gassing up, I moved my car to the side of the pavement, not in a parking spot but still on the property. I couldn’t help but note how drab the environment was...

The gray day didn’t help matters any. I’m sure this spot isn’t Veedersburg’s best…

My brother and I spent some time in the small town of Mr. Sterling, Illinois (population 2006). It was much more charming that Veedersburg (though again, I’m sure that I didn’t see Veederburg’s best).

I like how, even though it is a small town, there is a veteran's memorial dedicated area.

And of course I like a cleverly worded sign!

We were close to Missouri at one point. The bridge spans the Mississippi River and separates Illinois from Missouri.

Will cross bridge into Missouri for cheaper gas! There are two gas stations located just past the bridge and into Missouri. Gas is almost always around 30 cents cheaper a gallon in Missouri than IL due to Missouri imposing less of a gas tax than IL. One morning, I drove about a mile out of the way to go to Missouri to get cheaper gas.

Picked up these at a store for my brother and me to snack on. I ended up eating the whole bag. WHY are pretzels covered in white chocolate so good... and even better with festive colored sugar on top??

Speaking of festive and sweet, we watched my first cousin once removed, Jolie, and her baking partner advance again in Food Network’s Elf on a Shelf holiday baking contest. 

Made this cowboy stew for dinner one night when I was back home. It is full of protein with three types of meat- bacon, beef and kielbasa sausage and veggies. Spices of cinnamon and smoke paprika give it great flavor. I tweaked it, per ease with soups, based on preferences. It called for twenty four ounces of sausage- I used half and I didn’t add the peas that it called for. 

The best part was that I had all of the ingredients to make this. I realized that I hadn’t been grocery shopping since before Thanksgiving. (I did go to Trader Joe’s with Alyssa last week but only got snacks so I am not counting that.) I have enjoyed my break from grocery shopping and am glad that I was able to make food for as long as I could with pantry/fridge/freezer staples. The two weeks prior to Thanksgiving, it seems like I was going to the(/a) grocery store every three days or so. I’m hosting Christmas for a crowd this year so I will likely soon be doing my every three day run to the store. In addition, the pantry is getting low and my fridge hasn’t had as few items in it for a long time so I can’t put off going to the store any longer!

Only subbed a couple of days this week. One day was as a choir teacher in 6th grade. The good thing about subbing in choir is that I’m not expected to teach the kids singing or heaven forbid, sing to them myself. The bad thing is that then the students are stuck doing boring written assignments. The students did not like their composer assignment- reading about six composers and then answering questions about them but that was what they had to do. I had to write three students’ name down under the “behavior issue” area of my sub report. I hate for the teacher to have to deal with disciplining students when she returned to school the next day.  But having no consequences for poor behavior is not doing the students- both the ones with behavior issues and the ones who make good choices- any favors.

Donnie and I did something fun and unique during the week one evening. We normally spend week nights in; it was odd to have somewhere to go. One of Donnie’s clients and some other business people got together to bring a singer/ songwriter to a historical venue for an evening of live music. It was held in the charming downtown of Miamisburg, OH (population 19,923).

The performer’s name is Regie Hamm- not a household name but he’s written a number of gospel songs and pop songs that have been performed by household name artists. He sang some Christmas songs, some non Christmas songs and interspersed the music with anecdotes about his music career.

The venue was the historic Miamisburg Plaza theater- love being in this building steeped with movie and performance history!

There was a cute Elf display inside the theater. The theater has a stage for performances and it has a projection screen to show new release movies and retro movies like Elf and the The Christmas Story. 

The downtown buildings were so pretty and lit up for Christmas. However, the pictures that I took did not do them justice so I’m not including here. These lights are up year round and I think they add such a fun ambiance (as well as function, since, light). At the end of the buildings is a large public parking lot which is where we parked.