A Couple Days Away

A couple weeks ago our family was able to sneak away for a couple days and have some fun.

The first day we headed to the Volo Auto Museum where we saw all kinds of........

Yep, you guessed it! Cars!

We saw expensive cars. This beauty was only $188,998!

We saw cute little convertible cars.

We sat in a racing car.

We saw old and shiny cars.

(The kids wanted to know why there were no seat belts in most of the cars.)

We saw famous cars. Lots of famous cars!

I was a little disappointed with Kitt. I thought he would be way cooler in real life. 

After the auto museum we headed over to Gurnee to check into our hotel, do a little shopping and get some food.

The next day we headed over to Great America and rode some roller coasters. At least the ones that we were tall enough to go on.

While eating lunch, I looked over and there was Brad flying this little airplane.

 We had a fun couple days and came home exhausted!

A Weekend Trip to Iowa

In one of my Christmas break posts I told you that we said goodbye to some friends that were moving to Iowa. Well, it just so worked out that all of their stuff would not fit into the two big trucks that they had rented. Brad has a friend with a large trailer that we could borrow and the rest of their things got loaded into that trailer and then got moved to our driveway.

This past weekend we headed to Iowa to bring our friends Chris and Eva their trailer of things. Thankfully some good friends of their family let us borrow their vehicle so that we could fit our whole family in and then we took a couple of their kids and headed out.

I always love to think about how God orchestrates these things because this was the only weekend we had open to go visit them until April. If it wasn't for the trailer we wouldn't have gone until then. So thankful for that trailer full of stuff!

Whenever I think about moving, I will just take a look at this picture and then I will stay right where I am at.

Thanks to some nice warm weather and lots of room to roam, there was a lot of football playing.

Since the girls don't play football, they played dress up.

There was 4 wheeler riding. Yep, without helmets. So far, no injuries.

I told Eva to leave me something to do, since they only moved there a week ago I wanted to help out. Since she knows that if she asked me to clean something I would probably turn around and walk out the door, she gave me the fun job of organizing her pantry. Yep, that's right, organizing is fun for me! I really wish I had the before picture because all this stuff (plus more) was literally just piled in here. I had the brilliant idea (yes, I'm tooting my own horn again) to put this bookshelf in here for more shelf space. Now it looks beautiful! It better still look like this next time I go there!!!! If not, I guess I'll just have to reorganize!

On Sunday morning we headed to church. Chris was our former pastor and they moved to Iowa because he took a position at a church as their lead pastor. It was great to hear him bring the word, we sure do miss him at our church.

This is me and Eva. I miss her a lot but am glad she is only 4 hours away. Four hours is long but it could be worse!

This is both of our families.



Before we left we did confetti eggs. Basically these are eggs filled with confetti and you crack them over the heads of others. They were a lot of fun! Well, for everyone else they were, I had fun watching. Thankfully I was the photographer so I didn't get confetti in my hair.

It was a quick trip but it was filled with lots of fun and it was great to see our friends!

Moving Along to Birthday Fun

On Tuesday we had friends over swimming and Brad went to the U2 concert. I have no pictures of any of this, so I will just move along to the next day.

Wednesday was our birthday celebration day even though Joshua, Alexandra, and Amanda's birthdays weren't until Friday.

Brad took Joshua and Isaac miniature golfing, out for lunch to Buffalo Wild Wings, and shopping for Joshua's birthday present. He chose a new Wii game, a baseball mitt, baseballs, gloves, and all that is baseball. I also have no pictures of this because I wasn't there.

Now to the real fun.

I took Alex and Amanda to the American Girl Place in Chicago to pick out a doll and for lunch. We had so much fun! Of course the girls barely ate any of their overpriced meal but we had a lot of fun and it was worth every penny.

They each picked out a doll and had money given to them by grandparents and aunts & uncles that they were able to spend on outfits and accessories.

Here are the girls with their bag of purchases.

On our walk back to the car we stopped and took some pictures.

On Friday we celebrated with cake. They have been asking me for a Banana Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting ever since last November, so that is what they got.

I felt a little bad that I didn't actually decorate the cake but I felt better when I was told that this is the best cake in the whole world.

Fourth of July

On the Fourth, I mostly cleaned and cooked food all morning. But our afternoon was spent going to a parade in a nearby town.

There were far too many firetrucks and they were loud.

I always love the bands. But I wonder about how they walk. Is walking so stiff something these kids (does calling them kids make me old? don't answer that please) have to practice or something they have to show that they can do in tryouts? Either way, it's quite entertaining.

Someone was handing out Popsicles and they were delicious and a nice treat in the heat.

After the parade we went back to our house and enjoyed an evening of swimming and eating with family.

The Fourth is not only a holiday for us to celebrate but we also celebrate Brad's birthday as well.

And that is how we spent our holiday.

Catching Up!

Last week was a week full of fun and exciting things. Brad was off work. The Fourth of July. Brad's birthday. Alexandra, Amanda, and Joshua's birthday. Lots of plans.

When lots of things happen, I have lots to blog about but no time to do it. I took about 200 pictures last week and I would love to share all that we did with you. (Don't worry, I won't post them all.) Since we did so much, I will share in bits and pieces.

Fourth of July weekend started with big pile of mulch in front of my garage. Before I could have any fun, I had to move this pile to various spots around my yard. I got most of it moved, then I could pull my car back in the garage. Now the rest still sits there.

Sunday evening we went out to enjoy the fireworks. Two years ago we went to the same fireworks and it took us 45 minutes to get home.....we live 2 miles away. Last year we skipped for obvious reasons. This year we braved it again but were determined to be a little smarter. We parked in a spot that we could quickly get out. It kind of takes the fun out of it when the fireworks end and you grab your stuff and make a mad dash for your car. All while telling the kids, "Walk faster, walk faster." This year the 2 mile trip only took 20 minutes. We'll see if we can get that number down next year.

They're excited.....can't you tell?

I took my camera with so I could experiment shooting the fireworks. I had a lot of fun trying different Shutter speeds, Aperture, and ISO settings. While I was taking them I was disappointed but once I downloaded them to my computer it was fun to see my different results.

I'll be back with more of our exciting adventures.

Can't wait to look at all my pictures to remind me of all we did. Ha! I told you I'm forgetful.

Our Weekend of Camping

This past weekend was our annual camping trip with some friends and also my sister and her family. The forecast for the weekend was not looking so good and our family is more of a fair-weather camping kind of family. So when they were predicting severe thunderstorms with possible hail.......let's just say, it didn't sound too fun for us. Combine that with a child who is deathly afraid of thunderstorms, a husband that had 5 hours of sleep the night before and a son that had been sick for the whole week before, needless to say, we decided to wait til Saturday morning to leave.

Because of our decision, I am happy to say that there were no storms.

When we woke up Saturday morning, Joshua was covered in hives. As I said, he had been sick all week and was on an anitibiotic. He picked that morning to have an allergic reaction. Even with that, we decided to head out. The campground isn't that far away from home and pharmacies are close by. When I took him to the pharmacy later that day, I found out that he indeed had an allergic reaction. He thought it was very cool that not only does he have an allergy but he also has the same one as his mom.

So, enough about why we went late and almost didn't go at all and here are some highlights from our 30 hour camping trip.

Our camping weekend consisted of a very long hike, with a lot of whining kids AND adults. We are more interested in planting our rear ends in a lawn chair than a 2 hour hike.

This one didn't even take a step on the hike, yet he was tired out.

When we camp, I do my best to not do dishes at all and cook as little as possible. That is why we eat things like Lunchables, chips and cookies.

 

Because we didn't get enough hiking in on the 2 hour (which seemed like 5 hours) hike, we decided to drive to the beach and climb a sand dune.



The good thing about climbing sand dunes IS........you get to run down.