Father's Day Weekend in Chicago

Our whole family was excited that we would get to spend Father's Day weekend in Chicago!  We headed up on Thursday and landed mid-afternoon.  Both girls have become pros at air travel which we appreciate.  I did laugh though as they asked what time we would launch.  I guess that's a carryover from our time at Rocket Center a few weeks ago!  David picked us up from the airport, and we headed towards their home.  The Blackhawks were having their Stanley Cup celebration parade that day, and we decided it was best to stay in for the evening.  We ordered in some delicious pizza and simply enjoyed being with David and Jan.  Nick joined us towards the end of our time there, and it was great to visit with him again.  We finally decided to head over to our hotel, so we could all rest up and get ready for a fun weekend.

I took tons of pictures throughout this trip, but I've tried to condense them down to collages where possible, just to save some space.

On Friday morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel and then drove over to Lincoln Park Zoo.  It was an amazingly beautiful day!  We were so fortunate with our weather the whole time.  The zoo really wasn't too crowded either, so we were able to take our time and get up close and personal with the animals.  The girls really enjoyed riding the endangered species carousel.  We were all fascinated by the gibbon monkeys and their crazy calls.  I loved being in the big cats' den where we were able to get incredible views of lions, tigers, wolverines, etc.  Lily was very excited to get a stuffed animal from the zoo to match "Linca," the sea otter she got last time. She settled on a cute giraffe that she has named "Necklace."  Mia decided she would save her souvenir buying for a later day.

After several hours at the zoo, we headed out for lunch at D4 which was so good.  Then Jan took the girls while Ryan, David and I stopped by a great butcher shop and our hotel to get a few things together.  Jan started by going to Walgreens to get the girls sweatshirts.  Though it was beautiful, we weren't expecting the upper 50's for the weather!  When the wind blew off the lake, it was really chilly!  After they got sweatshirts, they walked over to Maggie Daly Park where a new playground had just opened.  Mia was thrilled to see the new climbing wall!  She spent close to an hour and a half on it.  She was definitely the smallest person out their climbing, but she had the most determination.  I'm truly amazed at her confidence and willingness to try things like this.  Love this girl!

Just after she started climbing, David and Ryan dropped me off.  Jan and I alternated staying to watch Mia and playing on the rest of the playground with Lily.  It was a pretty neat one with lots of different areas to explore.  It started out being not too crowded but then filled up as the day went on.  We realized that was the last day of school for Chicago kids, so many were celebrating at the playground.

When Mia's climbing time was up, she joined us on the playground.  They had a great time together.

David and Jan were very kind and offered to keep the girls for us at their home Friday night so Ryan and I could have a date.  Nick found some tickets for us which we appreciated.  We cheered on the White Sox this time, and loved that it was "Mullet Night" sponsored by Great Clips.  It was hilarious.  This was a great evening.

While we were at the game, the girls were having a blast swimming at David and Jan's home.  They will always take the chance to go swimming!

They also took this time to play with Taz a lot.  They love that little dog!

On Saturday, we enjoyed breakfast together and then stayed at their home for awhile.  Ryan and I were super excited to visit Eataly for lunch; we love this place.  It's probably one of my favorite places to visit, anywhere.  After that, we went to see the newest Pixar movie called Inside Out.  It was really cute, and we all enjoyed it.  Saturday evening we spent eating all sorts of yummy meats and cheeses from Eataly.  It was wonderful.

Sunday was Father's Day.  We were thankful to have both Ryan and David around to celebrate with.  Our girls have no idea how blessed they are to have Ryan for their father; he's a great one.  We decided to celebrate by visiting the Adler Planetarium.  It was a fascinating place.  The first part was all about the Gemini and Apollo space missions which we all love.  Ryan and I loved that the astronauts read the creation story in Genesis as a Christmas Eve broadcast from space.  The NASA flight manual said they would do this because there was nothing more appropriate than this.  I had goosebumps just listening to it.  We visited the dome for an interesting space adventure movie, and we ate a little lunch in the cafe.  There were some beautiful views of Lake Michigan and the city from the cafe.  The rest of our visit was spent seeing how other civilizations used the planets to create calendars and tell time, and how our understanding of the solar system has deepened with scientists and their tools.  It was a wonderful visit.

Another beautiful day; love this view from the Adler balcony!

We made our way back to the condo and got everything ready to grill out for the evening.  Look at this beautiful view!  This is on the 17th floor of the condo tower where they have lots of grills and patio space for the residents to use.

I think it's safe to say the girls were worn out from this weekend.  This is them all cozy on our sofa bed in the hotel.

This is how we found them sound asleep the next morning.

On Monday, David picked us up.  We enjoyed a breakfast at Yolk and then stopped by to see his new office.  It's in a really cool loft setting.  We got to meet his employees too which was nice.  From there it was time to head to the airport to come on home.  Our flight was delayed for a bit due to some bad weather coming in, but we managed to get out before it hit.  Both girls fell asleep on the car ride home.  It had been a big weekend.  We all loved it though.  We always enjoy our time with David and Jan.  We look forward to doing it again!

94 Years Young

Happy 94th birthday to Meme!  We love this lady so much.  Our family went to visit after I got home from work but before she headed to dinner.  Mom and Dad were there as were Mr. and Mrs. Rice.  Meme was so happy.  She had lots of visitors all day.  She was in great spirits.  I'm so thankful for her!

Hometown Tourist

We had some painters in our house last weekend, so we decided to play hometown tourist and give the fumes some time to get out.  We headed down to have lunch at Veni, Vidi, Vici; we were sad to learn they were closing but glad we made it by to have agnolotti once last time.  From there we drove down to the Marriott Marquis.  We all loved the view from our room. 

 We spent pretty much all afternoon in the pool.  It's a really great one.  It's a combo indoor/outdoor one, they provide pool noodles which we all love, and there's a hot tub.  The girls made a couple of new friends too which was sweet.  Finally, it was time to head in for dinner.  You know what that means...club sandwich from room service, my favorite!

 Just hanging out with this cutie.

 On Saturday we went over to The World of Coke.  The girls had never been, and it's something every Atlantan needs to do in their life.  Given that they rarely drink Coke (in fact, I think this was their first time to have real Coke instead of a product like Sprite or Fanta), this was quite a treat for them.  They loved it, well, until they tried the Beverly from Italy.  It was fun to see their reaction to that famous product (see Mia's face in the bottom middle of this collage).

We all enjoyed seeing the different bottles too, especially the ones from Morocco, China and India, three countries that hold special places in our hearts.

What a fun way to show a little hometown pride!

Memorial Day Weekend in Huntsville

We had such a fun summer kick-off over Memorial Day weekend!  Both of our girls are fascinated by space.  Lily just spent 2nd grade learning all about astronomy, and Mia thinks astronauts are the greatest; she'll go to outer space in a second if given the chance.  So, we decided to give Huntsville a try.  I took so many pictures over the course of the weekend, so I've narrowed them down into these collages so this post wouldn't be too incredibly long.

We headed over on Saturday morning, and we arrived at the Botanical Gardens right about lunch time.  We decided to grab a quick bite in their cafe before exploring.  It was an amazingly beautiful day, and we had a great time wandering the trails, admiring the flora and just taking in part of God's creation.  We also loved that they had several Lego displays up throughout the garden; it was fun to spot those.  There was something beautiful and/or fun to spot everywhere we looked.

We really enjoyed our time together.  I think we could have stayed several hours on the hammocks!  The kids' area was really neat; the girls were able to pet turtles which was something new.  They both enjoyed being our tour guide and using the map.  There was a very small playground with a couple of regular swings and a rope swing; they loved that!  This was really a lovely day!  

 After several hours of enjoying our time at the Gardens, we headed over to our hotel.  We got ready for the pool pretty quickly and headed down.

 After swimming, we came up to order room service dinner and shower off.  We all wanted a good night's sleep so we would be ready for the Space and Rocket Center the next day.

There were so many fun things to do at the Center.  Of course, it was fascinating to learn about the history (and some future predictions) of our space program.  Mia's favorite part was rocking climbing "on Mars."  This girl always loves a good rock climbing experience!  She scaled the wall quite skillfully two times.  Lily's favorite part was in the "Robot Zoo" where they had all sorts of robots and robotic activities that resembled animals.  It was pretty interesting.  We saw Saturn V which was humongous!  We learned all sorts of fascinating information.  What a wonderful way to spend the day.

 After leaving the Center, we drove up to Chattanooga for the evening; there's really no good direct way to Atlanta.  We spent the night (swimming in the hotel pool again), and then took our time heading out the next morning.  We stopped on the way home at the Tellus Science Museum in North Georgia.  Lily had actually gone earlier this year with her class, and she loved it.  She was excited to return while the other three of us looked forward to going.  Again, it was very interesting.  We learned about dinosaurs, gems, geology, space and transportation.  The girls enjoyed playing in the kids' area which included lots of science activities and also a temporary exhibit on the history of toys.  I think it's safe to say though the best part for all of us was the planetarium show where we learned about the night sky over Georgia.

This has certainly been an educational weekend, but we all had a great time!  What a fantastic way to kick off summer!

Other Spring Happenings

I love after tax season Spring!  I feel like a new person each year with a renewed sense of freedom.  I get to cook more, be up at the school more and simply enjoy life more.  It's wonderful!  Here are a few pictures of the end of May.

My company is celebrating it's 10th year of business this year.  Can you believe it?!  I hardly can.  It's been an interesting, stretching and mostly wonderful 10 years, and we are so incredibly blessed by it.  I wanted to do something a little fun to celebrate, so I rented a suite at the Braves' game.  We beat the Reds which was an added bonus!  I decided to make the evening even more celebratory by having both employees and friends there.  Ryan and I had a great time celebrating with Mary, Heather and their husbands, Adam and Alex (unfortunately, my two other employees, Larry and Sandy, were unable to make it), along with our friends, Jamie and Alan (Jamie also worked as a season preparer which was fantastic), Brian and Jill, Chris and Denna, Elizabeth and Jeff, and Heather and Andy.  In this picture with me are Jamie, Elizabeth and Heather.  This was a fantastic night!

 The girls always love face painting; they spent a couple of hours one morning painting each other's faces with the set Mia received for Christmas.

 For Christmas, David and Jan gave Ryan a gift card to buy this outdoor inflatable screen and projector.  We are loving it!  We set it up on our back deck in the evenings and enjoy watching shows (like Downtown Abbey, pictured here) or movies.  The World Cup just started this weekend, and we watched a game of that on it too.  We can't wait for football season this Fall!

 Mia had such a great time at Noah's "Mad Scientist" birthday party where she got to make slime!

 Poor Lily was wiped out one afternoon and ended up napping on the couch; it's very rare for her to take a nap, so I had to snap this picture.  She's all curled up and sucking her thumb; other than the size difference, I could have taken this same photo almost 8 years ago.  She hasn't changed!

 I was treated to a Mother's Day breakfast in bed of waffles, Greek yogurt, blueberries and milk.  Yum!

 The girls had made some crafts to give me which was very sweet.  Mia's class made these heart-shaped pins with different buttons on it.  The one on the top right has some sort of Chinese or Japanese writing it on, so we decided it probably says "I love you Mommy" on it.  Lily made me this rainbow loom octopus from my favorite band colors.  It's quite impressive.

Mia filled out this at school.  I couldn't stop smiling!

I love these two so very much!

 After church we came home and Ryan grilled hamburgers for us; they were awesome as always.  For dinner, we went over to Wayne's house which was a nice treat.  I was glad to have a picture with my Mom.  I love this lady to pieces, and I'm so grateful for her!

 Loved that we got a picture with Wayne too!

 Snaggletooth Lily here missing four teeth (two on top, two on bottom) at once.  Oh so super cute!  Hard to tell here, but Mia is missing her bottom two middle teeth too.  The tooth fairy has been busy!

 We always love when Grandpops comes to town.  In addition to getting to spend time together, he treated the four of us to dinner at Rathbun's which was fantastic and appreciated!

 The school held a carnival since the kids did a great job raising money with their Fun Run.  Take a wild guess what the girls were most excited about...

We surprised the girls and took them strawberry picking at a nearby farm after school one day.  We'd never tried it before, and it just looked fun; we were right!  It was a pretty warm day, but we had a lot of fun together.  When we got home, we couldn't wait to sample our goodies in milkshakes.

After a wonderful Spring, we're ready for Summer!

End of the School Year

It's hard to believe another school year has come and gone.  Lily has finished 2nd grade with Mrs. St. Hill and Mia has finished Kindergarten with Mrs. Keesee.  It's been wonderful years for them both!  We have loved these two teachers!  Here are a few things that were going on the last couple of weeks of school.

I was thrilled to help chaperone Lily's class trip to the Renaissance Festival. I remember going once when I was a kid, and I thought it was really cool.  I truly was looking forward to going back.  Even after all these years I enjoyed it!

Lily with some of her friends as we walked in (Emory, McClendon, Lily, Avery and Raegan). 

 Preparing for the joust!  This was everyone's favorite event.

 Lily and Emory choose to spend their souvenir money on making sand art.

 It was a lovely day!

 Mrs. Hobson's 6th grade class also went, so here's a picture of both classes together just before we headed home.

 History Day is always a fun celebration.  The kids love to dress up and enjoy a school-wide feast.  Each class has a different time period: Lily's was Renaissance-era and Mia was Biblical times.  Lily choose to dress up as Christopher Columbus while Mia went as Mary.

 The last day of school is always a half-day and ends with a picnic on the playground.  The last 1.5 hours of the day are the awards ceremony and 8th grade graduation.  It's always a fun event filled with joy and excitement.  At the awards ceremony, Mia received a certificate for winning the poetry contest recently, and she was recognized for excellence in art and music.  Lily was also recognized for excellence in art.  It was so fun to see them receive recognition for their hard work!

Before the school-wide awards ceremony, Mrs. Keesee recognized each child in her class with a character award.  Mia received one for Compassion, defined as "feeling the hurts of others and doing something about it."  We were so proud of her.  What a wonderful characteristic to have.

The girls had lots of fun getting their friends to sign their yearbooks.  Mia was ecstatic when she saw this picture in the yearbook.  In case you can't read it, the caption below says "Yearbook theme inspired by Mia Hooks' spaceship.  Thank you Mia!  Mrs. Rodriguez."  This was Mia's favorite piece of artwork she had created all year, and she loved that it inspired Mrs. Rodriguez in her yearbook production!

It's hard to believe the school year is over, but I'd say it's been a success!