Fun at the Moose Park

Our time in the Midwest ended with a 3 day mini-vacation that Mom and Dad put together for all the kids and grand kids.  We stayed at this awesome indoor water slide park and hotel in Lake Geneva, WI.  (This little trip allowed the girls to color another state on their USA maps too!)  The hotel was super nice and had a cool mountain-y, rustic theme.  The kids dubbed it "The Moose Park" for all the moose, bear and eagle decorations.

The water park was perfect for the ages of our kids.  It had a splash pool with fountains and slides and swings, a lazy river, 2 big waters slides, an indoor/outdoor hot tub, an obstacle course pool and a basketball hoop pool.  While the littles played in spouts of the shallow pool, the older kids would traverse across the ropes and floating logs or ride double tubes down the bigger slides together.

Delia took huge joy in riding the "big green slide".  She had a goal to go down it 99 times.  A hike up several flights of steps was required to get to the top.  I don't know if she met her goal, but I certainly feel like I climbed those steps about 99 times!

I know that one of the best parts of the trip for Dave was convincing Cole to finally go down the big green slide with him.  One trip down and this kid was hooked.  Uncle Dave suddenly had a new BFF.  He loved spending a large chunk of this water park time bonding with Cole. 

This may be one of my favorite pictures of the trip!  I hope when Dave and I have a bunch of grandchildren we are still riding the double tube around the lazy river holding hands! :)

On our last day of vacation we finally got some sun!  It warmed up just enough for the hotel to open the outside water features.  While we had our fingers crossed that it would hit 70 in WI so we could swim outside, back in CA it was 108 or something!

You might think that 3 straight days of water slides would get old, but this trip was a total blast and everyone had a really marvelous time!    Thanks again, Grandma and Grandpa!

Nothing Says "Romance" Like Blue Men

Lucky us, we actually got to celebrate our 14 year wedding anniversary twice this year!  For an anniversary gift, I had given Dave tickets to see Blue Man Group at Chicago's Briar Street Theatre a week following the date of our anniversary.  Mom and Dad were all too happy to take the girls on a special outing to the zoo, followed by dinner and a sleepover, so Dave and I could enjoy this night out.

We started with dinner at a sentimental restaurant Dave and I would frequent with our high school friends after basketball games.  Our crushes on each other grew during these group visits to Houlihan's and we would later have meals there as dates.  We haven't been back in probably about 15 years, so dinner here was a fun way to start our anniversary date.

The Blue Man Group was an interesting show.  It was not really what I expected.  The main word I would use to describe it would be "wacky".  There was plenty of drumming with paint and playing instruments made of strange pipe configurations.  But, there was quite a bit of social commentary, comedy and audience participation too.

Shortly after we took our seats, a theater worker came up and inquired of Dave, "May I ask how tall you are?"  After hearing his reply, the man then asked, "How would you like to be in the show tonight?"  My husband, who has a college major in communications, had a role in every single high school and college play, founded a college comedy troupe and now takes a stage every single week for his career, completely lit up!  They marked our spot on the aisle with a big tape X and whisked Dave backstage to tell him about the role he'd play in the night's show.  The gig was that the Blue Men wanted to try "Human Painting."  They scoured the audience for a volunteer, picked Dave, put him in a full paint suit and helmet and brought him backstage.  A video was played for us in the audience that said "Live backstage" and showed "Dave" being covered in paint, strung up by his ankles, hung upside down and slammed into a giant canvas.  The Blue Men then wheeled out a cart with a Jello mold on top of it.  After poking at the Jello, they smashed it apart and revealed Dave's head inside of it!  Dave was taken out of the cart and sent back to the audience with the canvas his body had painted.  My first thought was, "NO WAY we're going to be able to take that home with us!"  But, the canvas was kept in the theater for people to look at after the show and only Dave and I knew that it wasn't really his dangling body that painted it.  Cool, huh?  

When I got this gift for Dave, I would have never guessed that an opportunity to get onstage and "perform" with the Blue Man Group would be a part of it!  So, happy anniversary to my husband, who is brave enough to do things I would never dream of doing and who continues to impress, surprise and delight me every day! :)

Downtown Day

Monday was planned to be another BIG day (so ready yourself for a BIG post!).  We were excited to spend the whole day in our favorite city showing the girls some things they haven't seen in Chicago yet, and things we haven't seen in years.

We got into the city via train and then took a water taxi to our first stop on Michigan Ave.  Though these modes of transportation are truly the quickest, cheapest and easiest way to see the city, they are also very exciting to experience.  I love watching the city skyline get closer as the train pulls into Union Station and I love sailing under each of those famous streets as the taxi makes its way down the Chicago River.

We walked about a mile down the Magnificent Mile to get to our first destination at Water Tower Place-- the American Girl Place.  This particular American Girl store is the flagship and it is sprawling.  As you can image, the girls were in heaven.

To come here was actually Auntie Karen's idea.  She wanted to treat the girls to some special experience with their beloved dolls.  They decided to get their picture taken for the cover of a magazine.  It was so cute watching Ella, Delia, Kaya and McKenna have a little photo shoot.  And we thought it was fun to see the studio's new screensaver when we went back to pick up the magazine.

Ella was also excited to get McKenna's ears pierced at the American Girl Doll salon.  Now they match.

As we finished up at Water Tower and headed to our next stop, we passed the Blackhawks Store.  See Ella modeling in the window?  We explained to the girls that this was "Daddy's American Girl Doll Store" and it was his turn to be in retail heaven. :)

A quick stop at The Bean in Millennium Park preceded our visit to the Art Institute of Chicago.  Dad used an amazing work connection to get all our tickets into the world class art museum for free!

Though the Art Institute is full of famous works by Picasso, Monet, O'Keeffe, Dali, van Gogh, Pollock, Matisse and more, the exhibit we were most excited to see was a temporary one celebrating the children's book artists who've won the esteemed Caldecott Medal.  Weeks before our trip, we checked all the books from the exhibit out of the library to get acquainted with them.  It was SO COOL to see the original work from the pages we've been reading and falling in love with.  Ella aspires to be an author/illustrator some day, Delia loves a good, funny story and I am crazy about children's lit.  This exhibit was tailor-made for us and we LOVED it!

The rest of the Art Institute was incredible too, of course.  It was fun to see again and introduce art-loving Ella to classics like American Gothic or Seurat's Sunday Afternoon at the Park.

Ella's favorite ended up being Chagall's wall of stained glass windows.

After the Art Institute, we met up with Chris and our nephews, who were just ending their day of school.  Another amazing work connection allowed Chris to score us all free tickets to the Skydeck of the Willis Tower.  Two major (and expensive!) Chicago landmarks for free for us on this day!  It was great.

The top of the Willis/Sears Tower is the highest point in the city.  It's 103 floors up.  Ella has a fear of heights and does not love elevators.  She was pretty sure she was NOT going to be a part of this outing.  But, with tears and while clinging to Dave, she bravely decided to give it a try to be with the rest of the family.  

The views were fantastic!  But, even better than the view of the city was the sight of Ella's fear slowly melting away.  She went from clinging, to independently standing at a window to actually walking out on The Ledge voluntarily and multiple times!  The Ledge is an all glass cube that hangs off the edge of the 103rd floor.  I don't have a problem with heights, but "floating" above this city in this glass box for a just quick picture made me feel weak in the knees.

  

I have no idea how these crazy kids were doing this!  Especially Ella, who a half hour before was freaking out about even going in the building!

Special and unexpected memories were sprinkled throughout this trip.  Seeing Ella completely conquer this fear and then describe the top of the Willis Tower as the best part of her downtown day was another bright spot on our vacation. 

Each part of this day was so neat, unlike Ella, I can't even say what was my favorite!

All Together at Cantigny

This day was Dad's idea.  He said the one thing he wanted for Father's Day was for his whole family to get together and enjoy an afternoon at Cantigny.  Cantigny is a special park dedicated to remembering and educating visitors about soldiers who've fought for our freedoms.  

This day was Sunday and it followed a morning at church.  We all met up at the playground for a picnic and some play.  Unfortunately, this was probably our yuckiest day weather wise.  We got rained on and covered in mud, but it was actually still a really nice day.

Cantigny is probably most known for its huge collection of real tanks.  They are scattered all around the park and are super fun to climb and play on.  I totally remember doing this as a kid myself.

Cantigny also has this great museum that teaches its visitors about the modern wars our country has fought in by recreating scenes from them.  We walked through the trenches, Normandy Beach, the jungle of Vietnam and the desert of Iraq, seeing sights and hearing sounds that gave us a tiny idea of what it may have been like to be in these places.  It sounds sort of intense, but our younger kids were distracted by a scavenger hunt activity that the museum provided.

Hopefully I can speak for everyone when I say that the opportunity to get together as a whole group was another highlight of the trip-- even though crummy weather tried to thwart our outdoor plans.

Gone Fishin'

While Auntie Kris took Delia to paint pottery and Auntie Karen took Ella to an art class, Dave and I took our five favorite boys to the nearby pond to go fishing.  Apparently this pond is stocked with large mouth bass and not really known to many people, making the fishing the best we've ever experienced.  In just a little over an hour we caught 27 big fish (according to Calvin's tally, at least)!  Each boy caught at least 2 fish. We  outnumbered adults were kept hopping baiting hooks, removing fish, helping cast, snapping pictures and keeping kids from getting tangled in line.

  

Miles. Love him.  Smartest and most articulate 3 year old I know.

Cole.  Probably our most enthusiastic fisherman.

Calvin.  Winner of the "Most Fish Caught" and our numbers and statistics man.

Aidan.  Impossible to be around this charming guy without smiling.

Theoren.  Official "Sunfish Catcher" while everyone else was reeling in bass.  Also caught a tree at the end of the morning! :)

The cousins had such an excellent time playing hard together for most of this trip.  I barely saw my own girls for 9 days!  This morning was a wonderful way to get the kids in smaller groups with a focused activity, allowing us to enjoy some quality time with them and get to know them better.  This crazy fishing outing was one of my favorite parts of our trip!