Oh Chicago!

So a few weeks ago I was lucky enough to find myself traveling.......alone. Well, not really alone alone - I had my mom and dad with me. But alone as in no little chubby fingers pulling at my shirt. No children whining about needing snacks. No fighting in the back of my car about who is copying who.

I was alone.

Headed to Chicago! To meet up with my sisters! Wahooo! Girls only trip (plus sugar daddy:) He was invaluable to us by watching Heather's 3 month old baby while we girls took off to see a Broadway Musical.

That's right. "Wicked" was playing in Bre's neighborhood so we planned an entire trip around this one event. Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera with me so we didn't even get a picture with the billboard. I have a couple of shots on my phone but I don't know how transfer them to my computer....Actually I don't think I have the proper equipment. Oh well.

Here we all are after the show - this is taken by a professional photographer from Skips (Bre's husband) office. Hence the office in the background. We were visiting Skip. Don't we look cute?

Everyone thought this was my first baby....that's what happens when you travel alone :)

Here we are in our hotel room in Chicago. We left Bre's house in Peoria to stay a couple of nights in Chicago. We wanted the city experience! We stayed right on Michigan Ave. (aka the "Magnificent Mile") and magnificent it was! And busy. Extremely people/traffic busy. But talk about shopping!!!! An entire mile of shopping. Too bad I am very pregnant.......

Here we are at Navy Pier. Me, Bre, Heather, Shayli and my mom. This was right after I got the phone call from Darren saying he was taking my little Jace to the emergency room.

Huh?

Talk about things falling apart when mom's not home! Apparently Jace got very sick (throwing up and dry heaving on top of a cold) and despondant. Anyways, he couldn't breathe well and needed to get some antibiotics. At any rate, I was a worried mother for part of the day while things got figured out.

Since my dad was taking the girls picture I got one of him by himself! Looking good!

Here I am at the top of our hotel. We stayed on the 33rd floor - YIKES! But what a view!

I'm also wearing my "twin jacket" in this picture. Heather has a matching one. We bought them together on the Magnificent Mile at a magnificent price! They are our Chicago twin jackets. We also have matching jackets from our Seattle trip earlier this year. You could say it's become tradition:)

Here is the Silver Man, as I call him. He had some mooooves. We didn't want to stay too long though - he had a way of picking out the ladies and asking for tips. We were too broke at the point to help a brotha out.


The famous popcorn store. At least I'm told it's famous. I hadn't ever heard of it but they did have good popcorn. And a line that never left. I told Heather and Bre to smile but they obviously didn't hear me...

One of my favorite shots of the trip. He was stopped at a stoplight. It took some quick acting to get this shot! And we managed to get one of Heather too. Everyone else kept going without us.

That was when we got lost. I should say the first time we got lost. It was hard to navigate in the city with all those skyscrapers around us.......

And then we headed home. And our girls weekend +dad was over.

I have not been alone since:)

Pumpkins!

It's PUMPKIN PATCH TIME!!

Every year we look forward to heading out to Granada with Grandpa Sim and Grandma Lu to pick out the best pumpkins. This year was no exception....luckily we had a very nice day to search the patch. The only problem (for me) was finding a way to take pictures without the sun in people's eyes (got lots of those), or my shadow in the picture (got some of those too), or grimaces on kids face! Other than that, it was a success!

Jace, Brooklyn, and Abby - happy to be here!

Grandma Lu even joined in the searching.


Grandma Lu was also responsible for handing over the super sharp pruners to my 6 and 4 year olds (I was told I was ruining everyone's fun when I tried to protest.....).

Luckily all fingers (and toes) remain intact - and nobody's fun was ruined:)

Jace was Grandpa's little helper.



Grandpa Sim found the most unique pumpkin - there's no one else that has a pumpkin like that around!

Brooklyn came away with the biggest pumpkin.

And the biggest smile! Did Imention we love the pumpkin patch?

Happy Carving!

Mesa Verde

On our way to Lake Powell we decided to take a little detour through Mesa Verde. We've never been before and didn't know when we'd get back down that way so we decided to fit it in. We didn't have a lot of time so we weren't able to see everything but we did manage to get one tour in of what they call Spruce Tree. Amazing!

Here we are in some pit. I'm sure I would know more details about its actual function had we participated in the educational part of the tour! But since we didn't have enough time for that we just made up our own ideas about what it was used for:)



This picture is taken from the trail that we hiked down. We were literally the only family there. We were swarmed by tons of old people. I was actually quite impressed that they all made it down the steep trail without assistance! I'm not sure, but I think my rambunctious kids made them all a little nervous.....




Here's Abby headed down into the pit. We didn't know what the kids would think of Mesa Verde but they ended up really loving it. Brooklyn especially was into reading all the pamphlets we got and asking questions about it. They thought it was pretty cool that these were real Indian dwellings that real Indians used to live in!

Here we all are. The baby bump is there- it's just hiding really well! And then we were off to Lake Powell!

Lake Powell

Have you ever been to Lake Powell? I haven't...until last week! We made our first trip ever and joined most of Darren's family. Our brother-in-law works out there and was able to secure a houseboat for us all to stay on - for free! It was so nice to have a kitchen and a bathroom to use while "roughing it"!!!

We had all kinds of things to play on for our stay. A water trampoline being one of them. We also had a jet ski, two boats (wakeboarding, kneeboarding, tubing, and surfing), a beach (hours of fun), and a hike to a natural arch just a mile or two away from campsite.

Luckily I got a few pictures of Jace early on. He ended up with a really bad diaper rash (courtesy of being wet all day long) and had to go commando for a day and a half! I couldn't even put his swim trunks on because his rash continued half -way down his inner thighs. Poor little guy. I think he quite enjoyed his newfound freedom and was very amazed at being able to watch himself use the restroom.....


The beach proved to be a great spot for the kids to gather seashells, dig pits, create rivers and make mudbaths.

Here they are enjoying the fruits of their labors!

Abby decided to try her hand at wakeboarding. She gave it a good shot but wasn't able to stay up.



Brooklyn on the boat - Ty snacking. One of our favorite activities while boating!

I unfortunately did not take a picture of our houseboat - I don't know why not. But we did have top deck with a hot tub, and a slide that dropped you off into the lake. The drop off was actually quite high, I thought, (probably 4 feet) for little kids but Abby loved it. Brooklyn braved it one time and it wasn't a great experience so she was done with it. Jace thought he wanted to go down the slide but I wouldn't let him. There were also four rooms with queen sized beds, couches and tables that changed into beds, 2 bathrooms and a kitchen. The men all slept on the top deck under the stars.

All in all we had a great time and I was thankful that we didn't go in the middle of summer because it was still plenty hot in September!