Just one last post! Here are all the random photos from this weekend… We spent the first and last evenings of our trip at my Grandma Vivian’s house. She and Charlie seem to love having my lively kids romp all over their house! They’ve just gotten a puppy, named Susie, and Josiah loved playing with the dog.

You can’t see it because of the pacifier (which he really only has for nap and bedtime),
but he was giggling and laughing like crazy every time Susie ran towards him.

Josiah *LOVED* running up and down the halls in the hotel. He would run from one end to another, giggling with glee.

Uncle Hal bounced Josiah on the bed, and Josiah -though you can’t tell in the photo- was having so much fun.
He was making an "uhhhh-uh (bounce) uhhhhh-uh" drone the whole time, mesmerized by the sound and the bouncing.

For these photos, appreciate the food, not the faces, as none of us look good, except, of course, Anna. For Brian’s birthday, Friday night, my plans to go to the Cheesecake Factory and up the Hancock Building or Sears Tower didn’t come together, as we didn’t know that dining out in Chicago on a Friday evening involved a lot of time waiting for a table. Anna, Hal, my mom, Brian and I ventured out on the L-train… $10 for an entire 6 blocks, only to find we were still a few blocks from our destination (we looked like total tourists, not knowing how to work the turnstile and then ending up on the wrong train platform!). We enjoyed the walk, but found a long wait at the Cheesecake Factory. We headed to the Grand Lux Cafe. After a long wait, while my dad wandered around downtown Chicago for about an hour and finally found us, the 6 of us finally got seated around 9:15 or so. The menu is amazing, and the food was even more amazing when it arrived!

I got strawberry shortcake – wonderful. Anna had lettuce wraps – they were an amazing work of art with towering rice noodles on top. My dad’s fish and chips was even piled into a tower rivaling the lettuce wraps. My mom’s apple pie was voted the absolute best by everyone (‘cept me… I’m partial to strawberries and my homemade apple pie). Brian and Hal both had good meals, too, though not as photo worthy as ours:). It was a really nice dinner with my family, made particularly enjoyable to be without kids for a relaxing evening of adult interaction.

The Hancock building all lit up on Friday evening.

Josiah enjoying a cupcake (a treat my dad brought all the way from my favorite St. Paul coffe shop)
during our picnic before the aquarium on Sunday.
He loves his cupcakes…

The whole point of our wonderful Chicago trip was to share in my cousin, Natalie’s wedding.  They live in Chicago, and Bob’s family is Polish, so this wedding kind of took on a life of its own as it was being planned.  Weddings are even more of a big deal in the Polish community than they are elsewhere, so Bob’s mom stepped in and "upgraded" lots of areas of the reception.  This made for a VERY fancy, elegant affair, and we had a wonderful time celebrating their special day with all my family.  My Mom and Dad were both there, my Grandma Vivian and Charlie, my sister, Anna and her husband, Hal. 

The wedding took place in a beautiful garden.  Even though the wedding was at 5pm, it was still hot… probably 80 degrees.  The bridesmaids were in chocolate brown dresses, and the groomsmen and groom were in beige tuxedos.  The flowers were blue and white.  Very pretty. 

After the wedding, hord’erves and drinks were served until dinner started at 7pm.  The reception was held under a semi-permanent tent next to the garden.  It had fans and air conditioning machines, so it was actually a little cooler than outside, even as the evening cooled off.  There were pretty chandeliers, and beautiful hydrangea arrangements on all the tables. 

I don’t normally drink much, but we sampled a little of the "top-shelf" open bar, and the waiters kept everyone’s wine and champagne glasses filled.  My Dad and Grandma toasting…this picture’s one of my favorites:)

Dinner included a fancy salad and bread, tortellini carbonara (a cream sauce with peas and bacon – DELICOUS!), filet mingon with mushrooms AND chicken limone with green beans and carrots, and a lemon sorbet with assorted cookies.  There was also a huge delicious dessert buffet of chocolate dipped strawberries, mini cheese cakes, cream puffs, fruit tarts, biscotti and other delights. 

One table was set up with pretty containers of blue, white and brown candy so you could make your own little chinese-takeout box to take home as a favor from the evening.  A 7-piece band played throughout the evening, and they were really great.  Natalie was a stunning bride, and I hope she and Bob enjoyed the evening as much as we did!

Anna and my cousin, Nikki’s daughter, Mia, who was a beautiful little flower girl.

The weekend before we went to Chicago, we followed Brian up to Nashville for a bike race.  We got to visit our cousins, Richard and Christy and their 3 little ones, Lily, Luke and Levi.

Three-month old Levi just watched his crazy cousins dancing and playing. 

Luke, Analise, Lily and squirmy Josiah.  He never wants to sit still for a group photo!

Sweet little Levi.

I know these posts are in random order about the weekend, but I’m doing the pictures I’ve got handy:)  On Sunday afternoon, we headed to the Shedd Aquarium.  We sort of missed turning into the museum/aquarium area down by the Lake, so I was checking out a map, and I’d been giving updates on what we should pass on our way there.  As we were turning around, Analise said, "I need to see the map, Mommy!"  I handed her the map, and she said, "Ok, we’ll go through a tunnel, and then we pass Soldier Field and then we turn."  She was right on with her directions, having put together everything I’d just said over the course of 15 minutes.  Then she said, "Ok mom, here you go" and handed me the map. 🙂  She’s a smart cookie.

Fun fish fountain outside the aquarium.

They’ve got a Komodo dragon on display.  It wasn’t actually as fun as the one we saw at the Birmingham Zoo earlier this year.  But there was a huge inflated komodo dragon outside that you could walk under. 

There were so many people!  I suppose that’s to be expected of a Sunday afternoon in the height of summer.  The Aquarium is pretty expensive, too, $25/person (thanks, Mom!).  But Brian scored a free admission as an educator with his Samford ID.  Anyway, it was really hard to completely enjoy everything, as there were people everywhere.  The highlight was in the Oceanarium, a tank that goes right up to a big window overlooking Lake Michigan.  This is the ampitheater for the marine mammal shows in the Oceanarium.  Brian’s Dad saved us spots for more than half an hour, and it was standing room only when it got started.  The show featured the dolphins, and it was really cool to see how they’ve been trained to swim together, jump, and so other various things. 

The Chicago lakeshore and marina from the Oceanairum window.

The view of Downtown from the Aquarium.

Ok, I’m starting a couple different posts with pictures about our trip to Chicago last weekend. We had a great time. It was close quarters in Brian’s Dad’s car – Analise in the far back seat, Brian, Josiah and I (lucky me in the middle) in the center, and his parents in the front. We did watch Ice Age and the sequel several times, as I expected. But Brian and I enjoyed riding together doing logic puzzles. Josiah loved having me next to him. Here’s the first fun picture from the trip…

And we wondered why we couldn’t get him to sleep…

For over a year now, I’ve chatted with a group of moms online, and we’ve gotten to be good friends. Michele and I have a lot in common… both Analise and Josiah are the same ages as her kids, Emma and Michael. She lives outside of Chicago, and ever since we knew we were going up for the wedding, we’ve been looking forward to getting together.

Saturday morning, we met at a park so the kids could play. They had a great time! Analise and Emma are both big sisters, and we were a little worried that they might be a little too bossy for each other. But they hit it off immediately. Josiah and Michael are only 3 days apart in age, they started walking within a day of each other, and they’ve got similar personalities. They were so cute together, playing with the balls and "sharing" pretzels and lunch. (I say "sharing" because at this age, when one offers food to another, I’m not sure they really mean for the other to take it. But they did well together!)

After playing for a bit, we headed to the Choo Choo Diner. This place is seriously fun! There is a bar area, with 2 booths on either end, and a train track runs around the rectangle and a little electric train brings baskets of your food out on the back of the train. So cute! Brian’s dad told them it was Brian’s birthday (well, the day before), so the train brought us a little sprinkled cupcake with a train whistle and a candle, and they played a Choo-Choo birthday song. It’s tiny, and we got there in the nick of time, just before the lunch rush. If you’re ever in the Chicago area, it’s worth the drive out to Des Plaines (beyond O’Hare airport) to have lunch there. You can also see the very first McDonalds just down the street. Oh, and the food was GREAT!

Looking from our booth, across the track to the counter area.  Looks like the train has already dropped off its cargo!

The girls enjoying their sprinkled cupcakes.

The two cuties… Michael would hand Josiah french fries.  Josiah loved that… I don’t give him many:)

Not a bad photo, considering how squirmy our cuties are! And this is the entire diner!

We had such a fun time! I sure wish Michele and her family lived down the street from us! We’re already looking forward to visiting them again, maybe next year. Here’s the pictures that Michele took…

The girls loved the old-style merry-go-round.  Josiah, on the other hand, got caught in the centripetal force and fell on his face.

My three favorite photos… "sharing" pretzels.

Wow, wow, wow… new sense of freedom! Brian just left with both kids for ballet. I’m almost ashamed to say this but this is the *FIRST* time he’s gone out with both kids on his own!?!?!  Yes, I have let him lead a sheltered life for 14 months… but he’s moving into real parenting now, baby!

We’re having his family over to celebrate Brian’s birthday (belated) for dinner tonight, so he’s taken the kids to ballet class (Josiah can play on the gym stuff during class) so I can get dinner ready.  I’m so excited to be in the house ALONE that I don’t know what to do with myself.  ‘Cept I have 4 loads of laundry to fold and dinner to make and cupcakes to decorate.  Gotta go!

Don’t you wish you were in Alabama?  Thank goodness for central air conditioning and a drive-in garage.  Even if we go out (rarely), we can still stay pretty cool.  We’re in Stage 3 water restrictions, which means no watering with sprinklers – hoses only, and only on our designated days (Tues, Friday, Saturday and Sunday) before 10am and after 6pm.  Whew!  Our beautiful zoygia grass in the front yard is brown and dying, and the only plants we’re trying to save in the yard are my hydrangeas… and it’s not working.  Here’s the weather statement from today…

I think I’m so far behind with the blog, I’m afraid I’m not going to get caught up! 

My mom left last Thursday :(.  We miss her.  It was so nice to have her here.  I sure miss my family after my infrequent visits with them!  I didn’t get pictures taken but here’s a short list of the things she did – created pretty metal baskets of flowers for Analise’s room, decorated Analise’s window treatments, put up an ABC border near the ceiling of Josiah’s room, hung Josiah’s rainbow baby quilt, sewed me a table runner, recovered my dining room chairs.  She was seriously productive!  It was inspiring!

It’s BLAZING hot and humid here – like 100 with a heat index of 110.  And yes, my crazy hubby is still riding in this weather.  He’s got an extra water bottle with him, though.

We’re laundering and packing today for a trip to Chicago this weekend for my cousin’s wedding.  We leave tomorrow at 7am with Brian’s parents – all 6 of us in their SUV.  Add in Analise’s favorite movie of late – Ice Age – playing over and over in the background, and I’m sure we’ll all be a little crazy by the time we arrive at my Grandma’s on Thursday evening. 

On Friday we’re heading to Chicago to our hotel – a lovely downtown Hampton Inn & Suites.  Friday is Brian’s birthday (31!), and so we’ll celebrate at The Cheesecake Factory, and maybe, just maybe, I can get my kids to bed early so Brian and I can go out and enjoy a little of Chicago in the evening.  Maybe the Navy Pier Ferris Wheel or the Sears Tower to see the sun set and the Chicago Skyline…  Saturday, I’m hoping to spend some time with my family and squeeze in a visit/lunch with a friend and her kids at The Choo Choo Diner.  Saturday evening we’ve got the fancy wedding, dinner and reception in Downtown Chicago.  Sunday we’re looking forward to seeing the Shedd Aquarium before driving back to my Grandma’s in Indiana for the night.  Then Monday we’ll make the long drive back to Alabama. 

Should be fun!  We’ll report back when we can!

Josiah just 1 minute ago said his first word. It caught Kristine and I both by surprise. And the word was … "waffle". Kristine was getting his breakfast ready and asked Josiah if he wanted his waffle. Instead of his normal reply of "jah" or "dah", he said "waffle"! As Kristine prompted Josiah to say it again, Analise told us that he said it already.