Chicago adventures

The morning after attending "the ball," the girls and I set out for some Chicago adventures!  We met Mary, Justin, and Greyson near Kalamazoo, and drove them to Mom & Dad Kennedy's house for a few days.  We had a wonderful time with both sides of our family!

We HAD to stop at American Girl Place in downtown Chicago.

Katie and Megan had their doll's ears pierced at the store.  I also bought Jess and Meg tiny American Girl dolls (they've wanted them for a long time), and I bought Katie a pack of extra earrings for her doll.

Justin and Greyson quickly got bored of looking at dolls, so they wandered off to the Lego store, which is conveniently located right next to the American Girl store!

Little Miss Personality with an M&M friend.

Lunch at Gino's East - yummmmm!

Everyone added their signature, even Greyson!

Cool architecture while walking down Michigan Ave.

Waving to tour boats on the Chicago River.

We finally made it to the bean!  It was a little more than a mile walk from the American Girl store to the bean, and the girls whined the whole way.  :(

Girls by the bean

Auntie Mary playing with the girls

Silly girls!

Me and the girls!

Bram and Greyson had a fun time with each other - and watching Ollie and Tashi!

One day we went to a small local zoo.  Greyson was so cute, saying all of the animal sounds!

Birdies in a bird nest.

Touring a train

Watching a fox (aka Sammy)

Bram was very nice to share his toys with Greyson!  All of the kids had fun running around, being noisy, and getting out every single toy at Joe & Nancy's house!

Adventurous weekend!

This weekend was supposed to be low key, but it wound up being one adventure after another!

On Friday, we had an adventure while we were at Bloomer Park.  I checked the radar before we set out on our walk/picnic lunch, and it was all clear.  After about an hour there, though, the sunny skies disappeared, and I could hear thunder rumbling in the distance.  Crap.  We were a 20-minute walk home!  Fortunately, the girls did NOT hear the thunder at the park, and didn't even hear it on our fast walk home b/c they were on scooters, which were just noisy enough to cover up the sound.  When we were within sight of home, though, the booms got louder and louder, and they freaked out.  Thank goodness we made it home just in time!

Friday night, Megan wiggled out her 8th tooth.  Look at her jack-o-lantern smile now!  The four in the middle are all adult teeth...now surrounded by holes!

On Saturday morning, I had a nice morning walk with Katie. Then we all went to the Farmer's Market to pick up a few goodies. Surprise - there was a scavenger hunt going on!  Chris was intrigued by the clues, so we set out all around downtown Rochester to find each of the answers.  It was a lot harder than we thought, but it was a lot of fun to put it all together.  We got little goodies at each of the stores/restaurants.  By finishing the scavenger hunt, we got a chance to win a new bike!

Girls in front of one of the answers - the Avengers ewes.  (Downtown Rochester has tons of sheep around for the Ewe Review this summer)

That afternoon, Chris found a Groupon I had bought a while ago, and he asked about using it.  We scrambled together a plan for a date night!  It's been a long time since we've had one of those!  We signed up the girls for "parents night out" at our gym from 5-9pm, which included pizza dinner, swimming, rock climbing, and a movie.  They had a ton of fun!  Chris took me out for sushi for dinner, then the main event - the gun range!!  Yes, I bought a Groupon for a gun range!  I thought he'd go with a friend, but he wanted to teach me.  I was scared and nervous, and did crummy for a while, but then I got the hang of it.  I learned how to do everything, start to finish, with two 9mm guns.  I was best with the Glock 17.  It was definitely an interesting experience...not sure I want to repeat it...but I'm glad I was brave enough to try it.  Then he took me out for dessert at a new bar/restaurant in town.

You can't tell from the picture that I'm shaking like a leaf

By the end of our session, I was pretty good!

Sunday was another crazy day.  We decided to break out the bikes before Chris took off for the airport for another week in Italy.  We biked up the Paint Creek Trail to the cider mill for lunch (aka a huge waffle cone).  Then I mowed the lawn while Chris packed.  As soon as he left, the girls and I started prepping for our big night out - at the Big, Bright Ball at the Royal Park Hotel in downtown Rochester.  It's a fun fundraiser for the Big, Bright Light Show in downtown Rochester each winter.  (all downtown storefronts are lined with LED xmas lights every 4" - amazing!!)  I bought the tix to the ball a few days ago as a fun thing to do, just us girls.  I hope we get to go back every year!

All dressed up!!  I even painted their nails, and curled their hair.

The girls and I got "bling" in our hair.  It's just skinny tinsel tied onto a few hairs, but it sure is cute!

The girls made magic wands, complete with lots of glitter.

Katie with a few of her desserts.  Notice the feathers curled in her hair, and her Shirley Temple beside her.

Snaggletooth Megan with her desserts.

 The Royal Park Hotel is known for having great, fancy food.  We dined on spicy shrimp, lobster cakes, fancy mac & cheese, pulled pork sliders, meatballs, salads, and more.  The dessert table was amazing!

Girls dancing the chicken dance - my favorite song!  (I danced, too, of course!)

They were on the dance floor all night long!  Jessi knew the words to every song, too.

Leading the cha-cha line dance.  Jessi is an amazing dancer, I'm telling you!

Leaving with our goodies at the end of the night.  I don't know why Katie has a duck face.

 What a fun night!  It was like being at the best wedding reception ever!

Garden tour

Everyone's showing off their gardens, now it's my turn!

My deck plants are doing well.  On the top deck I have two planters with big colorful impatiens, and one with wave petunias.  On the lower deck I have these two whiskey barrels (from Grandpa Hubicz) full of mixed up annuals - whatever was left over!  They are both so pretty!  The sweet potato vine is going crazy!

The pond is pretty scraggly.  This is Chris' domain, and he hasn't been home much this summer.  But we have lots of frogs, and the waterfall has been running smoothly all summer long, so I'll call it a success!

Our woods planting area in the back yard is a disaster.  Too many "wildflowers" run amok.  This is on my fall to-do list.

Another view of the pond, looking toward the deck.  When Chris gets all of the rocks in place, I can start moving plants around.

Our veggie garden!!

Wax beans on the left side of the path, as well as baby carrot plants.  The right side of the path has tomatoes, sunflowers, basil, sweet banana peppers, and parsley.

Another view of the garden.  A bunny or woodchuck snuck in one night when someone left the door open, and the little bugger ate ALL of the leaves off our cucumber plant!  See it along the back?  So sad!

One of our supersized sunflowers.  The trellis fence is 5' tall, for scale.

The girls' garden is having a rough year.  Animals have been brutal.  We really need to either fence this off for them, or stop trying to grow veggies here.  See Megan's gnome collection?

Looking from the girls' garden towards our front door.  The wave petunias are happy this year!

Front of our house.  The impatiens around the birch tree have been nibbled on all year long, so they are still tiny.  But there's nice color all along the front of the house, which is nice!

Closer view of front porch.  Pink begonias by the boxwood.  The impatiens in the planters are getting nice and big.

Looking at the Sarah garden from the driveway.  The debris at the lower left is due to a failed construction project.  Chris took out a big arborvitae and planned on putting in a little patio and lattice fence for our garbage cans.  It hasn't happened yet.  :(  The shrubs are all doing great.  From the right - lilac, butterfly bush, magnolia, rose of sharon, and lilac.

The left side of the pathway shows the grandma rose and the Sarah rose.  The Japanese maple is still gorgeous.  Beyond it are a clematis, a huge bleeding heart, and yuccas that bloomed this summer.

Closer view of the rose of sharon from Erica.  This is a bad picture, but hopefully you can see that it is covered in flowers right now!

You can see that we're having a decent year despite the brutal heat and drought!  I need to do a better job of keeping up on the weeding/trimming/edging, but it looks pretty good considering how much the yard has been ignored lately.  It's always a work in progress, right??  :)

July catchup

July is racing by...time to catch up with some pictures and stories!!

The first week of July, we were at Elk Lake.  See previous posts.

The second week of July, I deemed "staycation week."  I wanted to hit as many local attractions as possible with the girls.  We went to the county fair, the zoo, the DIA, Cranbrook science museum, to the movie theater to watch Madagascar 3, a kiddy play at the local theater (Schoolhouse Rock Live), and sidewalk sales in downtown Rochester.

At the zoo with our best buds Michael, Maddy, and Matthew.

Sketching at the DIA

Katie wanted to sketch in each of the rooms!

As good as Picasso!

We went on a Friday night, when the DIA always has live music, sketching in the galleries, and craft projects.  Here, the girls are working on tissue paper flowers.  They each made a few beauties!  We enjoyed dinner in the DIA Cafe (a great restaurant), the music, and wandering through the museum.

Playing around at the Cranbrook science museum.  The girls always have to try to squeeze into this turtle shell.  Katie can't quite do it anymore!  :(

But Megan still can!

Tired girls by Stegosaurus outside the science museum.  We also went to a planetarium show of "Michigan Skies Tonight" and the girls are hooked on astronomy now.

The third week of July, we stayed home.  Chris was gone on a West Coast road trip for work from the 13th-23rd.  He and his group drove their cars and competitor cars over several mountain passes in Colorado, through Utah, and spent several days based in Las Vegas. They drove to Death Valley, Lake Havasu, Hoover Dam, and tons of other places.  While he was gone, I decided to sign up the girls for a day camp for a week at our gym.  They have wanted to do it for years, because it looks so fun.  They were right - they had a blast!  They got to go swimming every day, rock climbing, ball games, crafts, etc etc.  They took a field trip to a Tigers game one day, too!  I really enjoyed the break, and got a ton of bug work done that week.  It was so easy to stay on top of the housework with the girls being gone all day, too!

Last weekend, the girls and I went to Ohio to visit my mom and dad.  Saturday, we went to Put-In-Bay island and saw all the great attractions.  Sunday, we went to dad's Aunt Anna's 90th b-day celebration, and went to Maumee Bay state park for some swimming in Lake Erie.  I forgot my camera, so check out my mom's blog for pics:  http://pchristensen77.blogspot.com/

This week, we've had a nice mix of low-key events.  We stayed home Monday to spend some time with Chris after he got home.  On Tuesday, I took the girls to the county water park for the day.  It was so fun now that Jessi can touch AND swim!  Yesterday, we met our friends at the Rochester city park to let the kids play in the creek and let the moms chat.  Today, we played with bugs (we released emerald ash borer parasitoids for a cooperative USDA and Master Gardener project), and tonight we went to the Rochester music in the park.  On Sunday, Chris leaves for yet another trip to Italy.  :(  I am planning fun with the girls while he's gone...going to a fancy ball at the Royal Park Hotel, and going to Chicago to visit family!

On Monday, the girls got feathers in their hair.  They couldn't get them last year when they were popular, due to the school uniform code.  So they're a little behind the times, but they're still cute!  This is Jessi, with a big white feather, and a skinny pink and black feather.

This is Megan, with a fluffy dark feather and a skinny neon green feather.  I don't have any pics yet of Katie's feathers, but she has two skinny feathers, one pink, and one pink and black.

Gum in Jessica's hair.

This last picture is a funny story...  Today, Jessica got two pieces of gum stuck in her hair, right behind her ear.  It took gobs of peanut butter and a few snips of the scissors to get it all out!  Although she won't admit it, I think I know how it got there.  Monday night, we watched a DVD of the Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Remember Violet, the girl who was alway chewing gum?  Remember how she put it behind her ear when she ate?  I think Jessica tried it out!!  Ha ha!!  She still claims she doesn't know how it got there, though.