Golf and Dance

This weekend Brett took Cade with him to play golf. I picked Cade up after 9 holes and he wanted to stay longer which surprised Brett and I. We thought he'd get bored with it real quick. This is a shot of him washing balls which was a hi-light of his golf outing.
Cade got to putt on all the greens. He didn't really play, he just got to hit some off the tee box and putt on the green and maybe some other shots here and there. He actually made this shot in the hole. Way to go Cade!
My boys on the green.
Maddi was warming up before dance Saturday. She is one flexible girl! She's trying to learn how to hold her leg by her head and then go up on the ball of her foot on her supporting leg. She started back to dance this week and she's loving it. They started to learn their dances for competition and they are all very cute. The tap dance is to "Big Girls Don't Cry." Jazz is "Mambo #5". Musical Theatre is "If you've got it, flaunt it". Lyrical is "Streets of Heaven". Lyrical is always so pretty and can bring me to tears. This dance is a real tear jerker because the song is about a little girl who is sick and her mom is praying bedside in the hospital to God not to take her little girl yet because the Streets of Heaven are crowded enough and she just turned 7. The girls will wear white outfits like angels. I don't know if I'll ever be able to watch them perform it without crying.

Navy Pier and Cocoa's BDay

Cade is our city boy and is always asking when we can go ride the train to the city to do whatever it is on his mind that day. Since dance starts today for Maddi, we actually had a weekend to take a trip to the city. Saturday we went to Navy Pier and then ate at a famous Italian place in Lincoln Park. Sunday Maddi and I went back to the city and went shopping on Michigan Avenue. It was a fun weekend.

This is a shot of Navy Pier right where the bus drops you off. It's so pretty with the lake and boats, ferris wheel, etc. Yes, the kids are wearing sweats. It was a high of 63 Saturday and was quite chilly. It's much warmer now, but I have a feeling fall will get really cool real quick. Ugh...
We went to the Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier. The kids love it. This is Cade with the pouty "I don't want to take a picture" face. He loves the big dinosaur, so I wanted a picture for him to remember it when he is an old man. He just doesn't get it! If I didn't want to take a picture, he'd probably want his picture taken and throw a fit until I took it. Don't you love oppositional children?!?
Digging up bones. They have a big room with dinosaur bones and shredded rubber tires as the dirt. The kids use the tools to search for bones and then they start throwing the rubber at each other. Then we move on to the next activity!
There is a huge shoe that the kids love to climb on. I went in the shoe and got this picture. Apparently you're not supposed to climb on the shoe, but you are to go inside it and they have mirrors and things in it. We've always thought it was just there to climb.
A cheesy picture with an anchor at the end of the Pier. There were all kinds of people getting pictures on the anchor and our kids kept getting on it and taking other peoples turns on the anchor. They wanted a picture taken and put on the blog. Who knew an anchor was so exciting. The sign by it says it's from one of the US Naval Ships and it weighs 2 tons and it said some other historical things, but I don't remember them. But anyway, everyone wanted a picture with this thing so I guess it's important!
Cocoa is 2! The kids get excited about anyone and everyone's birthdays, probably so they can have cake. We only had a #5 candle, so we turned it backwards to try and make a two. My neighbor told me about one of my new favorite things called Warm Delights by Betty Crocker. They have brownies, cakes, cookies, etc. You just add water and microwave them for a minute or something. I'm totally addicted to the brownie one and then I add ice cream. You gotta try it. The kids had cinnamon swirl cake for breakfast and Cocoa got to lick the bowl. The poor dog never gets table food, so she didn't even know to lick the bowl. Maddi had to show it to her and then she was pushing the bowl all over the house licking it clean. Happy Birthday you little shit...zu!

Birthday and Soccer

Brett turned the big 3-5 last Friday. To celebrate the kids came up with the idea to kidnap him and take him to the movies and lunch. Here Brett is sitting on a bench with a blindfold in front of the movies. He got to take the blindfold off after the picture so only a few people saw him looking like a dork. We saw The Simpson's Movie and then we went to eat at Texas Roadhouse. Later that day Cade had his first soccer game.
Here is Cade dribbling the ball down the field. No goals scored this game, but maybe next! He is so funny, he doesn't seem to mind if he scores or not and certainly isn't interested in the score of the game. They don't have goalies and don't keep score, but Maddi always knew how many goals each person on her team scored and how many the other team made. He really enjoys the snack and drink afterwards!

Down on the Farm

This has been a month of life in the country for the McDonald Family. I have only been to the city once and it was for one day between our trips to Arkansas and Southern Illinois. I feel like I need to escape and stay downtown Chicago for a few days. Our neighbors invited us to their farm about 4 hours south of here for Labor Day Weekend. We stayed at his cousins hunting lodge where people stay for deer, turkey, and some other kind of bird hunting. It's a nice place, but there were about 30 deer head on the walls. No matter wear you went, eyeballs of dead animals were following you. The first night we got there the kids were trying to decide what room to stay in (there are 7 rooms). One room had a stuffed turkey on the bed with its' wings detached. They screamed and run out very quickly. The next room had deer antlers all over the bed, and another room had some kind of animal skins on them. It was hilarious to see the kids discovering all of this. We ended up with regular rooms without any animals or animal parts. The next morning we went fishing in the pond. The kids all caught fish, so that was good. The kids also drove Cade's remote control boat around the pond and they loved that.
After fishing, we got a tour of the crops. Our neighbors family farms about 4500 acres and they grew corn this year. It wasn't sweet corn, it is the kind used for ethanol, corn oil, etc. This shows the combine that picks the corn and takes the kernels off, a machine that the combine puts the kernels in and a semi truck that collects the kernels and takes them to a siloh. I couldn't believe how quickly the corn is off the kernels and how much corn they were getting. They had 2 semi trucks going back and forth to the farm and the silohs and they were constantly full.
The kids got to ride on the siloh and the other thing that dumps it into the semi. It was very dusty with all the corn being cut down, which wasn't so great for Maddi and Brett's allergies. The kids thought it was really fun to ride in the machines.
Then they got to ride in the bed of a truck back to the lodge. Left to right: Gracie (Emily's cousin), Emily (our neighbor), Maddi, Hunter (Emily's cousin), Cade, and Old McDonald (Brett).
Next on the agenda was dove hunting. Hunter is showing off the first bird. Only the dad's and boys went hunting. Laura (Emily's mom) and I took the girls for a bike ride and the girls played dolls at the lodge.
When the boys got back they couldn't wait to show the girls their dead birds. They are getting them out of Cade's vest in this picture. The girls were very interested to see them, but screamed and ran at the first sight of them. The boys then chased the girls around with the poor doves with their heads hanging off.
Hunter and Cade with some of their dove. This boy Hunter lives on the farm (his dad was driving the siloh) and is the biggest hick I've ever met. All he talks about is hunting and doing work on the farm.
To finish off the day we drove to the nearest big town for a rodeo. This was not your Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, it was outdoors and very country. It was part of the PRCA, but just much smaller than what we're used to. Maddi didn't enjoy it at all! I tried to prepare her for the wrestling of steer, lassoing (?), etc. The first event was steer wrestling and she was immediately in tears. The next thing was bucking broncos and she liked that. She laughed when the animals won and got the cowboy off. When they started the lassoing and tying of the feet on the calves, she was in histerics and I took her to walk around the carnival and we got apple slices with caramel and cotton candy. Cade, of course, thought that was the coolest part when the calves get choked with the lasso and fly through the air. So there were a few things she enjoyed and that was the barrell racing, bull riding (when they fell off), the clowns, and the funniest thing I've ever seen.....they had a border collie with a real live monkey named Whiplash on his back and the dog hearded sheep into a pen. The monkey was wearing a jacket and cowboy hat and it was somehow tied to the back of the dog. He'd fall over and then all of a sudden pop right back up to sitting on the dogs back. I couldn't get a picture because it was moving around so much. Has anyone else ever seen that? We were dying of laughter.

Sunday we went fishing again, the guys dove hunted, we had smores and rode four wheelers. We left around 3:30 to get back home because I had to teach a class Monday morning. It was 2 days jam packed with country life. It was fun to visit, but thank goodness that is not our life. I don't need to see anymore corn or soybeans for a very long time. Apparently other than Chicago and the surrounding suburban areas, all that's in Illinois are farms. Yee-ha!