The Last Few Days

Last Wednesday was meet the Teacher for the kids. This is Cade with his teacher, Mrs. Murphy. Maddi had her last year too. Cade was happy to have a teacher that "knows" him. I can't complain, she's a fine teacher, she just doesn't have that warm fuzzy personality you would hope for in a kinder teacher. Notice how tall she is and doesn't get down on the the kids level at all. It doesn't bother Cade so I won't let it bother me.....
This is Maddi at meet the teacher with Mrs. Click (her name is Pam so she has to be good, right?). We have heard such wonderful things about her and Maddi is thrilled to have her. She thinks she will be her favorite teacher and Mrs. Phillips from kinder in Texas. Doesn't she look nice and friendly? Maddi was still getting over a cold so she was a little puffy eyed and pale.
Cade went to the driving range with Brett to hit golf balls and practice putting. He was so excited to go with his daddy. He was ready to come home way before Brett, but he hung in there. He liked playing putt, putt is what he says. He means the putting green with all the holes.
Wednesday was Maddi's first day. She's all decked out in her pink from head to toe. She had a wonderful day and didn't cling to me at all when I dropped her at her class. yeah! She's growing up and getting some independence.
Today, Thursday was Cade's first day. I went with him for Kinder Round Up and he had a blast. He can't wait until I take him and pick him up in the car like we did for Maddi last year. I guess that's a sign of being big to a kid. Friday he goes by himself. We are so thankful that our kids love school and do well at school.

Cookie Dough Creations

We went to downtown Naperville to let Brett experience our newest find in ice cream. While down there the kids had fun climbing trees and getting in touch with their inner monkeys.
So Cookie Dough Creations is a place where you pick your ice cream and then they have 8 different raw cookie dough flavors (without egg so you can eat it) to choose as your topping. Cade's choice was rainbow sherbert ice cream with chocolate chip cookie dough. He decided he doesn't like the cookie dough because it's dark chocolate chips and they're "disgusting".
Maddi chose superman ice cream (vanilla with red, yellow and red food coloring) with Oreo cookie cookie dough. I had birthday cake ice cream with M&M cookie dough. Brett had Mint Explosion ice cream (mint with Andes mints and thin mint cookie pieces) with chocolate chip cookie dough. It's a unique experience. It's very rich and sugary so we all had to bring ours home to finish another day. We had pizza before hand so I'm sure that 's partly why we didn't finish. From checking their website www.cookiedoughcreations.com I think it's the only place to experience this combo.

As always, you can count on me to fill you in on all the ice cream places and other junk food in the area.

Trip to City

Summer is coming to a close so we took the train downtown for a last hurrah with some neighbors. Maddi and Emily with their American Girl dolls, Kit, are showing off one of their favorite dresses on Michigan Avenue. I don't remember what it's called, but they have dresses all over Michigan with really cool designs. This one is made of flowers.
Cade with his goofy smile with one of his favorite Lego creations at the Lego store. They have some really cool things built at the store. Cade tolerates the shopping and American Girl lunch because I buy him Legos to entertain him. We did find out though that American Girl has gameboys for kids to borrow for 2 hours while you shop at the store (yes, you can spend 2 hours there!). We'll try that next time!
Eating lunch at the American Girl Cafe from left to right, Kara and her doll, Emily and her two dolls (the one on the left got a new hairdo after lunch to tame her frizz), Maddi and her doll, and the boys..Kyle and Cade. While we were eating Brett called to tell us a tornado was on the the way. We weren't sure if we should stay in the big buildings with all the glass or get on the train. When it stopped raining we got on the bus to get back to the train and we made it home just in time and never got wet. We had some serious storms as soon as we got in the car to get home. Some of the trains were shut down right after we left because of fallen trees and power failure. We counted our blessings that day.
Emily with her doll at the hair salon. American Girl is genious. They sell hair kits for the girls to curl and style their hair. This causes major frizzing and tangling to the hair so you take it to the salon to have it styled for $10-20. Then you go home and play with it again to get it frizzy and bring it back to the salon, etc.. They actually did a great job with her hair and she looked like a new doll.

Maddi's purchase was a Halloween cat costume for her doll. It's actually really cute even though I can't stand cats. Maddi wants to be a matching black cat for Halloween. There were so many things Maddi wanted but after much thought (she's horrible at making a decision) she settled on this and a swimsuit.

I want to know how we all survived and actually enjoyed hour childhood without going to American Girl. Not to mention we had to do without Libby Lu, Build a Bear and others. What will our children tell their children they had to to without?

Another fun trip to the city. Cade is begging to go back to Navy Pier and Lincoln Park Zoo so I'm sure we'll be back again before too long.

Cade's Birthday Party

Brother and sister before the party. You'd never know that Maddi is nearly 2 years older than Cade. He's heavier than her and only an inch or two shorter. It was a chilly 60 degrees or maybe cooler for the party. We've always worried about the heat for an August party, not in Chicago!
The party was at Sports Zone with go kart rides and putt putt golf. This is the gang ready to race the go karts.
Fortunately the kids were too short to drive the cars so the parents were in control! It was fun taking corners fast and racing each other. I think I drove 4 or 5 times for 5 minutes each so I've had my fill of go kart racing for awhile now. The problem is that the kids now know how fun it is so I'm sure we'll be back soon.
Putt Putt was fun but nobody kept score after the 2nd or 3rd hole and then it became a race to see who could push the ball in the hole first.
After pizza it's time for Birthday Boy to make his wish and blow out his candle. Yes, I made a plain chocolate cake and vanilla cupcakes. My mom has always done the writing of Happy Birthday on the cakes but this year since Omie wasn't here we decided sprinkles would have to work because I'm not a cake decorator, just a baker. Cade insisted that I make his cake and didn't care if his name was on it or not. He wanted his mommy to make his cake because it's filled with lovins. How sweet is that?
Left to right- Grace, Kara, Emily and Maddi enjoying the sweets.
Playing with presents after the party. This was Nerf Dart tag and Cade and Brett had a great time with this. They shoot very far and are very powerful. Cade kept hitting Brett in the face or below the belt so today instead of dart tag they played target practice. Brett hung the target from a candle stick on the mantle and they shot at the target. Smart thinking by Brett to avoid getting pelted.
I don't know who had more fun, Brett or Cade.

It ended up being a cold and rainy day but was dry for the party. Cade had a great day and was grinning from ear to ear the whole day. Birthdays are so fun with little ones.

My "baby" is 5

Cade turned 5 Sunday. I know it's so cliche, but kids grow up so fast. You think they grow fast as babies, but the next time you turn around they're 5! He opened our family presents and then we went back to the Colonial Cafe for a kitchen sink (see previous post). The ice cream is really good, but the food is like Denny's...breakfast all day. We tried our best to get him to choose somewhere else for lunch and the Colonial for dessert, but he's so stinkin hard headed. I love my Birthday Boy!

So...it's official. Brett and I are OLD! We now have two school age children. The kids will start school in two weeks. We find out their teachers next Tuesday and then meet the teachers Wednesday. We actually found out Maddi's teacher yesterday. We saw her at dance and she told us Maddi is in her class. Very exciting as this is who Maddi wanted. I have heard such great things about her. We are still excited to find out who she knows in her class. We don't know Cade's teacher yet, so that will be fun to find out too. Looks like summer is coming to a close.

Trip home from Arkansas

So to break up the 10 hour trip back from Arkansas we stopped at the St. Loius Zoo. It was a really nice zoo and we were happy to get out and stretch our legs for awhile. The only problem was that it was 100+ and we were there between 3 and 5, the hottest times of the the day. The kids loved the fan mister and stayed in front of them as long as possible. We also enjoyed the 45 degree penguin exhibit and A/C bird house.
How cute is that bear? He was lying down and then when he saw the kids he stood up like that. I thought only circus beards could do that!
We got to see all of the bears get fed fish. That was so cool. The keeper would chunk fish in the homes and they would catch them in their mouth, pull them out of their swimming pool. Sometimes they'd rip them apart and other times they'd swallow them whole. It was fun to watch. This polar bear is about to rip the little fishy in half that's laying by her feet.
There's a bear in the background catching fish.
Amy T., this is for you. This was taken out of the window as we were zooming down the highway. Click on the pic and you can see the St. Louis Cardinals in red writing and people walking down the ramps because the game was over. The arch is in the background. That's how I sightsee...80 miles an hour!
I know she'll kill me someday for this, but I couldn't resist. She looks like she's catching bugs while sleeping. They crashed out after the zoo.

Notice how Cade just looks like a boy. He's sweaty, his mouth is dirty from a ring pop and he's drooling on his shirt. I love my boy to death but thank goodness I only have one of these creatures!

Texas Grammy's Summer Camp 8

Last week we drove 10 HOURS to the middle of nowhere in Arkansas to meet up with Brett's family for Summer Camp. We all stayed in a 5 bedroom, 4 bath house for 4 days. His step mom has had summer camp with her grandson for 8 years and this year it was more of a family reunion. Brett's Dad and Ellen live in Qatar, Mike (Brett's step-brother) and his son Alex who is 13 and Zoe who is 6 live in Maryland and the rest of the family lives in Plano. It was nice to see the family and the kids had a blast. I well....I survived. My idea of fun doesn't usually involve the middle of nowhere, swimming in the lake with who knows what, having ticks on me and around me, bugs galore and the closest place to shop is a Walmart 40 minutes away.... but I survived! The best part was seeing family and eating and playing lots of cards. I keep requesting that summer camp be moved to the city. Maybe next year??
We had a Birthday party for Cade and Zoe because their birthdays are August 12th and 13th. We also had an "un-Birthday" party for Maddi and Alex. Becca got Maddi a shih tzu dog named princess in a bag. Grammy and Grandpa got Maddi movie star glasses, lipgloss, jewels, etc. It went so well with her fashion dog.
Notice that we are all wearing the same shirt. Nice, huh? We wore the same shirt as everyone else every day! Ellen makes us all matching shirts.
My sixteen ...I mean six year old and me.
Maddi, Zoe, and Cade enjoying their ocean cups ( a dessert with blue jello and gummy fish) while checking out the latest bugs that Grandpa caught. Maddi and Zoe freaked out when a ginormous spider crawled past them as they were playing in their room. It got put in a jar for viewing as well. Notice the camp shirt for the day!

What didn't make it into the jars were the ticks that we all experienced. Yes, ticks! Brett's Dad, Brett, and Cade went fishing and walked through brush to get there and came home fishless, but full of ticks. Well...we didn't know until later and so some of the ticks made the house their home. The next day as I'm sitting on the couch because I'm terrified to go outside I find a tick crawling on my arm. I about had a heart attack. I would have packed up and left right then and there, but I was afraid our things mights have ticks and then our car would have ticks and then our house, etc. I try to look on the bright side of things, so the good thing was they were little bitty baby ticks. I guess that's better than big honkin ticks?!? In the end we all had at least one tick, even baby Grace. We don't have ticks in the city!
Zoe, Maddi and Baby Grace (Joel and Sara's sweet baby girl).
We went and visited a lady with her miniature horses. I think she said she had 58 horses, she wasn't sure how many she had. They were so friendly. She also had some babies that were just weaned from their moms too. It was strange to see so many "midget" horses, but pretty cool. The kids just loved it because they were just their size.
Uncle Todd, Cade and Daddy were making airplanes for the paper airplane contest. They each made 5 and threw them off the balcony. It was quite entertaining.

Swimming in the lake with minnows, bugs, dirt, and ???? I like the lake but only out deep where I don't touch and can't see what's lurking. I finally got in on the last day after days of pleeing from Brett and the kids. Did I mention I'm a city girl? Maybe next year we can swim in a pool!

All in all Summer Camp 8 was a success. Thanks to Grampa and Texas Grammy for having us all!