two posts in one day... woo hoo!

Clara so graciously allowed me to take pictures of her today, so here's what I got...







Can you tell she was done???

Okay... I promise CHA stuff coming tomorrow (I hope!).

catching up - michigan

Whew... we have a couple days of breathing room between CHA and leaving for Missouri on Wednesday. I have a whole post's worth of stuff on CHA but I'll save that for tomorrow (or later today if I get bored... lol!). Right now I just wanted to catch up on some of our pics from our trip to Michigan last week. We stayed at the totally fabulous Crystal Mountain Resort in western Michigan. It was a perfect place to go with the kiddos!! Here are just a few of the things we did....

The kids climbed the ski hill (that's their 2 yo cousin in the middle)...
we played at the pool...

climbed a 110 foot high sand dune at Sleeping Bear Dunes...
And ran back down....
had some ice cream...
did some beading....
went geocaching...
climbed the rock wall...
made "build-a-buddies"...went to the top of the ski hill (mountain?)...
and rode the chairlift, over, and over, and over again (this is Jeff and his mom with them this time, trust me, I think I went up and down about six times over the course of an hour and a half, I earned the right to stay at the top and take pictures... LOL!)...

The kids went with my in-laws on to their house for a few more days and we just picked them up (at a half-way point) yesterday. We're just totally vegging out today which is nice.

Okay... it's quickly approaching 11 am and I haven't showered yet, so I'm off!

update on Clara and a PSA

Okay, first of all, Clara is doing fine (thank you for your concern). She was violently ill all Thursday night and most of Friday. We were finally able to get on the road to Michigan at about 3:00 pm. She still wasn't feeling very well, but she was semi-mobile. She was able to keep down some dinner and by the next morning she was doing remarkably better. And this was her on Sunday after climbing the dune at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Park...Now, here's where the PSA comes in.... please be aware of what your children are eating and what is in it. We have no "proof" that this was the culprit but it's our best guess.... the one odd thing that Clara ate on Thursday was a handful of Fat Free Pringles in the car on the way home from Wisconsin... I didn't have any and neither did Alex. When I remembered this I did a google search on them while we were at dinner Friday night. These Pringles are made with Olestra/Olean which according to the websites I found, have terrible side effects in some people. Clara's symptoms fit the possible side effects to a "T". Clara has a tendency to throw up... but she usually tells us that her "tummy doesn't feel good" but Thursday night she cried all night in pain and kept telling us that her "tummy hurt". Clara never cries when she throws up (she has a tendency to get motion sickness), but that night she wouldn't stop crying. She was doubled over in pain. At one point I was thinking that she was having an appendicitis attack but she never ran a fever. Severe stomach cramps is listed as one of the side effects... this was what she had. She had some of the other issues as well... but the stomach cramps were by far the worst of it. Maybe she's just overly sensitive to Olean/Olestra but I'm not going to take that chance... it was just too intense to ever put her through it again just to see.

Okay... PSA over.

I have tons of pics to edit and I hope to get to them soon. However, CHA is this weekend and this time I get to go!! Woo hoo! I can't wait to meet a bunch of the digi girls in person! I will be taking a camera, but just the little point and shoot.... I'm not messing with my big camera this time.

Okay... I'm going to run... I have a big day tomorrow... a pedicure, lunch with friends, a cut and color AND then I get to hang out downtown with Deann from DiSc Talk Radio (and maybe some other digi gals). Fun stuff!

'nite!

ETA - THANK YOU KRISTEN!!!! I'll have to check it out closer once my chaotic weekend is over. :-)

delayed

Should be well on our way to Michigan by now, but we're not. Clara was up all last night throwing up. She's passed out on the couch right now... not sure when we'll make it to Michigan.

a few from door county

Just a few pics from our trip to Wisconsin. We got home tonight around 8:00 and we leave again tomorrow morning for our trip to Michigan. I just thought before I got completely behind and overloaded with photos I would quickly post a few from our trip...

What we did on our trip...

watched the sun set...
went cherry picking....

visited a dairy (and had ice cream)....
watched the weather from our balcony....

played in the indoor pool....
and visited The Farm....

I'm exhausted - Clara crashed early last night in my bed so Alex and I shared the pull out bed... needless to say I did not get much sleep.

Soooo.... see you next Wednesday when we get back!

'nite!

we're off....

... to Wisconsin... back in a couple of day! Hopefully with some new pics!

Oh... we got Clara's test results today and everything came back normal! No diabetes and no high cholesterol!!! Yay!

garden walk

It was a hot one today!!! We went to the beach again first thing this morning, but it was even miserably hot there. We splashed around for a couple of hours before giving up and coming home. After everyone showered and we had lunch, we decided to venture out again and check out the Lakeview Garden Walk. It was so cool! All of these hidden green oasis's here in the city. Alex enjoyed them so much that he is on a mission to have a garden and be part of the walk next year.

Here he is running the model train in one of the gardens... The train...Can you believe that this urn was on display at the World's Fair here in Chicago in 1893??

A couple of fun plantings...

Alex's buddy... he loved his fish... and he thought the fish loved him too... I didn't have the heart to tell him that he probably just thought Alex was going to feed him! :-)
The last garden we went to was shutting down for the day so they gave Alex the balloons they had tied up front to identify that they were part of the garden walk.
I got yelled at shortly after this to "stop taking pictures!!". Most of the gardens has refreshments and Alex had partaken in one too many glasses of lemonade and was making a mad dash for our house (and the bathroom) but I kept getting in front of him with the camera! LOL!

Nothing much else to report... I'm out of here on Tuesday so I'm desperately trying to tie up some loose ends.

Oh... Clara's blood test went perfectly on Friday. They got her on the first stick and she was a brave girl. Results should be in tomorrow!

Okay... I'm off to bed!

'nite!

Niki in the Garden and other stuff

Today the kids and I went with another homeschool family to go to see the Niki in the Garden exhibit at the Garfield Park Conservatory. It was AMAZING!!! It was so much fun! The kids had a great time because not only could you touch some of the sculptures but you could climb on them as well. Many had secret doorways for you to go through into the the center of the sculpture. It's a fun place to take pictures as well (maybe a place for us to consider for next month, Julie!).


Grand Elephant Vase...Large Firebird on an Arch (english translation)...
Grande Step Totem....
Alex making faces in the side of the Nikigator...
La Cabeza (the skull)...
a close-up...
me... inside the skull...
Les Trois Graces...
Star Fountain....
The kids had such a great time that they've already asked when we can go back.

I haven't taken the time before... but I want to thank you all (Marla, Meg, and Anne) for the kind words about Clara. It really means alot to me! Tomorrow is the big day for the blood tests. Thankfully Jeff is taking her first thing in the morning. Clara is especially hard to draw blood from and I tend to freak out around needles... I do okay if things go well, but if they have as hard of a time as they usually do drawing blood, I'm not the best one to be there and keep her calm. She knows she's going tomorrow and is a little worked up about the whole thing. I'll just be glad when it's over and we can move on.

Julie... I'm so ready for you guys to visit next month!!! Just let me know anything you have in mind that you would like to see or do and I'll get the stuff together!

I have scrapped a couple of pages lately....
details here
details here

Ugh... July is always chaos for us... it's our travel month... so my postings will be very sporadic. Next week the kids and I head to Wisconsin with a friend and her daughter. The day after we get back we head to Michigan with Jeff's family. The weekend we're back is CHA here in Chicago. And finally, we go to Missouri to see my family the last week of July. Whew!!! Chaos I tell you!

Okay... I think I'm heading to the couch to read some on the third Harry Potter book. I decided a couple of weeks ago to work my way through them all in preparation for the release of the final book. The first one took some time to get into again but now I'm on a roll and can't put them down!

'nite!

tourist

It's fun playing tourist in your home city! You have an excuse to go out and play... and of course, take lots of pictures!! I have tons of pics of the kids to edit but I decided to play with some non-kid shots first.

The Crown fountain....
The fountain is fun during the day but it is especially cool at night!

Sue the dinosaur...

The dolphin show at the Shedd Aquarium...


The Lincoln Park Conservatory....

Scenes from North Avenue Beach...
(I'm not liking the post processing on this one... I need to work on it later)

Okay... I'm exhausted (we spent another three hours at the beach this afternoon)... I'm off to the couch!

'nite!

i'm back!

Jeff just left to take our friends to the airport... so I'm home alone downloading pictures. We had a fabulous time and I have a TON of photos to go through. To give you some idea just how many I have, here's a "brief" run-down of our activities...

Wednesday - they arrived at our house, we had dinner and then took them to their hotel
Thursday - they spent the day at the American Girl store and we met them later for an evening at the Art Institute, and a trip through Millennium park to see the Crown fountains and the "bean".
Friday - we spent from 10:00ish to 3:30 at the Field Museum and then another couple of hours at the Shedd Aquarium.
Saturday - we spent from 10:00 to 1:00 at the Lincoln Park Zoo and then about three hours at North Avenue Beach.

Fun, fun stuff with LOTS of photo ops... back later with some pics!