With another tax season over, I’m breathing a sigh of relief and getting a bit of my life back.  We must’ve been busy this year.  I can’t remember another April 15th that I was so anxious for (except, perhaps, for the year the earthquake extended tax season to April 30).  I didn’t realize just how stressed I felt as we neared the deadline, until Thursday April 16 when my office, the phone, and even email were silent.  Friday I had my energy back again.  Amazing.  Anyway, it’s time for an overall update.

Christian is doing very well in baseball.  If you’re not following Bill’s blog, why not?  All of the details, including the schedule and results, are updated after every game.  School is still a struggle, and we’re looking into tutoring for writing for the summer.  He enjoys reading Geronimo Stilton books, and Yotsuba books (which are comic book format translated into English from Korean and are read from right to left).  Christian’s really enjoying learning to cook.  He’s great at pancakes and made us breakfast unexpectedly one Saturday morning recently.  He followed directions to make brownies from a mix quite well (except I didn’t have the right oil out for him so they turned out weird – olive oil is not always an acceptable alternative to vegetable oil).  Today he’s making fudge, yum!

The kids did a great job each of the six weeks leading up to Easter presenting a new symbol of the season each week during the church service.  The boys read their lines slowly, clearly, with enviable poise.  Alyson memorized her lines and said them loud and clear (the four weeks she decided to participate – two of the weeks BJ had to say her line for her).  The last week, her line was really long, and we were really proud of her.  The kids do so well up in front of people.

This summer, the kids will be attending Skyhawks sports camps again.  They had a good time last year, and it’s an economical solution.  BJ was adamant that he didn’t want to go, until I made him an offer.  If they make it through the summer without whining, moaning, and complaining, we’ll spend a night at Great Wolf Lodge at the end of the summer.  BJ changed his tune quite rapidly.  I’d really like to manage a road trip to visit Angie in UT, but I haven’t figured that out yet.  We’ll have a week of VBS in July, and Christian wants to go to Bible Camp.  I’d love to go and take BJ and Alyson too, but I don’t think we can afford it.  I’m proud of Christian for being willing to go to a week-long camp without us.

BJ is having a blast being Bat Boy for Christian’s baseball team.  I think he enjoys being part of the team (particularly the snacks at the end of each game).  He’s a smart kid and does his homework easily, when we can convince him to do it.  He advised his brother to just rip it in half if he didn’t want to do it.  *sigh*  He’s become quite addicted to a computer game, so he frequently loses computer privileges.  He does enjoy reading, though, and can freqently be found sitting in front of the heater in the living room, reading any book that’s handy.  He’s into chapter books now, and is in the highest reading group in his class.  He claims to have read all of the Junie B Jones books.  He also likes Geronimo Stilton.

Alyson is still amazing me daily.  She’s often trying to sound out words.  She now writes Alyson, BJ, Mommy, Daddy, Christian, cat, dog, God and lovely without assistance.  She sounded out Doctor the other day and it was readable.  She called herself Doctor Alyson and said she wanted to be an eye doctor.  Go figure.  She can often be found sitting with a workbook and markers.  Or dancing.  Or playing with toys and games we had forgotten we had because the boys never played with such things.  It’s the workbooks that amaze me.  She can do word searches.  She can do fill-in-the letter activities which require her to look at words/pictures on the back of the book to figure out what letter is missing, and go back to fill it in.  She loves patterns and sees them in everything.  Today she decided she wanted to learn to play piano and learned the first three notes of the random song we had music out for.  She still loves to sing.  Her current favorite band is Paramore (particularly because they have a couple of songs on Rock Band).

We haven’t heard back from her school yet, but I’ll give them a call soon to see when testing should be scheduled.

I’m sure there’s more to say, but for now, hope you enjoyed the update 🙂  I’ll see if I can find some new pictures to add later.

It snowed again Friday night.  I don’t think the temperature rose above 25 the whole time we were in Chicago.

We had a quiet morning Saturday.  The kids enjoyed some time in the pool before we got ready for the wedding.

The wedding location was beautiful. The boys waited patiently between pictures and the ceremony.

The ceremony itself was brief, and Bill and Edward provided music.  Everyone laughed when the Mission Impossible theme played as Brenda walked down the aisle.

Alyson was really looking forward to dancing and pouted when she had to wait.

She was thrilled when it was finally time for the reception. Grandma gave her a bouquet.

She danced with us in rotation… Grandma, Daddy,

and Mommy

Christian even danced with Grandma and me

Bill

The groom

Alyson was exhausted by the end of the night

Sunday morning, we all had a lovely brunch, and Alyson took a turn with the camera.

She also got this great picture of Grandma

Daddy, Alyson, and the newest member of our family, Puppy 🙂

We caught a 6:15 flight home, on which the boys finished their homework and Alyson slept most of the flight.  We got home late Sunday night.

Overall, we had a wonderful weekend.  I’d love to go back to Chicago for another few days and get to the museums and other sights we missed this time around.

The next morning, the hotel shuttled us to the Hinsdale train station, about 5 miles away. We enjoyed the train ride into the city. We took an express train that took about 30 minutes. From Union Station, we took a cab to Navy Pier.

We enjoyed walking through the building. There is a stained glass museum that’s just incredible. There is also a garden with really cool fountains. Some fountains went in spurts that made it look like fish jumping. Some flowed in arches from one pool to another.

Navy Pier is also the home of the Chicago Children’s Museum, and we spent a few hours here.

The kids had fun playing, climbing, building, and flying airplanes.

The kids each got to spend $15 in the gift shop. Alyson picked a stuffed puppy, Christian got a yo-yo type toy, and BJ got another toy.

We had lunch at the biggest, busiest McDonalds I’ve ever seen at Navy Pier. From there, we took a cab to the Hancock building and went up to the 94th floor. A voice informed us we were on the fastest elevator in North America, making the trip in 40 seconds. Our ears popped in confirmation. Here are just a few pictures of the view.

The city

The kids listening to the audio tour

The silly kids pretending to be window-washers

The view of Navy Pier from the Hancock Building

I was amazed at just how BIG Lake Michigan is. It seems like an ocean.

Lakeshore Drive

Some of the amazing architecture

We took a cab back to Union Station and then the train back to Hinsdale.

We felt right at home amongst Starbucks and Washington Mutual’s everywhere. We had a little time to kill before the hotel shuttle picked us up again. We spent the time at Starbucks and had a bit of a culture shock. The coffee shop filled with 30+ middle schoolers with Starbucks cards, designer clothes, and attitudes. It was quite an experience, and when we asked about it, we were told they come in every Friday afternoon.

After we got back, we got changed and headed off to the rehearsal dinner. Bill was happy to get his toast delivered and did a great job. The meal was wonderful.

BJ was really tired through most of the dinner, but he perked up later when we handed over the camera. Christian enjoyed playing with his new yo-yo. Alyson spent another meal drawing and talked Kelly’s ear off.

Alyson thought it was funny to meet another Allison.

I think I’m fired… I haven’t blogged in two months. To make up for it, here is my recount of our trip to Chicago. To those also following along on FaceBook, some of the pictures will be repeats for you, but I promise to add in a few new ones 🙂

We left at O Dark Thirty Thursday morning. After Hawaii, the kids act like seasoned travelers. Thankfully, we packed lighter for this trip. This was our first experience flying Southwest, and I’m not sure I’d choose them again in the future (at least when traveling as a family of 5). Southwest has open seating (sit wherever you want) and sorts travelers into three groups. Families with kids under the age of 5 are allowed to board in between the first and second groups, which was helpful, but Alyson won’t be ‘under 5’ much longer, and if we were in the third seating group, we would’ve had to split up.

On our flight to Midway, the boys sat with Bill and Alyson sat with me. Thankfully, the gentleman who took the aisle sit with us has grandkids and was very understanding when we had to wake him up every hour so Alyson could use the restroom. The boys spent the flight doing homework, playing DS, and watching movies. Alyson did stickers, colored, and played a little bit of DS.

We arrived about 12:30 and caught the hotel shuttle to the hotel, Marriott at Burr Ridge.

The homes in Burr Ridge are amazing. Massive beautiful homes on large lots. Even three hours before check-in, the hotel had our room ready. We had a suite, which was great. The kids shared the living room and we had our own room. Here’s the view from our room:

After we settled in, we went for a walk (in the freezing cold). The hotel was near a shopping center that reminded us of Redmond Town Center, without all of the restaurants and bustling people. We went out to lunch at Cooper’s Hawk restaurant, and stopped in at Eddie Bauer. Mom will be proud, Alyson wanted a stuffed puppy. It was a Steiff.

In the evening, Brenda’s dad Bob picked us up to go to dinner at Giardino’s. He was our chauffeur for the weekend, and we were so grateful. With Alyson, we needed a carseat, so it was really thoughtful of them to make sure she was taken care of. We had a lovely meal and enjoyed getting to know Bob and Lynne better, and meeting Brenda’s brother and sister-in-law Kelly. Alyson took the opportunity to draw a map of her community. The big house is ours, the green one is Grandma’s, and you can see our church and daycare in between. Grandma helped her spell a few names as well.

We enjoyed the beautiful last hurrah of summer this weekend.  Yesterday, the boys had simultaneous soccer games (this will be a theme this season).  Would you believe BJ’s team actually lost a game?  It’s about time 🙂

Christian’s team was fired up and held their own much better this week.  They still lost, 3-1, but they had some great goal attempts and saves.  Christian had some key kicks and did a great job.  I’m really proud of him.

Today, we intended to go to the zoo.  We hadn’t made it all summer, and Alyson has been asking to see the animals.  First, I looked up the info online and was shocked… admission and parking were going to cost us $64.50!  Holy cow!  But it’s the zoo, right?  We needed to go.  So we packed up the family after lunch and headed down to Woodland Park Zoo where there was NO parking, in any of their many lots.  (Probably divine intervention to save our budget.)  We ended up at Seattle Center, where we paid $6 for parking.  There was a festival going on, Fiesta Patrias (Latin American independence), and there were several bouncy houses for the kids to play in for free.  The massive fountain was also going, so we had to spend a little time watching the water spout, and feeling the mist carried by the breeze.  We stopped in the Center House and had ice cream (or fudge) before heading home.  It was a great afternoon.