Ottawa Trail

This weekend has been BEAUTIFUL!  And, boy, is it needed.  After earlier temps this week in the windy low 40s, these 70s have felt like heaven!  We took the opportunity to enjoy the weather by going to Starved Rock to do a little hiking.  My favorite trail, thus far, is the Ottawa Trail.  I don't have to worry about cliffs or narrow trails.  AND, we get to wade through 3 different creeks.  FUN!

The kids got all their gear on.  They picked it all out.  I just insisted on the rain boots.

Spring has barely sprung here, so there were patches of green starting to come up, but it was very brown still.  That was ok.  It was neat seeing it in the beginnings of spring. :-)

The Ottawa Trail is in a canyon, outside of the park.  It is surrounded by these big sandstone cliffs.  Sometimes they are close to you, other times you have to climb up to them.  I zoomed in for this picture, but they all climbed up a pretty big hill to get to this site.

They wanted to climb up there, so they could climb on this rock. :-)

Here's one of the creeks we went across on our way to the back.  The kids loved playing in them!

There were a few places that the water was halfway up our boots, but most of it was fairly shallow.  Pete didn't wear his rain boots (not sure why), so he had to try to figure out ways to get across without stepping in the water.  It was a lot harder for him to navigate because of it.

At the back of the trail is this pool of water, with a waterfall at the back.  A little waterfall, but a pretty one.  This big tree has fallen over, so we stood underneath it, so you could see how tall it was.

This is the back of the trail.  See the little waterfall?  It's really pretty back there. :-)

Awww... my sweet family!  Tater LOVES going hiking, so he was thrilled to pieces to go with us.  There were times when no one was around us, so we were able to let him off his leash and let him explore.  He loved splashing around and checking everything out.  Pete found a tick crawling on him, which freaked me out, but he got it off of him, before he was bitten by it.

The thing that they love to do, when we're back there, is skip rocks.  I SUCK at it!  Pete's really good at it!  His rocks skip like 4-5 times each.  One even bounced into the waterfall!

When we were in CO last summer, Livie bought this vest with her money.  She also bought a little compass that hangs on it.  She liked checking out our direction throughout the hike. :-)

That walking stick is something that Noah bought when we were in CO.  He takes it everywhere and it's very handy to have when you're trying to balance yourself in the water, when you're climbing up a creekbank.  He used it to splash the water.

I had Pete take this picture, so you can see that Noah's officially taller than me.  Not by much, but he's pretty much there.  He's thrilled!

Here's more muddy, leafy water to wade through.

Just another look at the pretty canyon.  It's not Rocky Mountain National Park beautiful, but for Northern IL, it's not bad at all!

More of me and my 4 kiddos. :-)

I thought Madie looked so very teenager-y in this picture.  She's growing up so fast!

Pete and his dog.  They're total buddies.  Which is hilarious to say, considering how much he DIDN'T want a dog! ;-)

Madie asked if she could take our picture, so I said sure!  I didn't think about the fact that I'm so much shorter and that, by sitting on the log, I would look like a muppet next to him!  But, it's still a good one of the two of us - despite the muppetness. ;-)

We had a wonderful morning hiking, followed by dinner and a little shopping at Petsmart, so Tater could join us.  He had the BEST time and so did we.

Palm Sunday

I haven't posted in a while, so I thought I'd post a couple pictures I took today in church of the kids passing out the palm branches for Palm Sunday. :-)  We've been staying busy here with track, soccer, dance, and more, just haven't been out taking pictures of it all.  I mean, who wants a photo of me sorting through summer clothes and changing out drawers?  No one, that's who.  So, our busyness hasn't been very blog-worthy of late.

As we're gearing up for Easter, we had our Sunday School kids get involved with passing out the palm branches.  As always, they had lots of fun doing that!  Corralling 14+ kids into not hitting each other with palms, standing at the doorways to give them to people, isn't always the easiest thing to do, but they have fun with it every year.  I was glad they asked us to do it again.  I mean, look at those goofy faces!!

You can barely see Livie and Noah here.  Livie is completely hidden by the branches and Noah is peeking out from behind more branches himself.  Definitely a funny job for these eager kids to do!

Next week we're getting ready to celebrate Easter, so hopefully we'll have some adorable pictures to post then.  And, maybe, just maybe, I'll have something fun to post about in the meantime. :-)

New Sports Experiences

I haven't posted in a while.  Things have been busy around here.  But, I wanted to share some of the new sports teams our kids have joined!  Livie is in a soccer league at our local Y and is absolutely loving it!  She's wanted to be in soccer for ages, so she's beyond excited to be part of this team.  They meet every Tuesday night for practice and every Saturday morning for their game.  There are only 2 teams in her age group, so they'll be playing each other every week. :-)  The best part is she's got two really great friends on her team!

Here's a picture of her with her team at last Saturday's very first game.  She's the one in the bright pink socks.

She's so full of energy and runs all over the place.  She's totally into it and listens so well.  She's really got some sports skills, which is impressive coming from this family!

And, of course, ever the social one, she takes opportunities to talk to her friends. :-)

Here she is with her buddies.  They have SOOOO much fun!

Now, Noah has joined track and had his first track meet on Tuesday.  I know you're thinking Noah?  In track?!  Yep!  He wanted to build up his stamina and he's really stuck with it!  I'm so proud of him for trying hard to do something that's not his speciality.

It was a cold, windy day that day, so he wore his under-armor to stay warm.

He also used his blanket - the one Nana T made him - to keep himself warm while watching the other races.  Pete was able to leave work a little early, so he could come watch him.  Madie was at a Scholastic Bowl meet and I had to leave early to take Livie to soccer.  Yes.  Three kids, in three things, all at the same time!!  That is what our life has become.

Noah spent most of the afternoon standing at the sidelines and cheering on his teammates.  It was fun to see all the kids supporting each other.

Since I wasn't there to watch him race, Pete took this video.  He beat one guy from the other team and he kept at it and ran the whole way!  Hopefully the weather will improve, so his meets won't be quite as miserable.  And, hopefully I'll get to watch the next one!  

So, two new adventures for the kids this year.  I love that they are trying out new things!

The Field Museum

Today, since it's Spring Break, we decided to take the kids up to The Field Museum.  We've never been there before, so we thought it might be a fun day trip for them.  It's not nearly as exciting as the Museum of Science and Industry, but we definitely had a good time. :-)

Of course, one of the first things you see when you enter is Sue, the T-Rex.  It's the most complete T-Rex in the world!  This, of course, made us want to see more dinosaurs, so we headed upstairs to check them out.

It was cool to go to the top floor and look down on the elephants and t-rex.  It's a beautiful museum.

Apparently, Sue's skull isn't on her body.  This is her actual skull.  Amazing to see those teeth up close, let me tell ya!

They had TONS of taxidermy animals here.  I really enjoyed getting to see them up close like that.  You can see what they look like a whole lot better this way than at the zoo.  You see the subtle differences in some of them and the bold colors that they have.  It was really cool - though I could've done without all the insects.  That part was super-gross!

To get to the dinosaurs, you have to walk through the entire evolutionary chain - according to them.  There was a lot about cells and what our world looked like at the beginning.  Not really interested in that myself, but Noah found the cells very engaging.  Livie just liked seeing the big squid above her head. ;-)

They also had lots of trilobites.  They look like bugs too, which was gross, but there were lots of different kinds and the kids (and Pete) found them very cool.

Livie fell in love with this giant/weird trilobite thingy.  She had to lay on him and get her picture taken. :-)

Finally we made it to my favorite part - the dinosaurs!!  I called this a Brachosaurus, but I know it wasn't actually that.  Guess we'll just call it a "long-neck"  Either way, it was still huge and was awesome to look at!  They had a stegosaurus and several others in this area, including three flying pterodactyls.

This duck-billed one had a noise maker that you could press down on to hear what it sounded like.  The kids liked that a lot.

Noah was fascinated with all the monkeys.  He had me take picture after picture of the monkeys.  I decided to post this one, because it was of a monkey skeleton, which was pretty neat.

This was a fossilized alligator/crocodile - one of them anyway.  We stood by it, so you could get an idea of how big it was!

The most amazing skeleton, to me, was this one of the giant sloth.  This thing was unbelievably huge!!!  I seriously can't imagine seeing one of those in real life.  I mean, look at the size of that thing!!

No visit would be complete without mammoth dung.  Yes, Noah is pointing that out in this picture. :-)

While Pete and Madie checked out the gems, Noah, Livie and I went for a little walk around the place.

We checked out this palm tree and looked at the DNA lab.  It was kinda fun.  Then we all joined back up together and went into a makeshift Egyptian tomb.  That was really neat and we walked down into it to come into the Egyptian displays.

Not sure what this was, but it was pretty cool!

They only had a couple exposed mummies for us to look at.  Almost all of them were still in their sarcophagus.  This little guy was a young boy, probably around 2-3 yrs old.  It's amazing to see them up close and realize that this was, at one time, a living, breathing boy all those years ago.

More sarcophaguses (is that the plural form of "sarcophagus"?).

Pete and the kids by the "Nile River".  Hmmm... maybe Moses was hidden in reeds like that!

They had this huge area just for animals that had been taxidermied.  I mentioned that before and it was fascinating for me to see them so up close like that.  Madie loves wolves, so she was thrilled to see this one.

I personally love Moose and, after having a close encounter with them in Colorado last summer, recognize the power and strength behind them.  You don't realize how big they are until you are standing that close to them!!

This whale skeleton was Ah-Mazing!  Look how big that thing is!!  It took us a minute to figure out what it was.  Just the coolest thing to see!

Madie took this picture of me and Pete by Sue, the T-Rex. :-)

We finished our time there by watching the 3-D movie about the Wooly Mammoth and the Ice Age.  Livie wanted her picture by the elephants, because they are so much like the Mammoth. :-)

We had a fun time at the Museum today.  Like I said, it can't compete with the Museum of Science and Industry, but it was a really neat place to visit.  But, we're definitely glad we went!