Add Fail

OK, since you asked Aunt Judi, I'll tell you about the "Add Fail" and yes, it's add as in addition. I was the preschool leader at VBS last year at our church. I have done this for the past 3 years and I really love it. The craziness of preschoolers is always fun. And, it keeps me laughing and, though it's exhausting by the end of the week, I always feel so good about what they've learned and how I was able to watch them enjoy their time at VBS. Last year I had this girl who was more than just a handful. She nearly drove me to insanity. I'm not joking. And, to top off the insanity, her mother decided to be a "helper" and I use that word generously, because she was absolutely NO help at all. Every night on my way home, I would talk to my dad on the cell about the insanely stupid things that would happen with this woman and her daughter. They weren't there on Tues that week and we were singing praises to God, let me tell ya! Her daughter would run up and hit the puppets as they were doing their skit while her mom sat their oblivious. She would run around the sanctuary or yell or walk on tables. I had to constantly chase her down or make her sit still and whatnot. Again, while her mom sat there and did nothing. No, I take that back, her mom would take the crafts THAT WERE FOR THE CHILDREN and do them herself and then give them to me like I was supposed to hang them on my frig or something. She was like 40. I should be giving her MY things to hang up. But, I digress (the bitterness is still fresh apparently). ;-) All week we had this competition between the boys and the girls to see who would bring in the most food to donate to the local food pantry. The final night they announced the results. Boys had like 15 lbs of food and the girls had 12 lbs. The mom turns to me and says, "Oh man! We lost by 4!". Um, what?! We lost by 4?!! After a week of dealing with her and her daughter's attempt to drive me into the nut house, that basically summed it up for me. I looked at her and smiled and said, "Yep. We lost by 4." Thus, an ADD FAIL!

Spelling

There are times when living in Marseilles that you see something and just shake your head. For example a couple who live a couple blocks away have a 4-drawer filing cabinet on their front porch. Why, you ask? Pete thought it was to file their drug orders. You know you have a good drug dealer when they stay abreast of your addiction by keeping files. Or, the people who had the pink Obama cow during the election season. We STILL have no idea what the significance of that was. Some of these things we pass and shake our heads, not fully understanding WHY they have this. Nothing, though, has bothered me or perplexed me quite as much as the signs that have been posted all over town letting us know about a "moveing sale". Now, when I first saw the signs, back in May, I once again just shook my head and laughed. MovEing? Seriously? You would think that "moving" wouldn't be a hard word to spell. And, if WAS hard to remember to spell, you'd think they would use a dictionary or spell check before putting up 12-15 signs up all over town. Let alone leave them up for weeks after the sale was over. They've moved and left town by now, yet their signs remain for us to laugh at. If any of you have ever seen the "Fail Blog", it's quite hilarious. Every day situations where people or things fail to do what they should. This is a pretty awesome example of a moveing fail. Oh, if I could only have told you about my VBS experience last year. It was an add fail and quite an hilarious one at that, but I'll save that for another day. :-)

Anniversary Trip - Day 2 (Boat Ride)

Day 2 of our trip started off early. Since we had missed the boat the day before, we bought tickets for the 10:30 one that morning, so I got up early and showered and then we decided to order room service, so we could continue getting ready before leaving.


Here is our spread. Now, I'm not a morning person, therefore not a huge breakfast person. It's hard for me to eat right away. I usually eat toast or something mild. Not a giant ham and cheese omelet with all the trimmings. I only ate about 1/3 of the omelet and an english muffin half, but that was enough to send me into misery for about an hour. Ugh. I was beginning to wonder if I'd make it to the boat, but I figured it's better to get moving than wallow in my discomfort, so we left about 10 to get down to the boat. Well, the elevators were SUPER slow and it took a while to get one that wasn't packed. And, since we were on the 17th floor, didn't really feel like hoofing it.

We took this picture the day before, but it gives you a view of the Wendella tour boat launch area.

Here's Pete standing in the same area. :-) Well, after the delays because of my stomach and because of the elevators our "getting their early" plan was a failure and we were last in line. Which, unfortunately meant we didn't get to sit on the upper deck. Plus there were no seats outside on the lower deck either. :-(

Pete and I positioned ourselves by this window at the front for half of the trip and kind of wandered around a bit to take pictures. It wasn't too bad actually and we eventually found a seat in the back and got to finish our ride back there. It was so relaxing and beautiful outside. Really a lot of fun!

Here's looking out the front of the boat.

A pirate ship passed us on the left. I wasn't able to get a shot of the whole boat, because we were in the lock, getting ready to go out into Lake Michigan, but you can see the flags. :-)

Here I am looking out the front of the boat. And, here are a bunch of pictures we took on our ride. Pete took about 50 pictures, but after a while the skyscrapers just look the same, so here are some of my favorites....

This is Navy Pier.

A lighthouse by the breaker walls in Lake Michigan. We got this close to it. So neat!

Here's Pete by the front of the boat too. It got a little choppy when we were going fast in the Lake and with my stomach issues earlier that morning, I was scared that I might get motion sickness (my best friend Michelle can attest to my motion sickness issues). ;-) Thankfully my stomach had settled and I was totally fine the whole time.

The Bears Stadium. And, yes, the top of someone's head. She was sitting. I was standing. I'm short, what can I say?

Us towards the end of the tour. We were sitting and relaxing and enjoying the view. :-)

Down the Chicago River back towards the hotel we stayed at.

Can't remember which building this is, but I thought it was giant and cool!

Here's a short video I took when we were on the lake, so you could see what it was like a bit. We were still in the front of the boat. If any of you are ever in Chicago, I highly recommend this! It was a lot of fun. Jill and Adam told us about it. They've taken it several times. They usually go in the evenings though, so you can see the lights. I bet that would've been awesome! But, a daytime trip was fun too. :-)

Anniversary Trip - Day 2 (Cubs Game)

After we rushed back from the boat ride, we got the valet to bring the van around and we checked out. We got on the road about 12:30 and the game was at 1:20. We knew we'd be cutting it close, but as traffic got worse, we were making bets on how much of the game we'd miss!! We parked in the remote parking lot and caught a bus - all pretty quickly - and actually made it just as the 1st inning was ending, so we were pretty happy.








We sat towards the back and it was a great view! This is actually not as close as we were sitting. We sat a lot closer, but I wanted to get a wide shot, so you could the whole field. It was such a beautiful day too. We sat in the shade, obviously, and the breeze was so nice and it really couldn't have been better out. They played the Minnesota Twins and unfortunately we sat a couple rows in front of a guy who was already plastered by the 2nd inning when we got there and he was yelling at everyone and laughing at himself. He thought he was hilarious. We just wanted to bash him in the face. I've never understood why there's a need for beer at the games. If they want to have that, then they should have big family sections where that's not allowed, because if my kids had been there, I would've been really upset. They don't need to see stuff like that. Let alone hear the nastiness that came out of his mouth. Sorry, rant over. That was really the only thing that made our time unhappy. The rest of it was fantastic and I can't wait to go again next year!!

This was the first Cubs game I had been to since I was in 6th grade, so I was really excited!!

I shot a little video of our time there. I WISH I had recorded the very end of the game. It was awesome!! We were tied 2-2 and the Twins had defeated the Cubs the previous 2 games. We REALLY wanted to win (and winning meant shutting up the loser behind us too! hehe). Bottom of the 9th the Cubbies had a base hit. Then the next guy hit a double, making the players on 2nd and 3rd. Then the Twins walked the next guy, so bases were loaded. All the Cubs fans were on their feet, just anxious to see if they'd pull it off or we'd go into extra innings. The next guy came up to bat and hit a line drive and we scored!!! The crowd went CRAZY! It was awesome!! I should've been ready with the video, but I wasn't, but boy was it exciting!!!

Anniversary Trip - Day 1

We are back from our 10th anniversary vacation! And, it was soooo much fun!! As you know it was our first overnighter away from the kids and the report I got back was that they were all really good and, of course, did their normal "kid" thing, but it wasn't anything that Jill and Adam couldn't handle. In fact, when we got back yesterday, we walked in and they were outside playing. And, when they came inside and saw us they were like "hey" and just kept on walking. :-) Soooo glad to see they didn't miss us at all. Seriously. So, that made me feel better, just knowing they had so much fun that they didn't need us there, ya know? I won't have to be nervous anymore about that. Anyway, we left right after lunch on Sat, because we weren't able to check in until 2 (at least that's what we thought).



Here's our hotel. We stayed at the Marriott Renaissance Hotel and it was right in the heart of Chicago. We were close to everything there. It was soooo nice!

We got there about 2:30, but the room wasn't ready, so we gave our luggage to the bell hop and decided to go walk around the city some. Here's the inside of the hotel. I LOVED the lighting. It was just beautiful! We walked down to see if we could catch the 3pm Wendella boat tour, but it was sold out, so we bought a ticket for the next morning. Walked around some more, then went back to hang out until we got the phone call that our room was ready.

We walked around the hotel some when we got there. There were shops in the hotel, down below the street level, but nothing terribly exciting. So, we just went back to the lobby and waited for the call. Here we are waiting. :-)

It didn't take long and they called us. Here's our hotel room. Isn't it nice? We were on the 17th floor. And, me, scared of heights, did NOT look out the window much.

But here was our view. That's the Chicago River. The boat tours are literally just a couple blocks down from us. That's the Trump Tower that the sun is reflecting off of. I don't like Donald Trump, but I must say it's a nice tower.

Here's a better shot of the river. And, you can see how high up we were too.

We had made reservations to eat at 5, because we needed to get to the show by 7 and we didn't know how long it would take to eat and get down there. We changed our clothes and walked down. The restaurant is known for being a really great steak place. It was only a block away, so that was nice.

Here's the restaurant. It opened at 5, so we stood outside until it was open. I felt a bit dorky showing up so early, considering most people in the city eat at 7, but we had places to go and things to see, so we had to eat early. It was delicious though. We really enjoyed it!

And, right across the street was Harry Carey's bar. I almost wish we had gone there! I didn't feel quite fancy enough for Keefer's. Harry's is probably more my style. :-)

We got done earlier than we thought, so we headed back to the hotel for a quick minute, then headed out for the theater. We had tickets to see Mary Poppins. The Cadillac Theater was only 5 blocks away, so we got there quickly. Again, everything was so close to our hotel. It was terrific! We got there about a quarter till 7 and found out that it didn't start until 8! Doh!!!! I thought it was 7 and didn't bother to look at the tickets. So, we could've made our dinner plans later, made the 3:30 boat ride. Looked at the city more. But, I screwed up, so what are ya gonna do? So, we walked around some more, then just waited until the doors opened up. The show was spectacular!!! Watching it made me the miss the kids though, because I KNEW they would've loved it. And, believe it or not, Pete, who mocks out the shows on a regular basis, really enjoyed it and said he'd want to see more. Woo-Hoo!!! It got done about 11pm and we walked back to the hotel. It was so nice and relaxing to walk through the city at night. Much calmer and so pretty with all the lights. Oh, and I didn't take any pictures of the palace and stuff, because I didn't take my camera. Plus, cameras are prohibited in the theater, so I didn't bother. But, it was beautiful. So, that completed Day 1. I'll post about Day 2 later.

Flashback Friday

This week's edition of Flashback Friday is all about our nephews. :-) To be more specific our Schutz nephews. This weekend Pete and I are going on our 10th anniversary weekend to Chicago and the kids are staying with their cousins (and Pete's sister and her husband too, of course!). Trevor is their oldest. He's in the black shirt above and is 6 months younger than Madie. Ty is in the striped shirt and he's 4, right between Noah and Olivia. They LOVE being together and I think this will be a special weekend for them and a special weekend for us as well. This is our first overnight trip without the kids since Madie was born. And, in many ways, the first mini-vacation we've taken as a couple since our honeymoon. Very excited about it! Also, a wee bit nervous, since it is the first time leaving the kids, but the excitement FAR outweighs the nervousness. Anyway, the picture above is of our kids all together probably 3 years ago right after Livie was born. You can see her in Nana T.'s lap in the background. We watched the boys while Jill and Adam were looking for a new house when they moved to the Chicago area. Look at Madie's curls!!! So pretty!!! They had such fun those couple of days and I'm sure they'll have just as much fun this time around as well. When we get back I'll be the good little blogger and post all the pictures and tell you all about our fun time. So, see you on Sunday! :-)