More Weekend Pictures

Our weekend was so full of fun stuff that I decided to post the rest of our misc. pictures in one post.

Em, Jeff, and the girls came on Friday afternoon, so we got to spend the afternoon and evening hanging out with them before we headed up on Sat.  The kids all made quick work of destroying the living room. ;-)

This weekend was Lay Renewal Weekend at our church, but we were going to be gone.  There was supposed to be a bowling event on Friday, so Madie invited her friend Michael and we all headed over to the church to enjoy the events they had going on that night, since we were going to miss the rest of them over the weekend.  When we got there, we found out that it didn't start at 7pm like I originally had thought.  It started at 8!  That meant it wasn't going to be over until after 9 and I knew that would be too late for Em's girls and too late for us with such a busy weekend ahead of us.  Didn't want to disappoint Michael, especially, since he skipped the Youth Center activities for this event, so we decided to head to R.Grotto, a local restaurant, and have dessert.  We had ice cream, cinnamon bites, and some cheesecake.  It was delicious and definitely a good change of plans for the night.

With all that sugar in them, they weren't quite ready to go to sleep, so they sat up and read stories.  Kendalyn loved reading stories with Livie. :-)

The next morning, Pete dropped off Tater at John's house and we spent the morning getting our showers and getting everything packed.  Jeff and Noah were content to play Wii, while we moms were busy getting things gathered and kids cleaned up.

Pete had the very difficult job of sitting with sweet little Avery.  Doesn't look like he's too sad about taking on that job. ;-)

When we got up to Schaumburg, we were too early to check into the hotel, so we went searching for some lunch.  We decided to go to Five Guys.  We've never been there and it was really yummy!  Great choice for our first meal!

We were able to check into OUR room (Em and Jeff's wasn't quite ready), so we all dumped our stuff off there after lunch, Em included, took a quick potty break, then headed out to shop at Ikea. I'm the only one of the 9 of us in our group that had ever been there, so I was excited for them to see how fun it is!  The kids loved it especially and I'm pretty sure the adults did too.  We found this stuffed broccoli, so I just had to get my picture taken with it.  Would've been a better picture if I had a knife pointed at its head, but didn't have one handy.

After some shopping, we went back to the hotel to relax for a few minutes, before heading out for supper.  We met up with Jill, Trevor, and Ty, who literally live like a mile from our hotel and this restaurant.  We went next door from Five Guys to Noodles and Company.  This was my favorite place!  The kids were excited to see more cousins and we had a nice time chatting.

The next morning, we all got up early, Pete ran out to pick up breakfast, and the Spichers joined us in our room to eat.  We got our shirts on and were getting ready for the Walk!

My two special guys!

Yes, that's me back there with all the kiddos, except Avery.  We were so excited to get over to the park and see what great stuff was in store for us!

After the race, we celebrated wtih Portillos, then headed back to Ikea for a little more shopping.  We bought a new buffet!  I was so excited.  I had been eyeing it since I went there with my bestie Michelle and her mom back in March (I think).  When we walked outside to load up the boxes, the skies opened up and it just started pouring like crazy!  There was thunder all around and it was crazy!  As soon as we said our goodbyes to Em and Jeff, we left to go see Jill and the boys again (Adam was in IN helping his mom move).  As we left, we heard sirens going off.  Oh, goody!  A tornado!!  So, we booked it to Jill's and spent some time in their basement until the storm had passed.  You can tell the kids weren't too bothered by all the drama. ;-)

We were so glad to spend the weekend with my sister and participate in the walk, but also find time to see Jill and the boys while we were there.  It was a great time!

Legoland

We didn't just want to drive up on Sunday for the walk, especially since registration started at 8:30.  So, we decided to drive up on Saturday, get a hotel, and spend the day shopping and having fun.  Em looked up places to visit and quickly discovered Legoland!  As much as our kids love legos, we felt it was a perfect fit.

You can see from the picture above that we all had our raincoats on.  It rained off and on all day, but that didn't stop us from enjoying the day!  Here is the cool giraffe that greeted us as we entered.

Kendalyn LOVES Spongebob and who was right inside the door when we walked in?  Why, Spongebob himself!  She looked at her shirt and then at Spongebob and said, "We match!".  I later got her a lego spongebob keychain that she absolutely loved. :-)

This guy was also right inside the door.  Madie thought he looked like Papa D. ;-)

They had this huge display that looked like Chicago.  It was all decorated for Halloween, complete with cobwebs, monsters, and spooky lights.  So cool!

Even had King Kong on one of the skyscrapers.

The next room was the jungle room.  We loved this room! 

They had lots of animals and it took was covered with cobwebs and had ghosts hiding all around the room.

They had a fun ride we got to go on.  You sat in a car and it took you around in a circle.  You had a laser gun and had to shoot bats and spiders.  We all loved it!  Well, everyone but Avery.  As soon as I sat her down in the car, she started crying, but once we were off, she got so interested in all the stuff around her, she just sat and watched it all.

"L" for Legoland, don't ya know?! ;-)

They had this big lion right outside the 4D movie theater.  Kendalyn had to check it out.

The 4D movie was kind of cool, but we sat in the very back row, so we didn't get to feel most of the 4D effects.  Madie and Noah were a little disappointed in that part.

They had an Obama lego guy there.  We're in IL country, so we tried to be discreet and do silly things to him.  Jeff was trying to knee him, but it looks more like he's doing some kind of rockette pose with him. ;-)

They had this big room with this cool ride and a climbing thing and tons of table to build legos.  They LOVED this part!

The kids kept trying to slap my hand as they went around, but my arms were too short.

Kendalyn and Avery were too short to go on the ride, so they sat and built lego inventions.

We had to take our picture by Indy!

I think you can tell which way Pete's going to vote this year. ;-)

We had to take a picture by Darth Vadar.  We're using the force to destroy our enemies in this one.

The Spichers took their picture by the sweet Santa Claus!

And, of course, we couldn't leave out R2, right?  It was a lot of fun and the kids had the best time!  Definitely a great addition to our trip!

JDRF Walk

After much anticipation, we finally got to walk in the JDRF Walk for the Cure 5K in Schaumburg!  We signed up for this race back in March, if I remember correctly.  So, we've been excited about this day for a long time!  Hopefully it'll be the first walk of many in our future.

The weather forecast for the day wasn't only awful, it was scary!  They were calling for pouring rains, thunderstorms, and 50 mph winds.  Not really the forecast you want when you're walking outside for 2 hours or more.  The day before we just as yucky - lots of rain and clouds.  The temps, however, were actually quite nice.  It was in the mid-60s all weekend.  It was great!  We all said some prayers that somehow there would be a break in the weather during our walk, but we brought our raincoats, umbrellas, and bought some ponchos just in case.  When we parked our cars, the clouds were everywhere, but not a drop of rain to be seen.  We were getting excited to walk over to the park, especially after seeing how many people were there!

Em, Jeff, and the girls were ready to go too!!

There were tons of people walking over to the park from the parking lot with us and tons already there.  Since this was our first year, we didn't know quite what to expect, but the atmosphere was really powerful and exciting!  There was a group of drummers that were pounding away as we entered the park.

As we got closer, we saw all the tents up.  We actually saw them putting them up the day before the walk.  It was exciting to see how many went up.  Each tent had a team or a vendor in it. 

Some of our donations came in the form of cash, so we took our envelope up to the registration pavilion and got checked in.  We made our goal of $500 and actually made $525!  Not bad for our first year!  Because Noah raised over $100 himself, he got a free tshirt.  He was so excited!

The biggest tent there was filled with healthy, low-carb snacks.  And, all of it was FREE!  They had fresh fruit, granola bars of every shape and size, water bottles, juice, pop, etc..  We loaded up!

There was a stage with a DJ and he was playing lots of great music that the kids loved dancing to.  Kendalyn did her "bootie shake" for us.  It was hilarious!

Here we are!  We were the "Diabetic Sock Ninjas"!  I made our shirts, so they weren't as professional as some of the other teams, but when we were walking, a volunteer laughed and said, "I love your shirts!".  Made us all pretty happy to hear!

The walk began at 9:30 and we all started walking.  Here we are starting our very first 5K!

I will admit I was worried about how crowded it was going to be, because honestly, there were thousands of people as you'll see from the picture below this one, but we had plenty of room to walk and move around.  It wasn't too hard to stay together as a team (except that I have very short legs and my husband has very long legs!).  Look at our awesome team!

You can see in the background of this picture how many people there were.  There were just as many in front of us too!  Just tons and tons of people, all there to support these kids and their fight to end Type 1 Diabetes!

The kids got pretty tired along the way and Livie tried to grab a ride any time she could.  Kendalyn wanted to push her in her stroller.  So cute!

There were check points along the way, with bathrooms and more snacks.  This bagpipe group greeted us at the halfway point.

We took that opportunity to have a few more snacks.  Noah was the only one that opted out of eating any snacks while we were there and it was all for him in the first place!  Oh well, we enjoyed the bananas and plums without him. ;-)

These were the clouds that threatened our walk.  Did I mention that even though they hung around us the entire way, there wasn't a single raindrop the entire time we were out there?  The wind even died right down after the race started.  The rain started literally 2 min after we got back to the van to leave.  It was such an answer to prayer!  We serve an awesome God!

Towards the middle/end of the walk, Noah and Madie were getting tired.  Livie had gotten free stroller and shoulder rides, but Noah and Madie kept trekking away.  They found some walking sticks to help them continue on.

Here is our amazing group at the finish line!!  So thankful and glad that my sister and Jeff and the girls were willing to come out and support us!  It was a joy to have them there.  We laughed and chatted the entire time and it was so much fun.  We had the best weekend with them!  I have a lot more pictures of some of the other things we did during our weekend, but I knew that getting up the walk pictures was the first priority.  Hopefully I'll get to the rest tomorrow. 

We left the walk and headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out, then went to lunch with our team.  We decided to hit Ikea one more time before we went our seperate ways (we went the day before for the 1st time too!).  When we left Ikea, it was pouring.  And, not just pouring, I mean thunderstorms, craziness, and tornado warnings!  The sirens were going off and it became a bit of a scary situation.  We said our quick goodbyes and they headed home, while we headed over to Jill's to hide in her basement until the storm passed.  You'll see in the picture above, that all the busyness of the day caught up with Noah and Livie when we finally started driving home around 4pm.  They were out and dead asleep within minutes of leaving Arlington Heights.  Guess all that fun wore them out. :-)  It was a fabulous weekend and a great walk.  So thankful that we were able to be a small part of raising money to find a cure.