Hadley & I had a girls-only date and it was perfectly sweet.
I love her.
Hadley is not an independent reader yet, but she "reads" chapter books. I have no idea what she's doing (picking out sight words she knows?!), but she will sit w/ a book for 10ish minutes "reading", then she'll show me how many pages she read and tell me it's a good book. A day or two later, she'll go back to the same book, find her bookmark and continue until she finishes the book. She'd brought home a book and we discovered the font is cursive handwriting and she said she can't read it. So we went back and here she is looking for a new book that isn't in Spanish (she meant cursive 😂). Here's to 1st grade and becoming a real reader soon!
Our 2nd annual summer road trip to Willow River State Park w/ this group.
Look at Hadley's arms around Finley, they argue 95% of the time so it was a nice surprise when I looked back at our pictures. 💗
It's a 2ish mile hike into the waterfall, takes about 50 minutes when we make pit stops for butterflies, bugs, walking sticks and rock-throwing into the river.
We all made it!
Little girl by a giant rock.
There are two sides of the waterfall and the kids love exploring both.
New to us - we walked up 300 stairs (that's how many Caden counted) and we were all feeling the burn in our quads when we got to the top.
The view from the top.
Our little break turned into our lunch break. We have no idea where these stairs go, maybe that'll be next year's new adventure.
Back down for wading.
Of course, my thrill-seekers would be too scared to climb back down.
After a couple of hours, we got ready to hike back out, it was a perfect outdoor day.
Spencer, Easton & Nolan joined us for a cool treat before our drive home.
Hadley's newest mugshot (on the left) and last year's (on the right) - little sister has lost that baby-roundness and looks more grown up. (Her passport expired last year and I was going to renew it, but when we weren't going to travel internationally, it made sense to wait a year. But w/ spring break plans happening, she will need one in March 😃).
Hadley has figured out the Rainbow Loom. Finley used to spend HOURS making bracelets.
It was time for our annual road trip to Chicago. We have been lucky to visit Patrick's family every year mid-August. W/ no family weddings/gatherings planned, this year we decided to get a hotel downtown and fill it w/ touristy stuff. W/ Patrick's travels, he flew in from St. Louis and lucky me drove down w/ the kids.
We stopped for gas and Finley made me laugh - he looks like he's watching a scary movie, nope it's an American Girl doll DVD.
Our first stop was to see Uncle Jeremy at work - a fire house! We took a tour of the living space and the ambulance (Jeremy is the ambulance driver), because the fire truck got called on a run as we walked in the door.
When the truck returned, Jeremy offered to take the kids up on the ladder truck.
The bucket.
The looked REALLY high up there!
And I looked really little down there (in the pink circle).
We headed downtown to our hotel and walked to Pizzeria Due for true Chicago deep-dish pizza. The kids thought it was strange having sauce on the top.
Hadley HAD to bring Tenney to dinner and I got to carry her after 10 minutes. Nothing screams "mom" like walking around downtown Chicago carrying an American Girl doll😏
Tenney is the first doll Hadley has really stuck w/. She often insists on bringing Tenney (and 1-2 bags of Tenney's stuff) w/ us. Most evenings she changes Tenney into her pajamas and in the morning she'll dress her again. This was Tenney's set-up in our hotel. Kind of annoying (we had enough of our own bags to carry in), but absolutely sweet too.
Friday morning, the kids took their first Uber ride - Hadley was super happy to not sit in a booster.
We were headed to the SkyDeck in the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower).
The SkyDeck is a glass box hanging off the skyscraper 103 floors high!
After a short wait, it was our turn - w/ no hesitation, we walked right out!
A crazy start to our day.
We came down and enjoyed the city skyline from the ground and ended up at the Buckingham Fountains in Grant Park.
Selfies in Millennium Park on the Bean, because everyone does it.
One kid had a blast posing w/ the Bean.
The other one posed once...
...and was super annoyed when Hadley showed up in his picture too.
Auntie Shawna & Jake met up w/ us at Lincoln Park Zoo.
After a full day of walking, we needed Ghirardelli ice cream .
Major pancakes at the Original Pancake House.
We met up w/ cousins Mayah, Owen, Leah, Vinny & Livia at the Field Museum.
It was a little like chasing kittens, but fun too. The dinosaurs were the best part.
My favorite part - just walking around.
We were lucky enough to be in Chicago the same weekend as the Air & Water Show, which features another of my favorites - the Blue Angels.
Another stop at Buckingham Water Fountain, we really lucked out w/ nice weather.
My must-do for the kids was the Face Fountains (not the real name), it's right in the middle of Millennium Park and we'd stopped there a couple summers ago when we were downtown. It's a giant area where kids are running, shrieking, splashing and laughing, it's great.
We ended our weekend w/ taking over the pool area of our hotel - 7 kids + Jake.
The kids had a great weekend w/ family. I completely love downtown Chicago and all of the touristy things we found to do within walking distance of our hotel.
Back home and we met up w/ Finley's Cub Scout pack at the Children's Museum for a Solar Eclipse Block Party. Happy-faces because we scored glasses!
Hadley spent most of her time creating stuff out of cardboard and duct tape, she sat there for over an hour making thing after thing.
I tried to take a backwards picture of the eclipse w/ my phone and the sun just looks bright and shiny. But I think it showed up inside that pink circle?!
A local TV station was live for their noon broadcast...
...we made it our own version of the Today Show...
...and the kids made it onto TV!
Coincidentally, they were on the news a few times that week. Hadley is in the pink circle at gymnastics...
...a few days later Finley went to a ribbon-cutting w/ Grandpa and made the news...
...and when I was flipping through our school district's handbook, I found a picture of Hadley.
Allergies suuuuuck.
No cavities for Hadley, but we still have a shark situation. Dr. Miskulin hoped it would be out by her check-up and it wasn't. The adult tooth is now taller than her baby tooth, so she has four weeks to get it out or we're going back again.
Patrick has been traveling so, so, so much (there was a seven day stretch when he was in town for about 18 hours). So I was fortunate to have three needed evenings kid-free. I love my children, but when he's gone we are together 24/7 (they even sleep w/ me). First up, Grandma, Grandpa & I had dinner on a bridge.
Heidi, Ryan, some friends & I went to see the Tim McGraw & Faith Hill concert.
Flashback to 1995 when I met Tim McGraw!
But until then, we had a surprise party for her too.
Not sure how this started, but this picture of Ryan is hilarious.
School is getting VERY close, the teachers returned this week and so did some of my things! My good friend was offered/accepted a job w/ another good friend.
Summer is wrapping up and my patience for entertaining is pretty much spent. I'm looking forward to having some time to do MY stuff again, but days like this are my favorite kind w/ these two.
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