Winter Summary

We went to the Field Museum on a free day back in January. It was huge, we weren't able to see everything and we were there for 4 or 5 hours. It was fun though. Isaac loved all the animals. I really liked the rocks and stones, brilliant. It was fun to see Sue, that head there in the picture isn't real, the real one is on display on the second floor because it's too heavy to actually be mounted there on her body.

 In the rock and stone exhibit there was an original Tiffany window. I thought it was beautiful!

 It was a very snowy day, even though it was free, the museum wasn't crowded at all thank goodness. Chicago looks beautiful in the snow.

 Isaac and I have been drawing a lot lately. We started out using the washable markers we got him for Christmas.... but as you can see, that didn't work out. We are using crayons now.

 He loves playing peek-a-boo.

Winter wouldn't be complete without a little college basketball. This is last Saturday when we finally got to see the Cougs play! We don't have cable so when we found out the game was on CBS, we were aaaaalllll over that. It was increadible to see Jimmer play live. Wow. wow.

hmmmm like father like son.

It's been a snowy winter and as much as I like it... around Christmas time :) I'm excited for Spring to get here. I'm trying not to be too anxious though.

Some scenes from the Blizzard of 2011.. Don't worry, we weren't one of the cars out on Lakeshore Dr. that you saw on the news. We were in our nice warm cozy apartment!

Starved Rock State Park, IL

Last weekend Jason and I met up with Shannon and Matt at Starved Rock State Park in Illinois. I lived so close to it (an hour and a half drive straight down I-80) all my life and never knew it was there! It was really pretty. It was so fun to see Matt and Shannon and I just love how close we live to them; I wish it was closer sometimes, but I'm just grateful we're only a few hours away!

 Isaac had a lot of fun, especially when we let him down to hike. 

 Jason and Isaac were so cute. Jason helped Isaac explore all the places Isaac wanted to go. Well, almost all of them. Isaac was pretty excited about the leaves that had just fallen off the trees from the wind storms we had the previous week. He loved walking on them and hearing them crunch.

 Jason styled Isaac's hair. When I saw it and asked him about it he said, "What? It's for Halloween!" :) Isaac got a lot of compliments from the ladies about his spiky hair.

 I really love this picture Jason took of Isaac and me heading into one of the canyons in the park.

 Isaac tried to run away when we stopped for lunch on this bridge. He just took off running and giggling.

We love Illinois!

PS Don't forget to VOTE today everyone!

Da Bears!

It has been pretty cloudy the last few days here. I decided it might be a good time to take some pictures of Isaac since there wouldn't been any really harsh shadows from the sun. And of course he got to sport his new Bears shirt I found at a thrift store! :) 

I love my men!

Denver - Part 1

As I was saying in my earlier post, I just got back from a loooong road trip with my mom and eventually met up with my family in South Dakota. Our first stop on the trip was Denver, CO to visit my brother for a few quick days in Broomfield. They were pretty busy. The first afternoon when we got there (around 1 or 2 in the afternoon) Isaac discovered their backyard... wow, let me tell you, it's a pretty fun place. He especially loved climbing all the cool toys. Here he is on the rocking horse living it up.

One of our biggest reasons for stopping in Colorado was to do a 14er (climb a 14,000 peak mountain). My mom has been really excited for a little less than a year I think getting ready for this. We did a really pretty hike the night we arrived to try and help us acclimatize a bit. Then Thursday we headed up our 14er, southwest of Denver, Mt. Sherman. We were having fun, after the first hour it actually got easier as my body adjusted. There were some really cool old mining ruins along the trail. Here I am with my nephew Andrew on our hike up.

The peak is behind us. We were getting really close when my brother said we might have to turn around. He's been hiking a lot and knows what he's talking about so I ran ahead a bit with some of the older boys to see if we could make it to the peak fast and then run back down. On our way we passed an older man who was yelling for his wife to come back who had ventured a bit ahead. The man told us that he used to work for Search and Rescue in New Mexico and had pulled one too many dead bodies off of peaks like this to continue. The storm clouds were rolling in fast so I ran back to my brother not that far away to tell him what the man had said and we decided to turn back. We joked that if I didn't have Isaac and James didn't have his little family we might have tried for it, but didn't want to risk it.

Here's John on the gate entrance to the mountain, I think he might be a ninja like his dad was when he was a little older than John jumping on roofs and scaring little sisters...

John and my mom when with the little guys (Isaac and William) to a park near James' house to swing and play for a bit. John is a great older brother and cousin. Here he is helping Isaac up the slide. Isaac loves going up slides, not going down so much...

You can check out a few other pictures from Denver at my other blog at the July posts.

One Year!

I was going to wait to post these until I was able to have a picture of him with his cake... yet to be made and consumed. Hopefully we can sing to him tomorrow and let him stuff cake in his face. I went on a 3 week mega road trip and just got back literally Sunday after church. I'll have to update you with some fun pictures later on that too. I met my mom in Davenport and we left for Denver and stayed with my brother James and his family for a few days, it was a lot of fun. We went hiking, went to the rec center, the park, and Isaac had a ton of fun playing in their backyard. Then we went to Utah stopped at my cousin's house in Salt Lake and made it to Wendover before we headed to California. We stayed in the Yuba City area for a few days visiting with lots of family on both my mom and dad's side and then we went to Portland for a day to see my Aunt and Uncle there and meet up with Dave and his family. Then we went to Idaho to see Scott and caravan with him to the Black Hills in South Dakota where I finally met up with Jason (yay!!!) and we went camping with my family for a week. That was one of the best camping trips I've ever done. It was beautiful and a lot of fun. Well, Isaac turned ONE on August 7th but we were going to be driving back to Illinois so that Jason could make it to orientation on the 9th. So we decided to celebrate his birthday on the 6th with my family after an extremely fun day out on a boat on Lake Pactola the whole day. It was beautiful and sunny and as we were getting the fire started (of course) we saw lightning in the distance. My dad was making Isaac a yummy chocolate cherry cake with the dutch oven and Jason was working on keeping the fire going while the rest of us hid in tents playing princess go fish or cars in cars listening to IPods until the storm passed. When it did, we checked the cake and it was burnt solid and inch on the top and on the bottom and the cake was only about 3 or 4 inches thick to begin with. Well, Scott decided to take it upon himself to eat the innards of the cake, which tasted like what I imagine a cake made with cigarette ash instead of flour would taste like. wow Scott... wow... anyway! It was a wonderful day and we saw a double rainbow over the lake next to our campsite right before the storm set in... but no birthday cake as of yet for Isaac. We'll try that tomorrow. I think I'm just about done unpacking the kitchen!!!

Here is a video of Scott eating the cake and my mom trying it. By the way, my sister and I sound almost exactly the same, even I had a hard time telling when it was me talking or her.

Isaac still got to smother the spaghetti on himself for dinner (thank you Chef Boyardee and Jason's awesome fire skills during a storm).

Yummy! Even if it was WAY past his bedtime, he couldn't help but smile for the camera and his full belly

You can see another faint rainbow above the brighter rainbow if you look hard

I'm hoping to get another official "one year" post up soon after he gets his cake.