We're back

We had a wonderful trip but it does feel good to be home also. In fact Madelyn has commented repeatedly about how much she missed her house. It was a super trip and the travel itself, which I was most dreading, was fine. The trip out was a little stressful since Abby cried off and on from Cleveland on, which was only halfway and 6 hours from Chicago. We thought she had just really worked herself up but when her temperature continued to rise on Friday we called our pediatrician who recommended we take her in. Off to the local urgent care we went for a very un-fun Saturday morning. But it was a good thing because she was diagnosed with (guess what?) an ear infection. It took a few days but once the medicine kicked in she was back to our normal Abby girl. The trip ended with illness also......Madelyn developed an eye infection so we ended the trip with a visit to the pediatrician. Antibiotics all around! Everyone is doing much better now.

One of the highlights of the travel (besides the arrival) was a stop at Notre Dame. The girls saw the Golden Dome for the very first time....
It was nice to have so much time to see family and friends though as usual it still seemed like we did not get to see everyone. I took over 200 photos so that says how much fun we were having. The anniversary party was a big success and lots of fun. It rained a few minutes before the party started but cleared up nicely. Thank goodness we had rented the tent. Abby was so not herself and just wanted to cling to us but everything else went great.

We took a few days to drive farther West by 5 hours to visit some of my extended family in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. It is a wonderful little town on the Mississippi River that is very special to our family. Both of my parents and my brother Jason were born there, my Dad's side of the family still all live there and it is just a town that's charm stands still in time. We did the "must do's" which sadly included a lot of eating favorites: Rocky's pizza, Coney Island hot dogs and ice cream at an old-fashioned ice cream shop. The highlight for me was seeing my family, including my dozens and dozens of cousins---mostly (rowdy but in a good way) boys. Yes in fact, I have one girl cousin who is in 7th grade, the rest since have all been boys. So our girls were quite a novelty!

Here is a few of the family members who met us at the park....
And a few more gathered later that night....
When we got back to Chicago the fun certainly did not stop. We visited with friends (all with boys), met two new babies (both boys!) and spent lots of quality time with Glamma and Grandpa.

This summer has certainly been the summer of amusement parks and rides. While in Chicago we visited Kiddieland. (Madelyn was a little disappointed at first that it wasn't Kitty Land......she was expecting to see cats.) But the place is a total throwback. Kevin I think was having flashbacks of visitng there as a child. We went with our cousins, the Burkes. Madelyn and Andrew got along well and so did Abigail and Ryan so it was a super fun day for everyone.


Our last day we headed downtown to see some sights. The girls loved the train ride.
It was the start of the Chicago Air and Water Show so we were certainly not the only ones with the idea of going downtown. It was a gorgeous day to be a tourist. We saw Millenium Park for the first time and enjoyed the super-huge water fountain (our children were in a very small percentage of little ones not in their bathing suits!)
One of my fav. sites was "the bean" which was made for some fun photography.





Glamma and Grandpa and the girls went in to the children's museum (Chicago has one of our favorites!) for a little while and Kevin and I explored Navy Pier. We even went on the ferris wheel which made me oh-so-nervous for some reason. It's really up there! Thank goodness the kids were not there to see me sweat.



We packed up the next day and started the trek back. We decided to go for the gold (Olympic speak) and drove straight through. Now back home and into some routines....??? We can only hope.