Projects

I promise there are more Chicago posts to come as well as photos. There is just too much to write and I have a movie I want to watch before bed. In the meantime, I wanted to post a couple of pics of crafty-ish projects I made. The first one is made from an old window that came from our second floor and was taken out before we did our addition. I thought the window was charming and wanted to use it as a decoration. This window wasn't visible on the outside for some reason. They covered over it with siding. Now, it is a memento frame of sorts of our 2007 Florida beach vacation. All of the shells around the edge are shells we collected from that vacation at beautiful Pensacola Beach, FL. I get happy every time I see it.

The next project is a set of plantation shutters. I love plantation shutters, but this adds a new twist to them. This is now hanging in the girl's doll room. It has lots of ribbons in salmons, greens, & blues. It is a memory board of sorts, although I don't have many "mementos" hanging on it just yet since I finished it about 10 minutes ago.
I must also tell you about a super-bargain! My husband wanted some Crocs flip-flops while we were visiting Chicago. We trekked miles it seemed to visit the Crocs store on State. Well, they were like $40.00 and somehow we knew that they would be cheaper at home. These are cool Crocs and they look like regular men's flip-flops BTW. We went home and went to the local dept. store that sells them and sure enough...the first pair I touched was on sale for $24.99. They were his size so we took them to the register to pay. The clerk said, "that will be $4.75". My husband said, "how much did you say"? She repeated again $4.75. We paid for them and left. There wasn't a sign or marking indicating these were on super sale. Josh's first instinct was to check the bag to make sure they were indeed real Crocs. Yes, they were. I told my mom about them and told her they had more--although none of them were marked as sale. My family was also able to snag Crocs as well. In total, we got 6 pair of Crocs for less than the sale price of ONE pair!!! Now, that's a deal if you ask me. Everyone that got them has declared over and over how comfortable they are! Josh just shook his head at my "deal" radar that magically appeared.

Chicago Part I

I have already gone out of order on my Chicago posts, but that is due to the fact that I wanted to post about the taping of the Oprah showed BEFORE it aired today. I just watched it and re-lived those awesome memories again!! It is cooler to see it all put together in show format. There are many breaks in the show while they shift things around and such.
Our train arrived a teeny bit early into Chicago. We had luggage so we headed straight for the hotel. We planned to put it in luggage hold, but they allowed us to check in at like 10:45 AM. This was awesome because check-in isn't supposed to be until 3 pm. Needless to say, the hotel was a madhouse. We dropped off our things and headed out to Michigan Avenue. We took a water taxi over to Navy Pier. It was a GORGEOUS day!!

Navy Pier was BUSY! We were all very thirsty so we stopped for a bite to eat. We headed down to the end of the pier to see the Chicago lighthouse. Upon seeing the waters of Lake Michigan, Aliyah could only think of going to the beach. She did not want to ride the Ferris wheel, visit the museum or anything--only the beach would do. We found out that there is a free trolley (anything free in Chicago is pretty awesome) that stops right at our hotel--who knew? We boarded the trolley and stopped back off at our hotel to change into swimsuits. We got back on the trolley a few minutes later to go to the Ohio Street beach. It was GORGEOUS! We were privileged to experience Chicago's hottest days of the entire summer--a big plus for us!

I didn't take my camera to the beach since I didn't want it to get wet, and I didn't feel comfortable leaving it with all of my stuff while we enjoyed the water. Aliyah was very brave about swimming in the open water. The awesome things about Lake Michigan...no sharks, stingrays, crabs, or rip-tides. The water is clear and doesn't smell. We spent several hours there working on our tans. Finally, we headed back to the trolley and back to our hotel. After we got ready, we headed out to the River North area for some dinner. We went to P.F. Changs. Josh and I thoroughly enjoyed the food, although the eating experience wasn't great due to Keirah being out of typical routine.
Here is Aliyah chatting it up on the cell before dinner arrived. My mouth is watering thinking about P.F. Changs! From dinner, we walked around the city a bit to enjoy the lights, sights, & sounds. We stopped to take a few pics on Michigan Avenue and to go into Walgreens to get a few snacks for the hotel.
This is the Chicago Tribune building at night. Notice the beautiful architectural details--I love that!! Since the girls were getting tired, we finished our walk at our hotel.
This is the view from our hotel. The Chicago River is quite obvious. You will also see NBC tower on the right and the John Hancock building is the tall one in the middle. It was a SPECTACULAR view at night. Lying in bed and looking out at this was pretty cool!

Here's what happened once we got back to our room...
More Chicago adventures to come...and believe me, the trip got even more exciting!

Two

Happy 2nd Birthday, Keirah!! What could be better than to have a parade on the day of your birthday?? We took both girls to the parade of course and Keirah caught on quickly how to go get the candy--while Aliyah (age 6) pretty much watched. Aliyah is always of the idea that she doesn't really need much candy. In fact, the guy sitting next to her was giving her tons. The girls had orange large marigolds in their hair--from the plants Aliyah planted. They were looking quite festive. Everyone was stopping and filling their bag.

We proceeded to go to the arts/crafts/food portion of the festival. This is Keirah's 3rd one already because she went when she was only 3 days old! Yes, I am nuts and I love this festival.

For dinner, we had pizza. Keirah ate 3 pieces (they are very small). She kind of gave us this shy look about all of the stuff revolving around her. Although she got gifts from us while in Chicago from American Girl, she got a few gifts today from grandma & grandpa. Her favorite thing seemed to be the teeny tiny Dora backpack. She has worn it since she received it and continues to wear it while doing everything. She has enjoyed hopping around today and pushing her baby stroller. She didn't eat any cake, however loved the balloon candles.

Oh, how I remember Keirah's birthday! I woke up and watched Regis & Kelly that day (apparently that always sends me into labor)...it happened with Aliyah as well. It was approximately 9:45 am and the contractions started to get closer and closer. Josh got up and I told him that he needed to get ready and we should straighten the house. We did just that and left everything in perfect order. Aliyah was picked up by g&g and off we went. It was a gorgeous sunny September day. There was a lot of road work and Josh thought he would go fast. I told him to just drive normally. I remember breathing through contractions on the drive. It took between 30-40 minutes to get to the hospital. I walked in (remember this was the day I was to be induced that they had cancelled)...well she was coming anyway. They gave me an epidural right away and the whole l&d process was so much different and more relaxed than with Aliyah. With Keirah, I didn't have that horrid back labor that I had with Aliyah. At 5:41 pm Keirah was born. The doctor said he knew she probably didn't even weigh 8 lbs. You see, the doctors had told me she might weigh 9-10 lbs when she was born. I had gestational diabetes. She weighed 7-11. I remember them telling me that I could order whatever I wanted to eat. Since the diabetic diet was ended, it was a free for all. I ordered chicken strips & frieds (the forbidden foods on the diet). What a wonderful day with a wonderful new baby girl! Aliyah was proud to present Keirah with her first pacifier.

Keirah, you are so funny, sweet, & cute. You always have so much love and hugs to give us! You love your sis so much and always want to be with us. You have filled our house with so much love and laughter and beauty. We still can't believe you have bright baby blues!!

Happy 2nd Birthday! As Aliyah always says, "Isn't she a beauty"!

One

Today was Keirah's last day of being 1! It's so hard to believe that our little baby is now gonna be 2!! Where has the time gone?? I remember this day 2 years ago so well. I had started maternity leave that very day and was supposed to be induced on the 6th, but they had cancelled it. Wrong thing to tell someone who is pregnant. Well, the night of the 5th, I stayed up pretty late sitting up in bed doing something--not sure what, but I know I was watching TV. I remember pointing out to Josh that she felt like a whale because she was doing these huge movements. I think I was up until probably 2:30 am that night. Well, in celebration of Keirah's last day of being 1, I took this sweet picture of her. She posed for me and everything and then asked to see the picture. We are looking forward to going to the parade tomorrow and the festival.

King & his throne

I had to share a pic of the King and his new Throne. The furniture is now here and the wicked stepchild chair is done in it's role in our LR. The chair feels like a throne when you sit in it also.

Just Missed

Well, the local festival is upon us and every year they hide a medallion. They give out clues for the 2 weeks leading up to the festival. As of this morning the medallion had not been found. We hadn't studied the clues much since we have been gone until we came home last night. We had some ideas, but when the clue came out this morning on the internet, it struck us. We got ourselves together as quickly as we could and drove there only to find out that we were a few minutes too late--it had already been found. The good thing is that we figured out where it was this year. The cluemaster has a definite talent for writing these clues and to finally have figured it out is at least a plus. We WILL find it one of these years, just not this year. I'm just glad we finally figured out what this guy is talking about when he writes clues!

OMW

I am going to go out of order on my posting about our trip simply because I want to. If you have read my past posts regarding the Olympics, you will know that I REALLY like them.

On Tuesday evening, we came back to our room a bit later considering we have 2 small children. Well, we turned on the television just in time to hear that over 150 Olympic athletes had arrived in Chicago that day and would be appearing on Oprah the next day at Millenium Park. Well, our hotel was only 2 blocks from Millenium Park so we decided to go there--not really knowing what we would experience.

Now, I had always wanted to see a taping of the Oprah show since I was in high school and saw her at Disney World...my classmates who were with me didn't believe me that it was her--but it was because when we all got home, Oprah had a show from Disney World...anyhow...I thought of the Oprah thing, however I know that children cannot be in the audience.

We arrived and were given an Olympic pin (that's cool). We were shocked at how much space there was available. In Millenium Park there are about 1000 seats or so around the stage and then there is a grassy area immediately behind. In order to get the seats, you had to do backflips, starve, be a dignitary in Chicago, be an Olympic family member or have magic...and that process took place before we arrived in Chicago. The grassy area had a fence to divide it, but we were able to get right up to the fence. Of course, you had to agree that you are allowing HARPO to have your image on their production, but yeah we all know that. There was a lady warming up the crowd and doing all the run-throughs on how to ask a question, how to cheer etc...She also made mention of the fact that this is the ONLY time children are allowed to attend the Oprah show. I think I saw approximately 10 total including my own. Anyway, the people in those seats I mentioned were expressly told NO PICTURES and no autographs. If you had a camera in that area, you would be taken out. Well, not in the grassy area =). Only problem is, I am at the event of a lifetime and my camera is DEAD--DEAD. I didn't have the charger with me. Cell phone pics it had to be.

We got a glimpse of the athletes all strolling into the holding area. They were waving and you could see golden. Oprah arrived onstage and WOW--her hair was really big--even bigger than it looks on television. There was red, white, & blue confetti and balloons flying everywhere--really cool. The athletes all came in to the stage to huge cheers from everyone. There were over 150 of them including Phelps, Dara Torres, Shawn Johnson, Nastia Liukin, Kerri Walsh, Misty May, etc...all of the winners you can pretty much think of were there--even the basketball players like Kobe. The first interview was with none other than Michael Phelps. It was cool to see him in person. The one thing that is interesting about a taping is all of the moving of chairs and other such things around the stage and the dead silence as this goes on. It seemed like half of the show. They tape for probably 1 hour and 15 minutes plus before and after footage so it will be interesting to see what makes the Sept. 8th show.

David Cook (American Idol winner) performed at the end as the athletes left their seats and greeted people. I got to high five Brendan Hansen (swimming & relay) and Monique Henderson of the 4x400 relay. All of the 4 x 400 women's track relay walked by us as did the decathalon winner and others who I didn't recognize. I was trying to take pics on my cell phone, but that delay is rough on the pictures! I did get some though and will have more to post on this exciting event later.