Jul 19, 2010 | Motherhood, Uncategorized
Today is the first day of school!
My 3rd, 8th, and Kindergartner
I spent all night making a nap mat cover for Mr. Jac.
I didn’t use a pattern, just sort of winged it from the nap mat my mom had made me in kindergarten (yeah, I still have it.) I put two stretchy circles of fabric on the end to tie it all up with, and Em made the pillow. I was happy to use the fancy star stitches my machine can do around the blanket. Fun!
All Rolled Up
Alien on the Blanket
All my kids are in school this year, and Cole and I don’t know what to do.
He wouldn’t stop barking when Jac was getting his clothes on like he was saying, “You can’t make HIM go too, it was bad enough when just the two big ones went!” My reluctant kindergartner was fine until I said “bye” in the classroom. I haven’t had a call yet, so wish us luck.
The house is too quiet.
Jul 18, 2010 | Uncategorized
I am really frustrated…
My book blog and cooking blog won’t allow people to comment for some reason.
I’ve been trying for awhile now to mess with the code or the setttings to see if it will fix the problem, but nothing has worked. Everything looks the same as on this blog to me. Today I even totally changed my book blog’s template and took out all the things I’d messed with in HTML, but still nothing. (By the way, let me know what you think of the look on the book blog. I’m not sure I like it.)
Maybe when the kids go back to school next week I’ll have time to fix all this mess. If I can’t, any suggestions on someone who can fix/redesign a blog?
Jul 17, 2010 | Uncategorized
(They don’t have their own website, but do have a facebook fan page.)
The Red Haven and Early Loring’s were in
We only picked a bushel and a half this year (150 lbs!)
Of course 75 lbs were for others (and yes, we can eat 75 lbs probably before I get them canned or frozen.)
This song kept going through my head…
Jul 15, 2010 | Green Living, Illinois, Travel, Uncategorized, United States
I was pleasantly surprised by how “green”
Chicago is.
Besides a wonderful transportation system that actually works they have…
Green Roofs Everywhere
Fields and Art in Unexpected Places
Jul 14, 2010 | Illinois, Travel, Uncategorized, United States
Navy Pier
Last week was spent in the windy city, Chicago! It ended up being a fantastic summer vacation.
The natives were complaining about the 87 degree weather and we were in heaven
coming from over 100’s in Arkansas.
We watched fireworks from Navy Pier (quite on accident.) We’d walked down to check out the pier about 3 or 4, and found out when we thought about going back for a nap that the pier was closed to anyone else due to crowd control. Anyway, we stayed and had a great time people-watching and the fireworks show was nice. This year the city cut the show to 15 minutes due to budget cuts, I guess in the past it’s been an hour long.
Tips if you go:
- Buy rail passes for the week at the airport (adults price was around $28, kids over 6 were $20 or so and the youngest was free.) The O’Hare airport has a train that runs right into it, so you can ride into the city without having to get a cab. It worked well, we were staying close to Navy Pier, so we had one transfer, but it was fine even with kids and luggage.
- Wear good shoes! (You’ll be doing A LOT of walking!)
- Rent bikes (almost anywhere) and you’ll have a blast. (There are many bike trails and Chicago has so many beautiful things to see that are easy to get to by bike. They even have segway and bike tours!)
Can you believe this is in the middle of the city?
- Get a membership to your local museum before you go. (We do this every year and just on this trip we saved over $200 in entrance fees, I think it was only $75 to join our museum as a family. We also belong to our local Art Museum and Zoo as a family, and many of those are reciprocal.)
Museum of Science & Technology
- Take lots of pictures! (I have too many, why I haven’t posted sooner.)
- Make sure you have bathing suits or change of clothes for kids in your bag. (I didn’t on a few occasions and from the number of fountains in Chicago you can imagine…)
- Scavenger Hunts! (Chicago has a great website for the city with scavenger hunts for various areas. Lots of fun! Also has calendars with events.
- Be prepared to wait for pizza. (Chicago deep dish takes an hour to bake so you’ll wait two hours for pizza. You can call ahead to some famous places and they will put your name and what you want down on the list. )
