Friday, May 16, 2008

Day-by-day

Here's our trip described by day for those interested (if not, the pictures are in the previous post!)

Thursday: We flew out of LAX at 10:30am. After taking a taxi to the airport and checking our ONE allowed bag each (I'm a little bitter about how the airlines are CHARGING you for everything now!), we headed through the looooooong security lines and onto the plane. I had upgraded us to "Economy plus" so we'd have more leg room - TOTALLY worth it with a child in your lap! Amanda did pretty good. We had one small meltdown when the stewardess came by and Amanda wanted to go with her, and she said she couldn't take her. But otherwise, she played, ate and even took a quick nap. Although United does NOT provide changing tables in their bathrooms! So I had to change Amanda on the floor of the galley! UGH! We arrived to O'Hare on-time at 4:30 and picked up our rental car from Hertz. Had a MAJOR meltdown on the shuttle bus over there though. Amanda wanted to run around after being cooped up on the plan for 4 hours and I couldn't let her run around the bus! We couldn't get her to stop crying for the entire busride!
Arrived at Mike's sister's house and had a nice dinner with the family, then tucked Amanda in to bed. She slept really well all nights we were there, only woke up once on Saturday night but went right back to sleep.

Friday: We got up around 7:30am and had breakfast. Then let the kids run around outside. It was a beautiful day, though it looked kind of cold from inside. Within a few minutes of being outside though, we were stripping off the sweaters. Around 1pm Mike's mom came to pick me up so we could go get our nails done. By that time both Amanda and Zach were down for naps, so Mike watched the monitors while Kathy, Rosalie and I all went out. Mike got very lucky, as both kids slept the entire time we were gone!
Friday night us girls headed out to a mini-bachelorette party for Rosalie. We went to dinner at this little local place that serves only "tapas" or "small portions". It was definitely interesting. Each portion is seriously tiny (like exactly 5 shrimp), and we had to share it between 4 of us. But it was definitely a party for the tastebuds!

Saturday: The day of the wedding. We got up around 7:30 again and slowly got ready. I had brought 2 dresses. One I knew fit, and the other that when I tried it on a week before didn't quite fit. I put that one on Saturday morning, and wallah, it fit! So Amanda and I were both in pink :) Headed to the church to be there by 11am. Took some pictures with Rosalie and Mark, and then headed inside for the ceremony at 11:30. Amanda was being a bear as she hadn't had a morning nap, so I spent the ceremony trying to keep her from crying (thus, I have no pics from the ceremony). Afterwards, we had about an hour before the reception so we drove around, letting the kids sleep in their carseats.
The reception was beautiful, we had this huge room with a very nice balcony overlooking a golf course. The food was FABULOUS. It was over about 5pm, so we headed home. Let the kids play outside a bit longer, then put them to bed. Mike and I went out that night to meet his friend John and his fiance for coffee & ice cream.

Sunday: Mother's Day. Mike was supposed to take John out for his "bachelor" party at Great America this day, but we woke up to pouring rain and freezing cold wind. So they were supposed to do something else, but as the day wore on, it kept getting postponed. The kids were antsy from being cooped up inside all day, so we decided to go to dinner as the weather had cleared up by the afternoon. After about an HOUR of going back and forth, we finally decided on Chili's. By that time the kids were tired, hungry and not in very good moods. So it was... an interesting dinner to say the least. We had all four kids (Ali-3, Zach-2, Amanda-1, and Natalie-11 months) and 6 adults. But we made it through and headed home for bedtime.

Monday: Our flight left at 6:30pm on Monday, so we had all morning. We ended up at the Children's Museum in downtown Naperville which was SO much fun (as you can see from the pictures below). Amanda LOVED it. Had a quick lunch afterwards and visited with Rosalie & Mark while the kids napped, then we headed for the airport. Amanda would *not* sleep on the plane, so we had a long flight, though she at least wasn't screaming crying for the entire time. Arrived safely in LA about 9:30 and headed home.

Now I have to book our flights out there again in June for John's wedding...

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Quick picture post

Just got back from a trip to Illinois for Mike's mom's wedding. Here's some pics, then I'll post about the trip later.
First, some pictures from Wed. night before we left.  Amanda has decided she likes to help me clean!






Then from Friday.  The kids decided they wanted to get in Kathy's car, so here's a few of them playing like they are "driving"




From the wedding.  Amanda & I and then her cousin Ali giving her a hug. Amanda loved it!





And from the Children's museum on Monday:





This was her FAVORITE thing to play with.  Sorry they're all so blurry, but it was hard to keep the camera still enough to take the pictures.  You can see the intense concentration on her face as she put the pegs in the holes.





Looking at the fish:


And finally this was Tuesday night as I was trying to unpack: