A very important part about us going on our 10 anniversary trip to the Catskills, was Jim and Julie coming to Chicago to chill with the kiddos! We got to have an awesome weekend together in addition to our time away. Double treat. This is Grandma unwrapping our thank you gift, a Halloween dino yard inflatable to go with their collection from the Lawnozoic Era.
Julie has seemed to make friends with a very cute and colorful rat while strolling the alley. But more likely, Alice has adopted Brock's Murray costume, but the stroll in the alley remains the same.
One of our adventures was going to Great America! Now, Alice is not on
board with roller coasters like the rest of us, but kiddie rides with
Grandma? For sure.
Mini tea-cups with daddy is ok too. Sooooo not ready for Daddy and Brock's big boy tea cup ride. And neither is mommy ever ready for that ride. That is only a ride to the nearest trashcan or vomitorium.
Ice cream is mandatory of course. Children chose the somehow tantalizing tiny pebbles of perhaps dairy material under the pseudonym, Dippn' Dots.
Such a desperate reach. For what? More Dippn's? A nap? A sip of mommy's beer? WHAT DO YOU WANT?! And Grandpa is now accepting tips.
Here is a sample of the power of the daddy teacups. The horror!
One of the highlights of the trip was a journey in the Gypsy Wagon to Starved Rock State Park. It has some lovely trails but no wire coat hangers. Which was too bad as we managed to lock the keys in the car and poor Jim had to MacGyver (omg, while looking up the spelling of that name, I see they have a remake with a new young modern hunky MacGyver) into while the rest of us enjoyed the outdoors.
So proud of this little one, she stayed a-foot all 4 miles. I think it was because she had to show that she could keep up with Grandma the super-walker (+2,800 miles and counting. WOW. Alice has some catching up to do).
Or maybe she was just carried the whole way, that's possible too.
o
We found our way down to one of the waterfall gorges Starved Rock is known for.
Jim back with us. Or with us in the beginning? I forget....
Same waterfall gorge as before. Off to the left you can see the small ledge the selfie was from. I should have put it after the other for a better narrative flow, but cutting pasting, blogging, meh.
Is this the end of their wonderful visit? I guess so judging by the pictures. But we had a blast and as ever, we have more memories (for now) then our blog images do justice to. We feel so incredibly lucky to have the G's of Omaha be both the brave adventures, and role-model child rear-ers in the same 7.5-hour-away package. Thank you thank you thank you!! And so many more of these wonderful visits and incomplete blog posts to come!
Ah, the pomp and circumstance of a Kindergarten graduation. The wonderful Principle Korth at the podium... The event began with the graduates singing a song to their teacher: And then the main event! Then we adjourned to the playground for cake and popsicles. Alice with one of her closer friend, Chloe. And her AMAZING teacher who we will miss so much, Ms. Heintzelman! It has been a really good year! Alice has bloomed in reading and math and particularly in her interest and understanding of sociology and science. She even made a few friends! I can say I learned more from than even Brock's first year of public school. I began volunteering on Friday mornings in December after her school received 100 new refugee students from Venezuela (her school went from 200 to 300 in a day!). I did not want to volunteer in the classroom, but instead wanted to help out with admin, but that was not where humans were needed, so I ended up in the neighborhood third grade class. This was way outside
Uh. When the going gets rough, the rough roughs it! And off we head to Michigan for our annual camping and disc golfing extravaganza. We are last minute campers and it worked to our advantage this year. As everything else was booked, we ended up at a little "secret" campsite we know of in western MI called Timberview. The nice old man that runs it got sick of loud campers, so he pulled all listings off of the internet. It's not on google maps. We were lucky enough to drive by one year and just stop in. And now that we have a kid, he set us up in the nicest secluded campsite, of which we took two pictures (we're bad at this sometimes.) There was wonderful hiking, an assortment of mushrooms to discover, and a giant hill of majestic old-growth pines that Brock aptly named "pine tree heaven." It's also quite refreshing to be in a site where you are actually allowed to gather your own firewood, and it's low-traffic enough that there is plenty. We s
Brock was given the assignment of memorizing the poem "If", by Sir Rudyard Kipling. It is a wonderful poem, here was his submission to his teacher. They were also called on at random times through out the year to recite various verses impromptu in class. So deep.
Comments
Post a Comment