June

A Little Rain

Still Arizona girls at heart, these two love to don their raincoats, rain boots and umbrellas when it rains. 

A Visit From Friends

On June 2nd, Crystal, Jeff, Maliyah, and Zavier made a trip to Chicago. They stayed at our house for a night and we got to watch all the kids play together. We went into the City on Monday, met Kirk for lunch and went to see the Bean. We had a great time visiting; it was just too short!

This picture is fuzzy but I love seeing the interactions between them... Maren watching Zavier crash into the bean bag and Elena reaching for Maliyah's hand.

Festival at Winnetka

One Saturday, we headed out for a festival with rides, slides, treats, swings, bounce houses and pony rides!

I even got to go on one of the roller coasters with Elena and Maren.

Finishing off the day with ice cream cones at the park

Maren's 3rd Birthday

 Maren turned 3 on June 24th. We had a small gathering at our house on Saturday, June 22nd with Meme and Tim, Auntie Beth and Nikki, Chris, Maggie and Ryan. We ate outside and then moved inside for the balloon man to come and do his show.

Maren and her Doc McStuffins doll

The first balloon creature was the Little Mermaid, made for the Birthday Girl

The kids were mesmerized by his abilities to twist and create balloons. 

He made Elena a huge octopus. 

Inspired by her FAVORITE show, "Octonauts!"

By the end, Maren was very, very, very tired. She was all partied out. 

A Day at Navy Pier

Since we had some visitors and we had not been in the City too much yet this summer, we decided to head to Navy Pier. We had a nice little walk and then found the carousel. Of course, we had to ride the carousel!

 Kirk and Tim rode in one car on the giant ferris wheel and the ladies all rode in the next car. Elena and Maren could not quite figure out what they were doing in the next car and not in ours.

 Beth and I on the Pier

Maren does not always like her hair brushed but today the polka dot girl let Tim brush her hair.

May 2013

 Unbelievably gorgeous spring on our street

 Maren stopped taking naps last October. Right before we went to Hawaii, she started napping again. Of course, that went away with our trip, but once in a while, when she is super exhausted, she will still nap. And if you put her in the car she will be out in two minutes!! 

On this day she was calling me from her room (so I thought!) where she was supposed to be having quiet time. I was in the basement with Elena, who was asleep. All of a sudden, Maren got quiet. Mother's intuition told me I had better go check on her. This is what I found. I do not know how one falls asleep on the stairs... but I guess if you are tired enough! And, yes, the child has no clothes on.

Mother's Day presentation at preschool 

 Elena and classmates

Playdate at Naomi's house, a classmate of Elena's 

 A little pre-summer fun with the sprinkler. These girls could not wait to get their swimsuits on. They spent a couple hours out there. I was surprised it entertained them for the whole afternoon. Arizona girls at heart. 

 Isn't she beautiful?

Like sister, like sister. 

At our new favorite park in Morton Grove

A late evening trip to Home Depot to find some spring flowers. I love it when they let me put their hair in pigtails and here E actually has a ponytail. SO cute!

Baby and Jocelyn like to travel with us. These sisters are great mommies already.

Poor Maren... this no nap thing is just exhausting. This is just sad, she looks so pitiful! And she looks like Al Bundy with her hands in her pants, but her "security blanket" or alternative to thumb sucking is a finger in the belly button. So that is what she is doing here. 

 Elena with Miss Diane at her preschool graduation on May 17. I don't think they quite grasp that it is over... she did not want to go! Even though there was ice cream! Somehow the time after spring break got difficult for Elena at school, though we never found out why. She just did not want to go anymore. 

 Maren, Elena, Mia and Kailey from preschool

Elena hooked onto Mia the first week or so of school because Mia is Maliyah's, Elena's best friend's, nickname. Mia just adored Maren, was always trying to kiss her and touch her, which Maren never liked! And then one day Mia called Maren a baby - oh, boy, the wrong thing to say! 

 A little too much fun with chocolate pudding... and one of Elena's famous faces 

We love to dance in the kitchen. Elena usually likes to run in circles... but this time she let me dip her. Their favorite song is "Springsteen." Wonder why. 

I also got to spend 48 hours in Phoenix in May for a trial. I did not get to spend near as much time visiting people as I would have liked. The trial took longer than expected. I was so happy to be able to go and visit those I could. It felt like going home and it made me quite homesick for Phoenix and Arizona. And, of course, all my family and friends, not to mention my old job and colleagues. I did, however, get to see all the nonsense surrounding the Jodi Arias trial firsthand, as that was the building where the trial was. Quite a spectacle.

May was a good month. 

April Hawaii Trip

Spring Leadership and Anniversary Trip


I am obviously way behind in my blog... so time for a little catch-up!

Toward the end of April, Kirk and I flew to Honolulu for a Leadership conference. We decided to make it our 10th anniversary trip a few months early. We absolutely love Hawaii and spent our honeymoon there, also took a trip when I was 12 weeks pregnant with Elena, so this would have been our place of choice. We were lucky enough to couple it with a business trip, spend some extra days and be able to tour the island, too. We did have trouble getting out of Chicago, as there was a huge rainstorm that kept on going and we were non-reving, so we were at the mercy of the airline. Still cannot complain! Beth took care of Elena and Maren while we were gone and she got rain, snow, power outage, flooding... you know - typical Midwest weather! But she drove all over Chicago and they had a fabulous time.

This is after the conference with a few people we met. Hawaii's groups are quite young, as you can see here. I love this picture of Kirk. 

  

This was an area we stopped at on the North side of the island. I so wanted to see the huge waves on the North Shore but we were too late in the year. Kirk took this as a panoramic and I love the way it turned out.

These are called rainbow shower trees. When they bloom they are covered in pink flowers. They are like huge canopies. There was a small one in Phoenix I always kept an eye on - it never seemed to flourish in the desert - but I just love these trees. 

This was also on the North Shore, though a little more toward the eastern side of the island. We had a lot of fun just walking the beaches and I liked looking for little sea creatures or shells or whatever other fun ocean things I might find. 

Absolutely loved this place... great beer, (which says a lot coming from me), great food, sat outside right by an inland marina... I would be a regular if I could!

We tried to make the most of every minute, so our last day there, a Tuesday, we walked from our hotel to Diamondhead. We were not sure if we would hike it, but once we got there... why not? We did have time. It wasn't long, but as you can see here, it was steep. Completely worth the entire trip.

 Honolulu near Waikiki Beach

View of Honolulu looking north from Diamondhead

Daily Life

Maren's Band Aids

Now, if you know Maren, you know she loves Band Aids. We had this tamed for awhile, that if there was not blood, a Band Aid was not needed. However. Unckie Beth sent a care package a month ago with four boxes of Band Aids. So, there had to be a limit somewhere. We had to put a lid on it somewhere - so three Band Aids a day became the limit. Band Aids fix everything!

Now, what gets me on this is that Elena has never wanted anything to do with Band Aids. She does not like things stuck to her skin. But this last week when they got an Easter package from Unckie Beth with another box of Band Aids, well, they both got busy. 

At the Park

Monday was a challenging day so I decided we had to get outside. It was not even warm, so we bundled up and went to the park. It was a much needed trip outside. These kiddos seem to know it should be spring and  they just want to be outside. If the sun is out, they want to be out. This was a cloudy, windy day but we had a great time in the short time we were out.

A little blogspot for Lu! Here is Maren pasting geometric shapes to Lucy. Lucy has become quite tolerant in the last few years! She is especially tolerant of Maren, who is very gentle with her. I am not sure if Lulu really knew what she was doing until she stood up and realized she had stickers all over. It was cute how she let Maren do it, though. 

What a great dog! 

We also did some cleaning together this last week. Let's see if I can get a repeat on this next week! My favorite thing was Elena asking me the next day on the way home from preschool: "Mom, do you have any chores for us to do today?" What a shock that was! However, she was not happy with my response of: "Well, we do need to sweep and clean the floors and the dishwasher needs emptied." "No! I don't want to empty the dishwasher!" So apparently there are only some things worth doing - like washing windows and scrubbing sinks. Fine with me! I can find all sorts of things to do with a spray bottle, which is what they seem to like best. 

Weekend Project

Kirk has been planning to build a new swing set for Elena and Maren. Our old one followed us from Phoenix but it is pretty old. Rusty old. So it finally warmed up a bit and last Saturday he got the swing set part of it done. Elena and Maren thought this was the greatest thing - they had their tools out and were hammering on their own with Elena's tool set. I love seeing them out there. They are so happy to be a part of this new construction. They are quite excited about this!

 Right in the middle of it, helping Papa

 Meme got to help, too

We did some baking while Meme was visiting, too. The apple cake was scrumptious and Papa only got a teeny piece. We three girls ate it all (mostly after Meme went home Sunday).

 One of the best parts is turning the mixer on

This is Easter Sunday after church. Somehow I only got a couple photos of them in their dresses. Elena had been waiting all week for the Easter Bunny (what kid doesn't). She actually did really well - I think she thought that the Bunny was coming Sunday night so she wasn't looking too hard Sunday morning. But after she found the second egg around the house, she was on the hunt. Oh my gosh, was she excited. I do not know the last time she was that excited. Maybe when Jesse was here. She also managed to eat all the candy out of the eggs that she found. She did share, though! I was really happy to see that, as was Maren!