July
Jul 11Wow, what a couple of weeks that was!
It started on Tuesday, June 28 when Andrew stopped by our house and surprised us. Their family wasn’t due into Chicago until Sunday night for their annual vacation up from Houston, so this was a pleseant surprise. Turns out he just finished his final interview with Willow that day and got offered a job. (which he accepted). The process had been ongoing since May, and it was finalizing this week (he signed the contract on the 8th, so we were asked not to say anything until then).
Saturday, the 2nd, we headed up to Hutchinson Lake to spend family time with my cousins and aunts/uncles at my uncle Van’s cottage. We left later than we expected and got stuck in heavy, heavy holiday traffic. What is normally a 2 hour drive took us 4. We were less than happy with that. We were offered the opportunity to spend the night at their cabin, but we weren’t fully prepared for that, so we did head home later in the evening.
But not before having a couple of hours of fun playing in the lake and playing baseball on the lawn. We got Alex a life vest and that gave him a huge confidence boost. It was tough to get him out of the water. Sara, Alex, and I all climbed on a jet ski for a short excursion around the lake. We went out past the 7:30 “no wake” time cut-off, so I didn’t want to spend too much time out there lest we got Van in trouble. But we had a nice 10 minute trip with short bursts of speed and Alex had a lot of fun doing that. Next time we’ll have to get there much earlier to get some boating time. The plan to try to drive during nap time just sort of backfired on us.
The water was only up to his waist all the way out to the boats.
Sunday was relax day. Although we did go to the baseball field and that was when kids were shooting off fireworks on the next block over which Alex was sure they were being fired off for his “home runs.”
Monday was the holiday. At noon, the parade came down the side street and turned east (so not technically in front of our house). We walked to the corner and put our chairs in the street for a good view. Alex loved running out to grab all the candy that was being thrown out. We haven’t eaten any of it yet, it was just more fun to chase it all down.
Monday evening, Andrew & Cathi and the kids came over for a BBQ. The kids swam in the pool a little bit too. Alex became a daredevil by jumping off the cube into the pool.
We walked to the park on the praire path to kill some time and energy (and to walk by any houses that may be for sale). Then around 9, we walked down the street to get a seat in the grass at the church for fireworks viewing. It was late and the kids were tired. We wondered why we were doing it. Oh well.
Tuesday was back to work. Tuesday night was the U2 360 concert at Soldier Field. Hmm. I just realized those pictures are on Sara’s phone still. Well, here’s one from Cathi:
It was a great show. It ended late and getting out of there was tough (can’t go East!) We got to bed at 1am on a school night. I’m way too old to be doing that! But it was fun anyway.
Wednesday evening was BBQ at Emily & Dan’s place. Good to hang out with them again, too. Thursday night was my softball night. Friday night: day off! woohoo!
Saturday we drove up to Warren Dunes State Park (90 minutes) to meet up with the whole Bemis gang. This has become an annual tradition as this beach is perfectly between GR and Chicago. Traffic wasn’t near as bad as the week before, thankfully.
So we spent the afternoon playing in the water, getting sunburned and having a good time.
Alex surfing on a boogy board
Burying Andrew
14 Kids from 6 families
The Women
The Men
So that’s how July started. I need a vaction from all that!
More Updates
Mar 08You can see over on the right there are some new pictures in my Flickr gallery, too. Sara’s parents were in town for a week while I was in Nashville at NRB.
We’re on concert patrol this month. We hosted a Gungor and Seabird concert while in Nashville on Feb 27. This past Saturday Alex and his grandparents went to a Randall Goodgame Slugs’n'Bugs kids concert. This past Sunday night was an Andrew Peterson, Andy Gullahorn, Ben Shive concert. Both were at our church. Randall Goodgame is playing for my office on Tuesday. Sheryl and I are going to the Bon Jovi concert on Wednesday, but mainly to see the opening act, which is the drummer for our church, Kyle and his band, the West Side Winders. They won a battle of the bands competition and beat our 20 other bands to get to open for Bon Jovi. I’m real excited to see that.
It’s also now official that we’re part-owners of Cubs season tickets. My co-worker, Dave’s brother Ryan had his number get called (only took him 3 years). So we’re splitting it. The plan is to sell 90% of the games (yes, we have tickets to all 81 games). Dave and Ryan have been buying and selling tickets for nearly 10 years. They’re very confident we’ll make a profit. I think in the end I’ll end up with 6 games to go to – mostly afternoon or evening games that would be hard to sell anyway. Pirates in April anyone?
The seats are mediocre – deep in the right field corner, 20o level. But we’re in as season ticket holders and figure every year we’ll be offered a little bit better of an option. And of course, if the Cubs ever do go to the World Series, well then we’ll sell those and have Alex’s college tuition all saved for.
That’s pretty much it for now. I’m swamped right now. I have 11 open freelance projects right now. Some new clients, some existing, but way more work than I should be doing at one time. I should probably get back to some of them now.
Daycare
Dec 03When we bring Alex to school before 8am, we leave him in the 3-6 year old room until his teachers arrive. He’ll be graduating to that room early next year.
This particular morning, a very pregnant woman was dropping off her son and while Alex washed his hands, I heard the boy’s friend ask the mom some questions.
“What’s in there?” he asked, pointing to her tummy.
“A baby” she replied.
“Whoa! That’s a huge baby!”
He then said to the son, “You’re going to have a 100 pound baby!”
Desktop Wallpaper
Jul 17I experimented around today with Photoshop and Illustrator and came up with a desktop wallpaper.
New church
Jul 01Here are some pictures of our new sanctuary. It’s set up for the wedding that was this past Saturday, but you can see how beautiful it is. I’m so impressed at how it turned out. Plus it sounds fantastic.
