July

Wow, 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!

Monster Jam

Well, we did it. We went to a Monster Jam show. I’ve been hesitant to do it because I knew that the Allstate Arena is a tiny place (it’s a hockey/basketball stadium) and the trucks can’t get moving as fast as when they perform in football stadiums. But I looked at the 2011 schedule and there isn’t another show near Chicago all year. I was hoping they’d do a show in Minnesota this year, but I guess with the problems in the Metrodome, they’re skipping that state this year. Besides, the tickets for Friday night’s show were only $10 each, so it seemed like a good deal, just to see one show at least. Maybe next year we’ll go back to Houston if they go back to Reliant Stadium.

So a show is 2 hours broken down like this. First they parade all the trucks out around the track. Then they do little jumps – 2 each. We didn’t catch it on tape, but Digger was the first one to do this and flipped his truck. I didn’t film it because I figured there would be more wrecks later during freestyle, but unfortunately not. That was the only wreck of the night.

After the quick jumps, some of the trucks parked in the middle and they do some Quad racing, I guess just to fill the time. We didn’t film that either because that’s not what we came for.

Then there are the monster truck races, 2 trucks at a time in a little tournament until 1 truck is the winner. In between rounds, more quad racing. By the way, those quads, even though tiny, are almost as loud as the monster trucks.

Then there is an intermission. After the break, we watched two transformer cars do battle. Mildly entertaining. Their “canons” sure were loud. The bad guy lost one of his arms as he was transforming, too. They moved really, really slow. Definitely not like the movie transformers. I think I would have preferred Truckasaurus, but I guess they need to demonstrate other oddities, too.

Finally, it was time for freestyle: the main event. This is when 1 truck at a time tries for the biggest and most specactular jumps. There were judges, but not sure what they were grading on – their scores seemed pretty random.

There were 8 trucks total there. A few were Alex’s favorite. Batman, Digger, Max D. We were told this was the first time in 5 years that Max D was back in Chicago. Monster Jam puts on 5 shows in Chicago over the weekend, but they also put on shows in 4 other states the same weekend. So there must be a lot of trucks (and duplicates) and drivers. When Alex saw the driver of Max D, he told us that wasn’t the real Max D driver – and he was absolutely right. We didn’t get the star drivers that you see on the tv show. He’s just that observant.

All in all, it was a fun night and Alex had fun. He was pretty tired, but still had a lot of fun and didn’t want to stop playing with his own trucks at home for an hour after we got back. He had to have a checkered flag, too, which he really loves waving and doing races with. Seeing these trucks live is really impressive. We didn’t get close, but just seeing them on tv really doesn’t do them justice.

Here’s a bit of a compilation of our night:

All the Monster trucks at the show

Alex and his flag

Digger was still on the field as we were leaving, so we grabbed a shot

Phew … photos

What a mess – trying to organize 2000 photos from 5 different cameras which have different date/time stamps on them (I’m not happy with whichever one of you has their camera set to 2006 still!)  But I got all those photos organized and uploaded and selected the 873 best ones which you can view here.

All of them got some basic processing and resizing.  Now I need to get in and pick the really good ones and process them a bit more – make them not just print worthy, but frame worthy, too.  I’ve been doing some other fun stuff too.  Here’s a start:

Yosemite Valley Panoramic - click to enlarge

Monterey Aquarium

Our group at Glacier Point

4 generations of 1st born Millers (with better backdrop this time)

Fallen redwood tree

the boys

How do you get a 2yo to smile for the camera?

Well, that's better - too bad the backdrop isn't

at the Golden Gate Bridge

Monterey Aquarium

Seals

Monterey Bay Panoramic - click to enlarge

Bowling for the 1st time

New favorite activity: piano & guitar playing

siblings

Sisters

Getting the kids to smile for the camera

Feed me!

Chloeand Jen

safety first

The Boys

Alex's favorite toy

Grandpa and the great-grandkids

There’s just so many good ones, it’s hard to pick just a few.  By the way – who took the A Miller family picture in front of Yosemite Falls?  I don’t see that one on my copy of the CD!

Cubs – Sox game

I went to Wrigley Field with Todd yesterday to watch the Cubs and White Sox play.  It was by far the most exciting game I’ve ever witnessed in that ballpark.  It’s also the first time I’ve ever high-fived complete strangers at a game.

Well, mainly because Todd, a die-hard Sox fan, wasn’t going to high five me when the Cubs came back to win after overcoming a 4-run deficit going into the 8th inning.

It’s also the first time I was in the ballpark for a win and could hear the “Go Cubs Go” song played live.  Sara and I had gone to the game in May and they won, but we had to duck out in the 7th to go pick up Alex as school.

So it ended up being a real fun day … for me at least.  There was one incident where we watched security escort out someone after a scuffle.  But for the most part, people were really cordial, especially on the way out of the park.  There were some Cub fans behind us going down the ramp that were really cool to Todd and other Sox fans.  It was nice to see a semi-drunk fan not be a total jerk to an opposing team’s fan.

Of course, we did have a couple of 40 year old men down the row from us act like 12 year olds the whole game.  Yelling at the top of their lungs stupid things like “Die Konerko Die!”   First of all, the players aren’t going to hear us in the upper deck.  And second, they were way too old to be yelling stupid immature stuff like that.  They were an embarrassment.

But all-in-all it was a fun afternoon.  Win or no win, it was nice to be at the ballpark on a Thursday afternoon where the weather was nice.  We even got to the park early enough to watch batting practice.  That’s something I’d never witnessed before either.

Nice Saturday

I’m supposed to be doing some of my freelance work right now, but I know any minute now Alex is going to walk in asking to look at videos of trucks on the internet, so it’s hard to get motivated to start something.

It’s rainy and cool today.  But yesterday was awesome.  There was a lot of cloud cover to keep it from being classified as a georgeous day, but the 70+ degree weather made it great.  It’s been forever since we’ve been able to walk around outside in short sleeves.  We made full use of the warmth by going to the Morton Arboretum with Dan and Emily and their girls.

Bringing kids to an Arboretuem?  I know what you’re thinking, but the Mort has done a fantastic job at creating a fun and interactive children’s garden that kids can explore and run around in.  There are treeforts with bouncy bridges, streams that kids can wade in, rocks to climb and gardens to explore.  It’s really quite impressive and fun.

Dan and Emily are members and had a guest pass, so we could check it out for free.  Sara and I are considering our options on a place to get an annual membership (like a zoo or children’s museum), and the Arboretum is quite tempting.

The children’s garden takes up just 4 of the 1700 acres of the arboretum, so there is plenty to still explore.  You can drive, bike, hike, or cross-country ski through the park if you so desired.

We ate lunch in the arboretum’s cafeteria and then came home for nice long naps.  When we woke up, we drove out to Dan & Emily’s house for a BBQ dinner.  We had a wonderful dinner (and great home-brewed beer) and dessert and took advantage of their big backyard and playset after the food.

It was a great way to spend a nice warm day, but we wore Alex out.  He slept in an hour and a half later than he normally sleeps in.  It made us a little late for church today.

Crossing the bridge

Mom & Alex

Playing with water

More bridges

10 Years

I am old.  To be going back to your 10 Year college reunion means just that.  Well, that and whenever you hear sports casters talking about aging veterans on professional teams and then you see that they’re talking about players who are still younger than you.

It also didn’t help that this year, the reunion weekend was held during school.  In the past, the weekend has been held during the summer.  This time, while we walked the campus, students were going about their business.  Thinking about how these freshmen were 8 years old when we first started is really depressing.

When walking around with another couple, we were passed by some young students known to them (cousins?  youth group members?  illegitimate children?  not sure – didn’t catch that part).  We posed the question to them if we could pass as students, perhaps if we had backpacks slung over our shoulders, but they didn’t hesitate one bit to say no.  Bummer.

Sara and I changed our plans 4 times over the weekend.  The idea was to spend Saturday in GR for the events of that day (there were events Friday night, but we knew we wouldn’t be able to make in time for them).  We had 2 time constraints.  The first was the brunch at 10am for the reunion.  The other was I had a meeting at church at 9:45am on Sunday.  We thought we’d drive down Friday night and leave Saturday night.  Well, Friday night, Alex was not doing well with the teething, so we thought we’d just go down first thing Saturday morning after some sleep.  (Definitely not a full night of sleep since we had to get up early enough to get there for breakfast).  Well we got out late, but we did make it to GR just at the end for the last bit of eggs and waffles.

We were still planning on leaving that night until there were talks of after parties (which never did materialize) and the fact that we were already tired from being up so early.  So we decided during dinner to stay over and leave early in the morning.  This actually worked out very well as driving during the daylight was certainly easier than driving at night (you know, being old, my eyes aren’t as sharp as they used to be.  Wait, they’ve never been sharp).

The day shaped up like this.  After brunch at 11, we perused the bookstore and a few of our old haunts around campus.  Then we headed over to Lindsey’s house to drop Alex off with Uncle D (and squeeze a 30 minute nap in).  At 3, we took a tour of the new Communications Arts and Science building and got a close up look at all their new high tech toys.  We also got to catch the last bit of the Future Planning session in which we saw concept drawings of the new Common’s building and Fine Arts Center.  Yep – a ton of improvements will be made over the next 5 years that will really improve things on campus and make us want to go back to school even more.

We had another hour to kill between the sessions and dinner, so we walked around the campus some more with friends.  Then we met up with more classmates for hors d’oeuvres.  A class photo was taken, then it was on to the main course.  We played a round of Calvin Jeapordy (in which our table did not get one question right), followed by dessert.

It was great to see a bunch of faces again that we hadn’t seen in a long, long time.  There were a few other names on the online guest list that I was really hoping to see and chat with, but apparently they could only make it for the Friday night events and not stay around for the dinner.  Still, it was good touching base again with those that were around, too.