Enjoying home

We have been in the 80's and 90's for a week or so and have been enjoying the nice weather.

Grant loves riding his bike.  Gracie will settle for riding on Mommy's bike but tries to hop on Grant's every chance she gets (even though she can't ride it).

Given the hot days, the kids have been enjoying playing in a little blow-up pool.  Here are some pics of them having fun in the backyard.

 

One nice thing about the 'burbs is that we can walk to the playground whenever we want.  We have been spending our fair share of time there.  Gracie will climb up and go down the big slides by herself!  We spot her but she has no fear.  She is saying a few words these days (e.g., lily, cup, book).  She isn't a complete cuddle bug but will snuggle and kiss when she wants to.  She loves to steal her brothers "special things" to get him all upset (his little blanket and teddy bear).  Grant can be really cute with her, calling her his "cutie Gracie" sometimes and also is frequently in a timeout for being rough with her.  She is a tough bugger though and rarely cries or fusses about it.

Of course we have been spending lots of time playing and cuddling in the house.

Almost a month!

I can't believe it has been so long since we've posted to the blog.  We have been doing tons of fun things.

A trip to the natural history museum in Chicago.

Where we got to see Sue, the most complete T-Rex, along with TONS of other cool things.  Grant's favorite was definitely the T-rex.

 

We've made some trips to the local children's museum.

"Cheese!"

Just this past weekend we watched fireworks at North Central College.  We were close and they were definitely loud.  Neither kid fussed though.  Grant would flinch after every loud boom.  Gracie did good but was tense the whole time and making fists.

We took a trip to a local equestrian center that used to be a major horse racing stable producing Kentucky Derby winners.  The kids enjoyed it, but I think Grant's favorite part was seeing a cat in the barn!

We went to the final game of North Central's baseball season.  One of my student's plays and I had been meaning to make it all season.  They had to win the game to make the playoffs and...they lost.  Gracie was relaxing on Lara and really enjoyed it.  After about 1 inning Grant was bored and hot and wanted to go home.

In other recent news, you may have seen the flooding in our area a few weeks ago.  This was our street.

Thankfully we are uphill just a bit and only had a little water in our unfinished basement.  Many of the nice houses around us got water in their basements and some had as much as a couple feet!  The next day furniture and carpet was piled all along the street.  In the morning a student sent me a video of the street he lives on and said, "sorry, can't make it to class".  The video looked like he was filming a river.  Actually North Central cancelled classes all day because most roadways were impassable.  Two cars tried to make it through the water on our street, pictured above, and both cars died and had to be pushed out.