I'm in trouble.....Mom's going to ground me

Every time I talk to my mother or email my mother or think about my mother, the same question pops into my mind - "Amy...Have you blogged YET?"

*sigh* No. I haven't blogged recently. I have been insanely busy. Exhausting-gonna-drop-any-second-busy. The hubby has been in and out of town. I've been under a mountain of laundry. We have officially wound down our summer vacation and we're knee deep into soccer for both girls and every time I turn my back to try to make something to eat or get some laundry or PEE my son is trying to climb on top of the dining room table. School has started! We're BUSY!

So again, shame on me for not blogging all about Chicago when it was happening. I was busy then too dang it. I'm a busy girl!



Here we go - the second half of my tenth grade essay, "What I Did On Summer Vacation"

After Erin's wedding things settled down a little bit. No much - just enough to let us catch our breath a bit. Erin and Jon's wedding was one of the major highlights of our vacation - after all, it was the reason the trip got planned in the first place! So once it was over, we could kind of slow down and move onto other things. Kind of.

I don't know if I've mentioned the gym yet. Or the pool. *drool* Both were absolutely rockin' and pretty much made our trip complete. One of the best perks of working at the hospital is the free membership that mom gets to the most fantastically awesome health club I've ever been sweaty in, and she was wonderful enough to get me and the kids a temporary membership for the month we were there. Seriously, the place is amazing. It's beautiful first of all. And it has these huge family changing rooms that don't smell like old sweat socks, with big fluffy towels and kid friendly showers stocked with everything you need. And if you don't have your kids with you, you can use the awesome women's locker room, which has everything from a whirlpool to all of your shower essentials to lemon water to these awesome towels that you can wrap all the way around your body. And around your head. And you can take an extra to stand on. And you don't have to feel guilty about any of it!

But the best part of the gym was the kids' club. Every day the girls could go to "Discovery Club" which was run by a few full-time staffers and a handful of really sweet and fun and incredibly energetic college kids. Every day they played games indoors and out, used the rock climbing wall, went swimming, did crafts, and more. And the best part is that it was included in a membership and they could stay for up to three hours every day. And........get this.......I could LEAVE THE BUILDING.

I mean, seriously.....they told me that and I was GONE - down the block GONE. I adore my kids but they had way more fun at Discovery club than they did with me and it gave me some much needed time off.

On days we didn't go the gym (or sometimes after the gym) we would go to the pool (That's Banana in the picture, personally I think she may have a future as a Hawaiian Tropic model). My sister works for the park district now and was able to wrangle pool passes for all four of us. This is the same community pool that I used to take Tom and Sarah to when we were younger and had to ride our bikes all summer long. Back then it was basically a big concrete hole in the ground full of water. But in the past eight million years since I've last been there, they have done some major renovations. Now there is a fantastic kids' section complete with fountains and a sand area and a zero-depth entry on three sides, where they can splash and play and have a blast in like, eight inches of water. They took the diving boards away and put in three water slides and added new seating and a new snack bar and we wasted about a trillion hours just lazing it away in the sun. It was bliss.

And in between all of those visits to the gym and trips to the pool, we did a bunch more stuff.

First of all....we went to the mall. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but we went to the REAL mall. Like, one that is only 20 minutes away that I don't have to drive through a national landmark to get to. So that was cool. We went out to eat with friends and we rented movies, and again people - we went to the MALL. My girlfriends here were all very jealous. I went to Target too. Like, lots and lots and lots of times. And to Super WalMart PAST 10:00 at night. That may be par for the course in good old Illinois but out here in Oregon that's crazy talk. So yeah. Boo-ya.


We did some other stuff too. The day after Erin's wedding, some of our closest friends from college celebrated their little girls' first birthday and it was awesome to be able to attend her party. We miss all of our friends so much sometimes and they have all always been so fantastic to us since we started having babies, so it was wonderful to be able to share their milestone with them. Happy Birthday again Addie!

At that party I had a chance to reconnect with a ton of our other friends from college and thanks to Bernie and Jeff's generosity, we planned a somewhat impromptu BBQ for the following weekend. I knew that Mom and Jack had another wedding to attend so it seemed like a great opportunity to hang out with some of our old friends. There was a ton of food and Guitar Hero (being played by my best friend Seth and godson Jacob in the picture) and there were little kids EVERYWHERE - that's what happens when everyone grows up - they procreate. But once the night got rolling, there was no stopping it - when Banana finally tracked me down (sitting in the dining room talking about who knows what with all my girlfriends) and told me that she was tired and ready for bed, I was shocked to look at my watch and realize it was almost midnight! So we stuffed them all back into Mom's truck and headed home, but it had been a seriously awesome night. A HUGE thanks again to Berns and Jeff for opening up their house, and to everyone who took time out of their weekend to come hang out. It was almost like the "old days."

I woke up the day after Bernie's party in a little bit of a panic. All of a sudden I was experiencing a major shift in my vacation-mindset. Where once I had been thinking "what in the hell am I going to do to keep these kids occupied for five and a half weeks," suddenly I was starting to FREAK OUT that my vacation was slipping away from me far too quickly. Out of nowhere, we were more than halfway through it, and although we were missing Skippy terribly (and the silent house was making him crazy in Oregon), we weren't quite ready to start thinking about saying good-bye just yet either.

Thankfully, we still had one last exciting surprise planned for the girls - COUNTRY THUNDER USA. And I PROMISE (Mom) that I will blog all about it tomorrow! Right now I have to go get ready for bed - Banana has to catch the bus bright and early at six fifteen tomorrow morning!