104!

E's last golf tournament of the summer was today (yeah!) She played at Indian Lakes in Bloomingdale. The course was beautiful. It's part of a Hilton resort that has two pools, a spa, mini golf course, etc. Very nice. Best part was that E shot a 104. It's not under 100, which was her goal this summer, but it's pretty close. She came in fifth in her age division.

L and I spent most of the day shopping. Andy's sister lives near Bloomingdale so I'm pretty familiar with the roads and the mall! While we were waiting for E to finish her round, L and I sat in the hotel lobby. Here's L lying on the lobby floor, looking up at the skylights. The cave behind her is actually a bar. It seems really dark in there. Not sure how that works. Here's my goofy girl in the lobby:

Birthday dinner

We took L out for her belated birthday dinner tonight. She chose to go to Chuck E. Cheese. B and E surprised her and gave her all the tickets they earned playing games throughout the night. L was able to choose a big prize with 500 points.

Exhausted

L slept a little on the ride back home, but was awake enough to help E film the movie she's making with her friends. She also rode her bike through the neighborhood (until the pedal fell off, but Andy fixed it). She had an early dinner and here she is, by 6:30 p.m., crashed on the sofa.

Picking up my baby

Today we drove to the farm to pick up L from her weeklong stay with Grandma and Aunt Cindy. L said she had a great time. The highlight, she said, was visiting Meramac Caverns in Missouri.

It's where she got this crazy hat. It lights up and she's planning to wear it to "Crazy Hat Day" at school this fall. A crazy souvenir hat and ice cream - what more can a 10-year-old want on her birthday?

She also went to a water park, saw "Brave" at the drive-in, made Kevin a birthday cake and watched him blow out his candles, celebrated her 10th birthday, shopped at a resale store in Staunton where Grandma volunteers and visited Grandma's neighbor Suzy and her many dogs and cats.

WARNING: L said she had so much fun she's love to do it again next summer!

Bye, F!

E went to a going-away tonight for her friend, F. F's family is moving to California for a year for her father's job, then they'll see whether they like it or whether they'll move back. E and F are both hoping they come back. Here's a group picture with F giving E a big hug:

E and F met at the U of I engineering camp the summer before their eighth-grade year. E was describing her middle school and said there are two middle schools in town that identical to each other. F said that sounded a lot like her town and asked where she E lived. They soon discovered they were both from Oak Park. E was at Julian and F was at Brooks. The girls left camp without getting each others' phone numbers, but I used my expertise Google skills and searched F+Brooks and found a picture of a girl with her name. From there we were able to get a phone number and E called. No, I'm not a stalker.

Fortunately, it was the right one and the two girls kept in touch through phone calls throughout eighth grade. In high school, they were reunited and had lunch together first semester and history together second semester.

Golf & pizza

E had another golf tournmaent today. This one was in Glendale Heights. B rode with me when I took her there. It was about a 20-minute drive (with no traffic) so we came home while she played. Andy went with us to pick her up and we went to Giordano's for pizza. E was pleasantly surprised to see J, her "big sister" from last year's golf team, at the tournament. E scored a 116. The course had a lot of water and, to be fair, a lot of the girls had high scores. E was in a trio and she scored in the middle of them. She was happy with her playing today. Above is E and B at the restaurant, playing on B's Nintendo 3DS.

Happy Birthday, L!

L in 2002

Hard to believe, but my baby is 10 today. She's spending the week at Grandma B's on the farm. I called her tonight and she said she's having a great time, and claims Grandma is too. Today they went with Aunt C to Meramac Caverns. L said it was pretty neat to walk in a cave. I can't wait till we pick her up Saturday and hear about all over adventures.

L is the most energetic of our three kids and likes to push the limits. She's also incredibly sweet, super funny and creative. She never fails to put a smile on my face each day and I love hearing her sing along with the radio. She loves riding her bike and playing with her friends. She's always giving her friends gifts. She likes animals (live and stuffed) and, on occasion, has brought home a stray.

L at Disney World, July 2012

Brawl!

B and his friend, IB, went to the Main Library this afternoon for a video-gaming tournament. They both played Super Mario Smash Brothers Brawl. IB ended up in first place, winning a $25 gift card to Amazon. B tied for fourth place. They said about 20 kids showed up to play so I guess they did pretty well. I took this picture before they left for the tournament and asked them to give me their "game faces." I think B needs to work on his - he wouldn't stop smiling.

Shoes

If there's one thing E enjoys shopping for it's shoes. The girl could spend hours in a shoe store. Today we went to four different stores looking at shoes so she could find the perfect gym shoes for school. The store we found the perfect pair in had a buy one, get another pair at half off. She felt that was too good of a deal to pass up so I suggested she find a nice school shoe she could wear between sandal and boot weather. I was showing her so many cute flats that the girls wear these days. In the end, she chose a pair of Converse sneakers which are pretty cute. I love the color she chose. It's called "parasailing."

Sort of driving

We had our annual planning meeting at church today and after that, I needed a little excitement. I took E to the school parking lot across the street and let her drive around in circles, park, back up. It's the second time I've let her do that and she did much better this time. Last time she hit the gas really hard, and the brake really hard, and hit the gas when the car was in park accidentally revving the engine. It's going to be a long year.

Bye, L!

Today was the day E and B have been looking forward to for a while, so was L, of course. B decided to stay home and recover from vacation, but E came along, and brought her BFF, A, to drop L off with Grandma and Aunt Cindy for the week. We met for lunch at Avanti's, then shopped a bit at ISU's Alamo before kissing L good-bye and sending her to the farm for a week. She's so excited to be going to Grandma's. She told us she's looking forward to going to a water park, riding a bike that Uncle Kevin is fixing up, talking with Suzy, taking walks with Grandma, playing outside, celebrating her 10th birthday, baking a birthday cake for her and Kevin, and of course, going to Grandma's store.

After L left, Andy and I took the girls on a quick tour of ISU's campus and walked around the quad. What a coincidence that I found this writing on the sidewalk in the quad - and spelled the right way! The grammar could use a little help, though.

The campus has changed a lot since Andy and I were there. We snuck into the new State Farm College of Business building to use the restroom. There's also a Caterpillar Auditorium in there. I don't think E has much interest in going to ISU - she has her sights set on University of Illinois. Maybe it will be her "safe" school.

Princess count

Long before our Disney vacation started, B decided he was going to keep count during the week of the number of little princesses he saw. He had some strict criteria: they had to have their hair done, be in a princess costume and have glitter - lots of glitter. Some little girls didn't make his count because they were lacking in the appropriate amount of glitter. He takes this pretty seriously. His total for the week: 101 princesses. He thinks they look a bit scary all dressed up like that.

Last day of Disney magic

Today was our last day at Disney. Here I am at breakfast eating a tasty cherry danish. Do I look ready for the vacation to be over?

We checked out of our room, checked our bags in with the resort holding area and went to Animal Kingdom so we could go on the safari ride. We didn't stay long. It was so hot and humid we decided to go back to the resort. Here's one of many pictures Andy took on the safari. They look like postcards.

We sat in the air-conditioning a while then walked over to the French Quarter portion of the Port Orleans resort. We decided their pool was nice (but we like ours better) and their lunchroom area was sensory overload with all the colors and things hanging from the ceiling. Here the kids are, hot and miserable, waiting for a boat to take us back to our resort because they don't want to walk:

They may look happy, but trust me, they weren't. After the boat ride we sat in the air-conditioning of our resort until the bus came to drive us to the airport for our flight home.

Divide and conquer

This morning, Andy took B and L back to Blizzard Beach while E and I decided to go to Magic Kingdom and do a little shopping (without L begging for everything in sight!). It was a successful mission. I found a cute Mickey Mouse wine stopper and managed to get E on the Haunted Mansion ride.

It was a hot day, though, so E and I went back to the resort pool and met Andy and the kids there. L was able to join in the kids' pool party. She played a variety of relay games with the promise that there was a prize at the end of the party. The prize turned out to be a really small bottle of bubbles. Course, she wasn't too happy about that. She did admit, though, that she had a good time playing the games.

We went back to Magic Kingdom before it was time for our dinner reservation at Chef Mickey's. We tried to get a nice picture of the kids in front of Cinderella's castle.

Here's L trading pins again with a castmember. All week long, we'd turn around and she'd be gone - a few steps behind us trading pins. At least this time we knew where she was. And here at the other two goofs on the People Mover ride in Tomorrow Land.

Tonight was our dinner at Chef Mickey's. By now the kids know the drill - the characters come to the table, they get up, we snap a couple of pictures and send the characters on their way to the next table. The kids enjoy the buffet.

Epcot

Our lunch today was a sit-down meal at Le Cellier, the restaurant in the Canadian portion of Epcot. I had an incredible grilled pork chop and this adorable chocolate "moose" for dessert. It was pretty hot out today so after lunch, we walked "around the world" at Epcot then headed back to our room. Notice E's Coca-Cola shirt. It's written in Japanese. She can read some of it and plans to have her Japanese teacher translate the rest when school starts.

And B chose his first souvenir: a Pillow Pet Pluto. It's really soft. He's a creature of comfort. And he deserved a little comfort. While the four of us are cozy in bed at night, B is sleeping on the pull-out bed. However, he claims he likes it. At least he doesn't have to share.

That night, we went back to Magic Kingdom after the temperature cooled down. The lines for the rides were pretty short since most people were watching the parade.

We went on It's a Small World, Pirates of the Carribean, the River Ride, the new Barnstormer roller coaster. Andy and L wanted to go on Splash Mountain. B and I were ready to go on it, too, but E didn't want to so I took her and B back to the room. Somehow L managed to talk Andy into buying her a light saber, so we had to take that back with us. Here are the two goofing off as we reached our room:

Rain?

We started out the day at Magic Kingdom. Andy took a few shots of L on the Thunder Mountain roller coaster. She said she was scared to go on it, but after the ride, she wanted to go on it again. Notice that E is screaming just as much as L. B, though, enjoys roller coasters and likes to throw his hands up in the air.

Here's L enjoying the rain. The rest of us were staying dry under the porch of a store. We haven't seen much rain in Chicago this year. I think it rained more in Disney when we were there than we've seen in Chicago since April. L said, "It doesn't rain like this in Chicago." Not this year, anyway. She was thoroughly soaked. Course, when we tried to run for the exit to catch a bus, it started raining again and all of us were soaked. It felt pretty good except for my mushy sandals.

Our dinner tonight was at Tutto Italia, the Italian restaurant in Epcot. The best part could have been the tiramisu I had for dessert. Here is E ready to dig into her dessert.

After dinner, E and B went to look at the Japanese gift shop. Andy and I and L sat down to listen to a Lynard Skynard tribute band. L wasn't too happy with our choice of music. Fortunately for her, we only caught the last three songs they were performing.

Blizzard Beach & Hollywood Studios

Today we spent most of our time at Blizzard Beach, one of Disney's two water parks. B lounged around in the lazy river, though we did take him out to do the family raft ride (twice!). E and L liked going down the slides in innertubes. Andy took B into the wave pool. I spent my time in the pool next to the slides.

We came back to the room, showered, and went to Hollywood Studios again. E decided to get her hair wrapped at the resort. L was going to do the same, but decided instead to buy a hair wrap that's on a clip so she can wear it when she wants to and take it out when she doesn't.

Tonight we ate at the Sci-Fi Drive-in. It's one of the kids' favorites. They like the movies, sitting in the car to eat and L enjoyed getting a cup with glowing ice cubes.

Disney World!

Somehow we managed to get the kids (and ourselves) up and read for the cab to pick us up and take us to the airport at 4:15 a.m. today. We arrived in Disney before noon and had lunch at our resort (Port Orleans Riverside). They've remodeled the rooms since we last visited. We were in Lodge 36. Here are a couple of shots of our room:

After lunch we went to Downtown Disney. L wanted to get another (her third!) pair of "ears" and we went there becuase they had a store where you create your own ears. Unfortunately, we learned, that store has closed. Instead, L found a pair of pink and black girly pirate ears she decided she wanted. That afternoon we headed to Hollywood Studios where we ate at the Hollywood & Vine buffet and saw "Fantasmic." Andy rode the Hotel of Terror, but couldn't get anyone to join him.

Here's a picture of the finale at "Fantasmic":