An Assortment of Cute Pictures

Well, it's time for my semi-monthly oh-I-have-a-lot-of-pictures-on-the-camera-I-need-to-put-on-the-blog post.  So, in somewhat chronological order, here you go.

 Early Spring in our front yard...

 "Oh, I'm so funny I eat colored pencils and climb on the table!" Don't worry, I took it from her right after this.

 "Hi, Mom!"

 Oh yeah. Easter dessert - the last of our frozen blackberries and peaches we picked last summer. Sniffle.

 Anna climbed in there but got out before I got a picture, so Connor demonstrated.

"Please, Mama?"

 "I'm adorable."

 "Yea!"

 What a helper.

 These two are having lots of fun lately.

 Handsome construction worker.

 Again, super helpful.

 Anna demonstrating her reverence "folding" her arms for the prayer.

 Beautiful spring in the backyard!

 One of God's special spirits - Margie. We had her for dinner on Mother's Day. She was great at entertaining the kids while we got dinner ready.

 Beautiful Spring Day!

 Wowzers!

And today at the Farmer's Market. Somebody thought all the strawberries were for her.

 It was heaping at one point...

"I'm so funny!"

Today was a good day.

More of Chicago

Although most of our trip consisted of driving around...

...we still had lots of fun. Our second night, after we were pretty sure we got our place, we went out to a nice dinner near the hotel.

We had some delicious food and enjoyed a nice evening out together. Saturday morning, we slept in (yeah that hasn't happened in years) and went for a little run and then out to breakfast. I had Eggs Benedict for the first time and it was super delicious!

After we got all ready and checked out we only had about 2 hours left before we needed to get back to the rental car place, but we decided to head into the city anyway. Neither of us had ever seen it, so it was fun even though we were only there about a half hour.

We went to the famous "bean" aka Cloud Gate and took a bunch of pictures and marveled at how giant this city is. We'll have to take the train in with the kids sometime and do some more exploring.

 Can you find us in each of these pictures? We're pretty far away in the one below.

Oh yeah, and then this happened. Classic Chicago deep-dish pizza. Oh my. I thought I'd never eat again.

Then we headed back to return the car and catch our flight. We were anxious to get home to our sweet kids, although I did better without them than I expected. I was starting to get really sad and anxious before we left, but we were so busy while we were there I did okay. :) 

(View of Mt. Hood from the plane. It was good to be home!)

And the kids seemed to have a wonderful time with my parents! I did get some extra long snuggles from all of them when we got home so I know they missed us, but it's nice to know they were in such good hands. I think they wore my parents out (understandably - they wear me out too!) but I hope they've recovered. Thanks Mom and Dad!

Kid Pics while we were gone

I didn't take any pictures of my parents while they were here, but my mom sent me these cute ones while we were gone. Looks like they had fun!

Sorry I didn't get any of you, Mom!

St. Charles, IL

Well we're pretty sure we found a place to live! Yay for not being homeless. We thought we'd have signed a lease by now, but we're still working out some details. Jeremy and I flew out last week to explore "Chicagoland" and we had a great time! Thanks to my parents, we were able to go without kids and it was our first trip ever without them. We definitely don't want to wait another five years to do that. :) We spent most of the time in the car with the GPS going, but it was still nice to just be together and explore our new surroundings.

After much searching, we found a great townhouse in the city of St. Charles. We drove all around Naperville, thinking we may end up there, but then we met our friends from business school over in Batavia for dinner the first night and we fell in love with that area. St. Charles, Geneva, and Batavia are part of a "tri-city" area along the Fox River about 50 miles west of Chicago. St. Charles is the largest of the three (still only about 35,000 people) and the furthest north. We just loved the smaller city, less crowds, and the beauty and character of the river. It's also a lot closer to Jeremy's work than the other areas we looked at, so it was kind of a no-brainer. Unfortunately, there aren't a ton of rental properties over there, so we weren't sure if we'd be able to find something, but we did!

(St. Charles is way on the left, Jeremy works in Glendale Heights, pretty much straight east).

We didn't want a townhouse at first, but I think it will be really perfect for us. We'll only be here a year again, so it will be nice not to have to worry about the yard or the snow removal because that's all taken care of! It also has an attached 2-car garage and is the end unit surrounded by lots of beautiful grass and walking paths, so there's still plenty of space to run around. It's less than a mile from the elementary school Eli will go to and between us and the school is a giant park. Jeremy's commute will be about 25 minutes. The half nearest our house will be through the unincorporated area of Wayne, which is full of some beautiful giant homes and horse farms and as he gets closer to his office he literally passes by every major store imaginable - Walmart, Target, Costco, Kohls, Home Depot, etc. etc. ("Honey, can you pick this up for me on your way home?") Very convenient.

The house is two stories plus an unfinished basement, which I imagine we'll put to good use in the winter months...and maybe the extra muggy summer days too. :) All the bedrooms and laundry are upstairs along with 2 bathrooms and then the living, dining, family room, kitchen and half bath are on the main level. I have actually never lived in a two-story house in my life (crazy I know) so it will be something new! Luckily Anna is old enough that I think she'll handle the stairs just fine. In fact, she'll probably have a blast the first few days climbing up and down over and over. And I told the kids if we need more exercise in the winter we'll be running up and down the stairs. So much to look forward to.

(Oh yeah, did I mention it was SNOWING the day we found our house? May 16th? Haha. Awesome.)

I'm actually really excited for the location. I was worried at first because we're kind of on the outskirts of St. Charles and it's a little far from the grocery store and the church and pretty much the whole town, but I think we'll enjoy our little spot up there. It's right by the riverbend and we can easily walk over to the trail along the river (and a footbridge that crosses it) and I think we'll do that a lot. I have a serious need for some good quality nature :) and I'm happy to know that I'll have somewhere nice to go once I leave the Garden of Eden here. Jeremy and I have been running lately too, so we'll have some nice places to continue doing that.

Here's a more zoomed in map. We'll be near the riverbend. The park near our house is not actually on this map, but as you can see, there are a lot of big parks and forest preserves, which is great! And there are walking trails all along the river that looked beautiful!

That's all I know so far! I know several of you have been asking what I've "found out" and researched, so I better get on it. :) And I have several other things I need to blog about, so I'll try to catch up soon!

Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival

The kids and I went with some friends down to the Tulip Festival down in Woodburn, OR on Tuesday. It was a gorgeous warm day and we were actually getting pretty hot by the end. The tulips were beautiful and so colorful! The kids weren't too interested in the tulips, but they loved the tractors, dirt, rocks, and playground at the end. I asked Eli what his favorite part was and he said "running around". I agree. It was nice to be out in the wide open spaces and feel free.

It was a really pretty drive down there too through all the farm land. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I got home that I had a smudge on my lens, so all my pictures have a fuzzy spot on the left side. Oh well. I was pretty distracted juggling miss crazy-pants Anna most of the time anyway, so my pictures didn't get a whole lot of attention in the first place.

We went with Melissa and her 2 youngest boys - ages 5 and 2 - and Emily and 3 of her 4 kids - ages 5, 3, and baby. My kids were in heaven!

 Parking lot full of rocks. What more could you want?

 Miss Independent.

 Mt Hood in the background.

 These tire swings were so fun!

 Anna wants to do all the things her older brothers are too afraid. Super fun.

We're trying to cram as much Oregon beauty in as we can before we leave. It's a beautiful time of year here!