July Tidbits

While Ireland was hanging out with Nick, we went on another bike ride past Bucky's. Liesel came with this time and was able to see what a cool trail it is. It runs by a stream and over this bridge we could clearly see fish!

Me: Which sister would you go to if you had a secret and you needed to tell someone?

Girls: *in unison* NONE OF THEM!!!

Liesel: They'd all tell on me.

Gita: Yeah, I don't tell them anything.

Sydney: Yeah!

Liesel and Gita came with me to Dick's Sporting Goods to find water shoes for camp. They spotted these mannequins and copied their poses. Not bad!

I told Liesel I don't like the trend of women calling other women b*tch." Even used in a friendly way, it's just a really negative word. She insisted it's about women taking the work back because the negative use was popularized by men putting women down. So I told her I just decided to take the word butthole back. Yeah, if you think about it, it really means "we're tight" which is a positive thing. Now every time she walks in the room I say, "What's up my butthole?"

The girls have been diligently working on their flips. Liesel has been coaching Sydney who is by far the most reticent. I love the encouragement she gives her.

Ireland is on fire as well.

Leave it to Liesel to give an entirely different perspective!

At the Disney store, Gita spotted this stuffed Dug dog from Up. She insisted I take a picture and send it to Doug. Her love of even stuffed dogs just radiates right through this photo!

Sydney loves to bring me fantastic meals she has created. Here I get orange juice, grape juice and lemonade. What lovely refreshment options in the middle of a hot summer!

A pedicure to match my mood.

Sydney jokes: What did the hacker tell his boss when he called in sick? I have a code. Where do dogs put their cars? In barking lots.

One of our trees was struck by lightning.

It may not look like it, but that's actually a lot of wood to contend with! I'm happy to report between Brent and I (mostly Brent) we had that sucker chain sawed and out to the curb for debris pickup tout suite.

Remember how I was dreading my talk on hope? I received the sweetest compliment via email a few days later. Glad my thoughts came across OK. I'm really better on the page than speaking.

Every time I go to Culver's I manage to forget I'm waiting for food. When someone walks up with my order, I nearly scream, "Please no! I'm a mother and I have no money!!!" The worker in their blue apron is always annoyed with how surprised I am. 

Hot Child in the City

For Vanessa and Elizabeth's last day with us we finally made it to the American Girl store. Honestly this was at the bottom of their list since Elizabeth isn't into them. Vanessa tells me she had a doll but she never played with it so imagine our surprise when she loved the place!

The airline attendant outfit just kills me! How cute is that?

We thought it would be fun to go to Maggie Daley Park but everyone was melting. We stopped by The Bean for a quick photo op:

My girls are always up for photos, for sure.

 For lunch we hit the Shake Shack just across the street from The Bean. Oh what a gift air-conditioning is in the middle of the summer! Love Sydney's flirtatious shoulder shrug and wink. She was so happy to be out of the hot weather.

While everyone else went souvenir shopping, Ireland and I went to retrieve the car. On our way, we came across this bronze cow and of course had to snap a pic.

This is the plaque explaining it.

Ireland grabbing the bull by the horns.

Our time with Vanessa and Elizabeth was epic indeed but it came to an end as we dropped them off at the airport. I'm glad we had so many new experiences while they visited us and hope they had as much fun as we did.

Bowlero

I was feeling a little bad about my plans to take everyone to Bowlero. Driving to downtown Chicago to have a new adventure everyday was going to kill me so I built in a couple of close to home activities while we had guests in town. Wouldn't you know, the girls had the BEST time just bowling and hanging out? We are keeping this in mind for Spring Break, Winter Break and just rainy days when we want to get out a bit and have fun.

Bowling is such a simple game but it engenders so much camaraderie! The girls were cheering each other on- so excited to knock down just one or two more pins. 

This is a new bowling alley so they had the fancy schmancy bumpers that prevent gutter balls which makes it so much more fun for little kids. There were also bowling ramps to help with aim.

Brigitta became really precise with that sucker.

Like, really precise.

I mean she had that thing lined up perfectly.

 And in the end she picked up the spare without the ramp and with that bowling ball bouncing off the bumpers not once, not twice, but three times. I love Liesel's, "Oh no way, it WORKED?!?!"

Well that's my Gita girl, for sure. Also my Gita girl to drink marinara sauce straight out of the container.

I spend a chunk of my summer mitigating the endless fighting between the girls. Often I just want to throw some boxing gloves at them and let them just go at it because nothing seems to work. It was so nice to get out of the sun and heat and to see them cheering each other on for a change.

It was also nice to just sit back and watch.

The girls insisted I get a photo because they were so proud of their scores. I don't think anyone is going pro anytime soon, but there were a respectable amount of strikes and spares!

Return to Foster Beach

Nothing can ruin a glorious, sunny day at the beach! Nothing!!!

I've said it before and I will say it again- kids don't need a lot to have fun at the beach. Sand, sun and surf are the perfect combination to keep them entertained for hours.

Classics like burying feet in the sand never get old (although the mermaid tails are getting increasingly sophisticated).

Pictures always turn out great because of the bright blue sky and colorful swimsuits:

It's just perfect. I was worried we would encounter the dead alewife problem like we did in Wisconsin but no problems here!

The girls are so dang happy at the beach! Really, we can't go wrong here.

I'm glad I splurged and bought this swimsuit for Liesel.

She's worn it well all summer. I smile every time I see her in it.

Vanessa wanted to do a couple of throwback photos:

June 2012

Now

 

June 2017

Now

Not much has changed with that one.

What can I say? It was another great day at the beach!

Water Balloon Fight and Tinfoil Dinners

Vanessa was coming down with a bug (thankfully not Covid-19) and I desperately needed to put in some time on a talk I had to give in church. Thankfully, she was cool to just hang out around the house for the day.

Elizabeth had a ball playing with makeup. Vanessa has some, but not nearly as much as we do and they created all kinds of looks:

Elizabeth could be tough to please- sometimes I don't think she entirely knew what she wanted- but makeup was a definite hit!

We planned to do water balloon fights and tinfoil dinners. Sounds fun, right?
  

It was a nightmare. I mean, the kids had fun and all, but aside from that it was a nightmare. After filling water balloons, I couldn't get the spigot to turn off. It just kept leaking water and Brent wasn't able to make any headway either. We finally called our home warranty company and they didn't have anyone available for several days. Oh, and they also tried to claim they wouldn't cover it because it was "outside the foundation of the home." The spigot is connected to the foundation of the home!!! Despite explaining that water would be running until someone fixed it, there was nothing to be done. It was so frustrating, time-consuming and embarrassing. This was the very last thing we needed with guests in town and sick guests at that.

Our only option was to turn the water off and just turn it on for limited amounts of time (like when everyone was brushing their teeth and headed to bed). Ironically, my talk was on "The Miracle of Hope" and let me tell you, I did NOT want to give that talk! Any other subject would have been better but I was in the middle of the summer which is already hard. I was hosting guests which was really hard. I was kind of in crisis and it was just the worst topic possible. The upside is the girls had a blast and enjoyed their tinfoil dinners. I did finish my talk and miraculously Liesel finished hers (we were speaking together). This is one day I'm glad is behind me!