The city that starts with a C ends with an O and has HICAG in the middle, and a few other things

It's been nearly 9 months since we said goodbye to good friends and the Windy city and since Jeff had a few vacation days he needed to use before the end of June we decided to drive up to Chicago and visit friends for the weekend. We tried to get the girls to be tourists and go to the city, but all they really wanted to do was hang out and play with their friends that they, okay all of us have missed so much! Plus we finally got to see the newest addition to the Israelsen family, Russell, who is almost 3 months old. So cute! And the kids, mainly Sarah, couldn't get enough of him.

We got up early Thursday morning and drove up to Chicago. There was no question where we were going to eat dinner - Portillo's. One of our favorite place to eat. We had dinner with our good friends the Israelsens and the Palmeris. It was great to be with all of them again.

Friday the kids were torn on what they wanted to do. But we decided on going to watch their friend Bret at his gymnastics class (he is pretty dang good! and strong!) and then go to the DuPage Children's museum (another favorite place) since it was raining. We took the girl's friends Grace, Bret & Lia with us to the museum. They had a blast!

In the wind tunnel
from l to r - Grace, Ada, Emilie, Lia, Bret, Sarah and some random girl!

Playing in the bubbles

Sarah loved this thing - it's tubes connected that twist all over and has air flowing thru them. You stick balls made of yarn in it and it blows them thru it and eventually get blown out the other end. Hours of fun!

I call this the disco room. Mirrors everywhere!

Sarah loved the drums too. It was good for her to have something to beat, besides her sisters.

Goodnight everybody!

Jeff even participated in the fun!

As if the museum wasn't enough to wear them out, we then took all of them swimming at the hotel with the addition of Braden. They swam for a while and then Staci brought pizza to the hotel and they ate by the pool. Then more swimming. Then off to bed. Needless to say, everyone slept really good that night. We were all beat!

Sorry no pictures of swimming since Jeff and I had to take turns watching the fearless 2 year old.

Saturday we slept in late and then did some shopping. Afterwards we went to Staci's house to party. We celebrated the birthday's of Jeff (the 7th), Ken Israelsen (9th) and Mark Houser (9th) and said goodbye to friends from our old ward the Garcia's who are moving to Utah. The birthday celebration became an annual thing a few years ago. There were a couple other men from the ward (who have since moved) with the same birthday as Jeff, so we just threw a big party for all the guys with their birthdays so close. We were excited to be there for the party again this year. I was a slacker and didn't take any pictures that night either.

Sunday we went to church at our old ward. It was great to see and visit with some of our old friends. After church we went to Staci's for dinner and let the kids hang out and play some more. Staci took some really cute pictures of the kids, hopefully she will share some of them with me. (hint hint) Sadly we had to say goodbye to our friends that night. It was hard to say goodbye again. We've missed our good friends the last 9 months, but loved being able to spend time with them.

We decided to get a head start on our drive home since either way that night we would be spending it in a hotel. So we drove to Iowa City. Not soon after we left Sarah wanted some pretzels. So I handed them to her and not two minutes later I turned around to this

I think we all had a great weekend and lots of fun, but were all worn out!

Love the half eaten pretzel in her hand!

Monday we got up and drove the rest of the way home. I think Jeff was particularly excited to get home because one of his favorite posessions was being delivered to the house that day. His '65 Falcon convertible that he inherited when his dad passed away. We've been storing it out in Utah at various places over the last 9 years and now that we have somewhere to put it (3rd car garage) he had it shipped out here.

The delivery truck

OUR PAL!

You should have seen the grin on Jeff's face when it was coming down. He could hardly stand the wait to get in and drive it.

Pretty cute eh?

The inaugural drive in KC!

Finally Jeff and the kids have their convertable.

There was already talk about who gets to inherit the car from him!

Last but definitely not least of this post

Relay Missouri

Jeff's nephew Bryant who is from St. Louis and two of his friends, Crissy and Michael, put together a fundraiser for the charity StandUp for Kids, a charity that helps homeless kids. It is a relay run across Missouri from downtown Kansas City to downtown St. Louis.

You can read more about it at http://www.relaymissouri.blogspot.com/ if you are interested.

The kick off party was last night and the relay started this morning and they will finish in St. Louis on Saturday. We couldn't be more proud of you Bryant and this accomplishment!

So last night we went to the kick off party that was here in KC. It was great and we wish all the runners the best!

The organizers - Michael, Chrissy and Bryant

Emilie and Ada in front of the sponser banner for Jeff's company

Just a cute picture of Sarah and Becca

Emilie with her face paint

Ada

Sarah

Jeff with two of the Kansas City Chiefs players

Corey Mays #51 and Travis Daniels #34

Two of the nicest guys you could every meet. I just might have to cheer for the Chiefs next season!

Again, great job Bryant, Chrissy and Michael! You guys are awesome!

Love this....

Today I needed a little perspective, and this is just what I needed. Love it.

Earth Day Giveaway!

A friend of mine makes these awesome cookies and is giving some away for earth day!

You can enter to win them at her website here

What better way to celebrate earth day then to eat earth shaped cookies?

Catching up, once again

Once again it's time to play catch up on the blog!

The Saturday before Christmas the girls and I went downtown with some friends to Union Station (yes again) to see the Christmas Train. It was the only weekend they were doing it, so we thought it would be fun. We waited in line for over an hour and it was a quick trip to walk through it, but it was fun to see all the displays that they had put up inside.

The front

The rest of the train
Santa and Mrs. Claus were in the first car we went in. Emilie wouldn't join us for the pic. :-(

After the train we walked over to Crown Center and had lunch and saw the gingerbread house display - again. :-)

We went to a friends house for Christmas Eve dinner, games and acting out the nativity. Then we had a very quiet Christmas day at home. Santa managed to make it to our house admist a massive snow storm and howling wind. The kids were a little nervous that he wouldn't make it due to the weather, but we knew Santa would come through. It was great and we were excited to have a White Christmas! For New Year's we decided to go to St. Louis and spend it with the Blairs. We had a great time as always and Sarah has a new best friend, Wally.

The poor dog. Emilie and Ada would scream and run from him (not big fans of dogs) and Sarah couldn't get enough of him. By the second day Wally would see Sarah and would run from her! It was pretty funny.

While we were there we went to City Museum. The kids, and adults, had so much fun climbing through all the mazes and sliding down slides. It is an amazing place! I wish I had gotten more pictures of everthing.

Sarah and Becca

Tom and Peter starting the climb to the ceiling climbing along the ceiling

Emi and Ada on one of the many slides

Sarah and Bryant

I'm not sure, but I think she liked it. :-)

After a fun weekend with the Blairs we came home to more snow. It started snowing Christmas Eve and snowed off and on for the next 2 weeks. We got around 2 feet of snow in those 2 weeks, which is not common for this area. I think we were 2 inches short of the record. School was cancelled for 4 days, so the kids ended up with an extra week of Christmas break due to the snow and the record cold temps. We had wind chills of -20 to -30, which we got in Chicago, but obviously they aren't used to that here! We all started going a bit stir crazy being in the house, so the girls decided to brave the cold (don't worry it wasn't -30 cold!) and go sledding for a bit. Sarah didn't last long, but Ada and Emilie had a great time.

All bundled up!

sliding down the deck stairs made for the perfect hill

Gratefully it has warmed up, a bit, and we haven't had any more snow and the kids got to go back to school on Monday. YEAH!

Our week in review

Is it just me or does time seem to be going way too quickly?

It was exactly a week ago that we spent a fabulous Thanksgiving day with family. We had Jeff's mom and her husband Richard, 3 from the Blair clan (Jeff's sister's family) - Tom, Bryant and James, and Jeff's cousin Joseph with his wife Jenni and son Owen. It was such a great time! I have to admit I was feeling the pressure to put on Thanksgiving dinner without Jeff's sister Heather. She is usually the pilot and I am co-pilot, but she wasn't able to be there for Thanksgiving day. But thanks to the help of everyone we had a great dinner and even better company! Jeff's mom, Richard and the Blairs all stayed the weekend to attend Emilie and Ada's baptism on Saturday. Heather and Becca flew in on Saturday so they could be here for the special day. I won't go into details, but it wasn't quite the day I had hoped for the girls. There was some anixety and tears before the baptism. The baptism service was really good and after they were baptized everything went much smoother. I hope they will remember the good things of the day. I am so proud of them and so grateful to everyone who was there to support them and for their patience with us!

Sadly I have no pictures. I was hoping to get one good one so they could remember their day. But, with everything going on with them I was just grateful to get them in the water. Most of you know they don't like getting their picture taken and I just wasn't going there with them.

Monday Emilie and Ada got to skip school and go have some fun with their grandma and grandpa. They went downtown to Union Station to see the train display and Christmas tree display. They also went over to Crown Center and had lunch.

On Wednesday for play group we went to Union Station to see the displays. The train display was amazing and so detailed! Sarah had a great time and had no problem with her picture being taken!

The front of the display Sarah and her tutu - she insisted on wearing it! Still loves her tounge! We then walked over the Crown Center to see the gingerbread house display. It was amazing as well! The last thing to share is this video my sister in law Katie sent me. It is the perfect way to start the Christmas season. It is impossible for me to watch and listen to the song without getting emotional. If this was the only song I listened to the rest of the Christmas season it would be just fine with me. If it doesn't get to you on it's own, try setting up your nativity while listening to it!

If you want to download the video, the song or the sheet music you can do it at:

http://songsbyshawna.com/Site/Home.html

Happy Birthday to my girlies!

Seriously where has the time gone? Could my little twinkies really be 8 years old? I suppose it must be true since it was their 8th birthday last Thursday!

The girls decided this year that they wanted a birthday party. They haven't had a real party since they were 4 - not because I wouldn't give them one, but because they just haven't wanted one. So Saturday they had a party with some friends from school, church and the neighborhood.

It all started with pizza

Then they had a candy hunt to find the treats for the movie (Emilie and Ada's idea!)

Enjoying all the good stuff they found during the movie!
Opening presents

We are still rookies at this birthday party stuff but we think a good time was had by all!

We are so excited for the celebration to continue this week with family coming in for Thanksgiving and the girls are getting baptized on Saturday!

Happy Birthday Emzies (that is what Sarah has started to call her and I love it!) and Ada!

I'm so proud of you both and love you much!

So much to blog.......so little time!

WARNING: VERY LONG POST AHEAD!

It's hard to believe it was 5 weeks ago today that the movers finished packing us up and we were out of our house. It's also hard to believe that it was 9 years ago that we moved to the Chicago area on the 3-5 year plan. So much has happened to our family in the last 9 years and we have really enjoyed living there and we will forever remember our time there and the many wonderful friends we made. We were all a little sad (okay some were extremely unhappy) to leave our good friends and our home, but we (okay not all of us) were excited to start a new adventure in KCMO (translastion - Kansas City, MO).

Friday night (Sept. 25th) began our two week stay in 4 different hotels. Friday and Saturday nights we stayed at a hotel near our house because we had to finish doing some cleaning at the house and we wanted to attend our ward on Sunday for the last time. It was the primary program, which of course Emilie and Ada would not participate in, but they did invite their friend Grace to come and watch. Grace lived around the corner from us and knew a lot of the kids in our ward. Grace came over to our house every morning before school because her mom had to go to work before the bus came. She is a great friend to Emilie and Ada and we miss her much!

Ada, Grace and Emilie

On Sunday after church my good friend Staci had us over for dinner (saving us from McDonalds! THANK YOU!) and then had a going away party for us. It was fun to visit with everyone and have a chance to say goodbye.

Here are just a few pictures

Some of the greatest kids in the world!
Two of my favorite girls!
Our good friends and neighbors - oh how we miss you! One of mine and Sarah's favorite people
Thanks Staci for everything - we miss you!
Sunday night we went to our 2nd hotel which was closer to downtown Chicago because on Monday we were taking the girls downtown for one last time. The main plan was to go to the Sears Tower (I know it's now the Willis Tower, but seriously) since the girls had never been to the top. Of course Monday ended up being an incredibly windy day - I know, when is it not windy in the windy city, but it was UBER windy! We parked and walked the block to the tower and it was so windy we could hardly walk! When we got to the doors this is what greeted us:
PLAN B: Hancock Observitory
It was open, so we drove over there. It was a good second option, but someday we'll get those girls to the top of the Sears Tower! We all had a great time and the girls had fun with the self guided tour.

We then had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory - YUM! After that sadly we were all tired and ready to start our drive to St. Louis. So we drove back to the hotel and picked up my car. Sarah, Ada and Jeff drove in his car. Emilie and I drove in my car. Everything was going smoothly until Sarah woke up around the Bloomington/Normal area. (about 2 hours from downtown).

Monday morning when Sarah woke up her left eye was a bit red and swollen. The only thing we could figure out is that she had gotten a misquito bite on her eye the night before at the party.

I didn't think much of it. We went downtown and she fell asleep in the car on the way back to the hotel to pick up my car. When she woke up 2 hours later she couldn't open her eye it was so swollen! So we stopped in Bloomington at the Walgreen's quick care. The doctor there said it looked like Celluitus and we should take her to the prompt care at the hospital incase it was.

So we drove over there and saw the doctor there who said it was just an allergic reation. Most likely to the mosquito bite. So we got her a prescription and all of us some dinner and were back on our way to St. Louis. With our 2 hour detour we didn't get to St. Louis until around 10:30 that night. We were all pretty tired from the day and were ready to go to bed in hotel #3. But not before stopping by to see Jeff's sister and family!

Here is Sarah's eye - I called her Rocky all day because it looked like she got in a fight! You should see the mosquito! HA HA HA

This is pretty much the last picture I took since arriving except for some of our kitchen. We are in the process of new granite counter tops and new back splash which they are supposed to finish tomorrow! It looks awesome! I'll post the before and afters when it's all done.

Tuesday we drove the rest of the way to to KC and to hotel #4 and our home for the next 9 days. We made it just in time to go to the school and meet the girls new teachers. Both seemed very nice and have turned out to be perfect fits for both girls. Emilie's teacher is Mrs. Littrell and Ada's teacher is Mrs. Sheriff. They started school the next day and it was much as I expected. Neither wanted to go and there were lots of tears. But they went and they survived. Ada was fine after a couple of days and is doing great. Emilie took a little longer to adjust, but she too is doing great and they both like their new school and teachers!

We closed on Thursday Oct. 1st and then took possesion of the house on Monday the 5th. (It was wierd to us too, but that is how they do it a closing date and a posession date.) Over the next few days we had a radon mitigation system installed, a washer and dryer delivered, carpets cleaned, painted the dining room and I tried to get the house cleaned and ready for our stuff to be delivered. I say tried because I didn't get everything done I had hoped! Our stuff was supposed to be delivered on Thursday the 8th, but there was a 100% chance of rain so we postponed the delivery until Friday.

Gratefully they let us stay in the hotel all 9 days! Everyone in the hotel knew who we were by the time we left. The funniest story was one night we had popped some popcorn and Ada wanted some more, so she put a bag in the microwave and turned it on. All of sudden the smoke alarm went off and we looked over and there was a huge cloud of smoke coming out of the microwave. The bag had gotten stuck and stopped turning and was burning up! It took 4 days for the smell to finally get out of the room! We definitely left our mark at that hotel!

The moving in part was a bit of a fiasco (later post). They guys who unpacked the truck were in a big hurry and put stuff pretty much where ever they wanted. But everything made it and we, for the most part, are unpacked and pretty much settled. We have met a lot of neighbors and the girls are making friends. We love the area - it has rolling hills! From the top of our street we can see all the way to downtown KC (about 20 miles from us)! LOVE THAT! We love the house, the neighborhood and our ward too. I've had fun doing some exploring and getting to know the area. It's been a busy and crazy 5 weeks, but we are doing well and happy to be here!

And just as in Chicago, we love visitors!!!!