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| Landon's ferocious face |
Landon turned 11 months a few weeks ago, but I have been SUPER busy, first on vacation and then getting back into work and working with the young women in my ward, so here it goes a little late.
My dear sister, Mariah, who lived with us for a few months this summer, only had a few weeks left before she left Chicago, possibly forever. We felt it of dire importance to fit in everything that she wanted to do in the city before she left.
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| My beautiful sister Mariah and the BEAN! |
We had an eventful July 4th week. We kicked it all of with a free outdoor concert in Grant Park July 3rd. Landon sat through about half of it, tried to upend several of our neighbors beautifully laid out picnics, and finally ended up hanging out in the back of the crowd with daddy until the concert was over. It was a great concert featuring various patriotic songs. The conductor was from Scotland and wore a patriotic kilt for the occasion. That tops last year's sequined Uncle Sam outfit for sure. It was also Landon's first ride on the train. He did great, and loved looking at the lights in the tunnels as we zoomed by.
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| Matching boys at the 4th of July BBQ! |
July 4th, we attended the Arlington Heights 4th of July parade. Landon loved the fire trucks and loud bands, and was so tuckered out he fell asleep about 2/3 of the way through the parade. I LOVE parades and it was a great way to celebrate the 4th. We hung out at a BBQ with friends, where Landon ate dirt, played with sticks, and threw around big river rocks in their backyard. Fun times. He was so tired out that he fell asleep way before fireworks, and Austin ended up staying inside with him while Mariah and I braved the mosquitoes to watch the Elk Grove Village fireworks from a field near our house.
On Friday, July 5th, we went to a Schaumburg Boomers baseball game. We got a ton of adorable pictures of Landon and dad in matching baseball caps. Landon paid attention to the game for approximately 1.5 seconds, then he was off exploring the grass with lots of space to crawl. We got lawn seats, so he was able to crawl around to his heart's content. He even found a football and we played catch for awhile. There were fireworks after the game that went off right over our heads. Landon stayed awake this time and his surprised, happy face was a joy to see as the fireworks boomed overhead.
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| 4th of July morning |
The next week, Austin and I were signed up for an open water swim race. Austin, having never swam open water before, wanted to try out his wet suit before the actual race. After work on Thursday, we drove up to Lake Zurich, which turns out you have to be a resident or know somebody in order to swim in the lake without paying a large fee. I think the lifeguard felt sorry for us and let us swim for free. Landon hung out with Mariah on this really cool play structure. It was a castle with all sorts of turrets and Landon had a blast climbing around.
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| My boys at Taste of Chicago |
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| Excited on the train to downtown Chicago |
Austin has these amazing things called summer hours. Basically it means that in exchange for working an extra hour Monday-Thursday, he gets a half day Friday. This works out since he was typically working 9 hours on Monday-Thursday anyway. So, on one of these blessed Fridays, we ventured into the city. Mariah wanted to go to the Art Institute. I would have gone with her, but Austin didn't feel like art gazing, so I decided to hang out with him and Landon. We wandered around downtown a bit and wandered right into Taste of Chicago. We decided to look around and see if it was worth it to buy tickets, when a nice girl came up and gave us a whole wad of tickets because they were leaving. SCORE! We decided to come back with Mariah for dinner. In the meantime we walked down Michigan Ave. to see what we could see. Chicago really is a neat city with such cool architecture and great shopping. We liked crossing over the river and watching the boats. At the Taste, we tried pulled pork, arancini, gelato and fudge and it was all yummy. Mariah tried this really yummy ice cream as well.
The next day, Austin and I competed in our 2 mile open water swim race at Crystal Lake. It was a lot of fun, and Austin ended up getting 1st in his Clydesdale category, and 2nd overall. I got 5th overall and 1st for women. We didn't kill ourselves trying to be speedy, but had fun racing those around us. We would both do another open water race if it presented itself!
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| Our future swimmer hates his swim cap! |
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| Pre-race pose |
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| We went to a family reunion in Estes Park, CO. It was a ton of fun! More on this to come! |
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