whirlwind weekend

 

It feels like we have been on the go all the time lately! Sometimes I look at my friends and think, wow, they really go a lot of places and do a lot of really neat things; we should really make time to do more neat things with the boys. But I guess when I stop to think about it, we kind of already do. Part of that is because I have the itchy feet (as Mike likes to say) and really love to go places. It's one of the few areas that we have different philosophies on: He works at a "regular" job all week long, and would rather spend the weekend at home puttering around in the yard and just generally enjoying being here, while I work from home, so by the end of the week I am climbing the walls with the need to get out and DO something.

Luckily for us, we got to do both this weekend.

We needed to be in Chicagoland Saturday, so we took off a few hours early and went to check out the Lego exhibit at the Morton Arboretum. We saw a Lego ant hill, a Lego grandfather and granddaughter gardening, Lego bonsai, a Lego wheelbarrow, a Lego finch perched atop a Lego tortoise ... Legos everywhere. And of course, we visited the maze and the children's garden and the tree houses and the secret stream. We had a pretty good wet-to-dry ratio this time: Only two children fell in a pond/stream and were soaked from head to toe. Good thing I remembered to bring an extra outfit for everyone.

This is my favorite of all the pictures. Look how much they've grown!

My dear friend Heather had a milestone birthday this week, and her husband organized a surprise party for her on Saturday. They live in Wheaton, so Mike was able to spend some time with his friend Mark (both Mark and Heather were in our wedding) and his family, who live only a few miles away. Heather and I were roommates for the first few years that I lived in the city, and her sister, Jenny, was also our roommate until she got married. Our friend Zak was there too -- Heather, Zak, and I worked together at Borders, and he was Heather's roommate after I moved out. It was so nice to see them all and just hang out talking and laughing in their gorgeous backyard! It's always sort of nerve-racking for me to go and spend time with people I haven't seen for a number of years. I worry that we won't have anything to talk about, that we'll find that our lives have diverged so far as to leave us with nothing in common, or that we will just plain be awkward with each other. But I didn't need to worry this time. That level of comfort and happiness is kind of rare for a semi-socially awkward person like me, and I am so glad I could be there and spend time with them.

Once Mike and the boys were done visiting with Mark and family, they came to see everyone and spend a few minutes with us. They were so uncharacteristically well behaved! Henry and Sara, Heather and Joe's daughter, became fast friends and went off to explore the yard together, while Max and Liam managed to charm the adults. Jenny helped Henry and Sara collect specimens from the pond (water and algae and tiny rocks) so Henry could bring them home and analyze them. We spent Sunday morning making slides of his samples and examining them, which inspired Henry to go outside and collect grass and crab apple skin pieces and other assorted samples from our yard. Yay science!

We spent most of Sunday puttering around the house, getting some things accomplished but mostly just doing whatever struck our fancy. Video games were played. Books were read. Laundry was folded. In the afternoon, I stayed home and our cousin Jimmy came over to play with Max and Henry, but Mike and Liam got ambitious and went off to Potato Creek to test Mike's new bike on the mountain bike trails. Check them out!

And speaking of science, we did let the boys stay up late Sunday night to see the super blood moon eclipse. We even trekked over to the darkest nearby area (the field behind the school) and set up the camera, ready to capture some magnificence. Too bad for us -- the cloud cover was totally solid and stayed that way the whole time. Boo! Sorry, science, but at least we tried.