"Spring" Break - Week 1, Part 2

After the Field Museum, we met up with Kevin, Naomi and Brooklyn to go to the Children's Museum. It's free every Thursday night from 5pm to 8pm. It was quite crowded!

If you put the balls in the right spots and then turn the crank, it will play songs. Wes mostly just liked throwing the balls.

Wes the fireman and Brooklyn the cutie dalmation.

Wes driving the fire truck.

Here are the three kiddos playing in the water area. Brooklyn and Wes loved this place.

Oooh...lightswitches at our level!

Wes driving away in Kids' Town.

Wes washing the windshield while he was putting gas in the car. No, we didn't tell him to do that. He just did it! Learn by example? I think so!

Wes and Brooklyn had a great time together! They kept each other busy which was great for us!

We visited our friends Joe and Daniella while we were out there. They had their first little girl, Abby, in the first of November so she's about three weeks younger than Sydney.

Sydney thinks it's really funny when you put her feet in her face, but she still gets distracted by the camera.

Sydney is becoming a fan of her exersaucer. You can see our be-u-tiful snow in the background. Here's to hoping it all goes away and doesn't come back for a while!

Here's our little girl doing the traditional nee-nee. Do all kids love this as much as mine do?

"Spring" Break - Week 1, Part 1

Brian had all last week off for "Spring" Break. Spring is in quotes since it's been pretty dang cold and not much like spring at all. It should be called Mid-Winter Break like it was at my high school. At any rate, we've been enjoying having him around a lot more!

Since we haven't been doing our dinner co-op thing during our break, I got to make dinner more than my normal once a week. I actually really like cooking, which can sometimes be a problem. I'm currently trying to find Brian's favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe. We've had a lot of cookies! This picture is of me making our French meal on Sunday. The main course was French Onion Soup. On Monday we had Japanese cuisine and we've also had Brazilian. Mostly, I'm just finding a way to try recipes I've never tried before.

On Thursday morning we headed to Chicago for a little weekend trip. On the way, we stopped in St. Joseph / Benton Harbor which is a beach town on the Michigan side of Lake Michigan.









It was a little bit windy and icy but we wanted to see the cool things that ice, wind and water do to the pier.







Those mounds of snow behind Brian are actually blocks of ice on top of the water. You can see the water far in the background.

When we got to Chicago, we went straight downtown because they were having a free day at the Field Museum. Wes had fun in the preschool area. This was an adobe house that he enjoyed playing in. He also liked playing in the music room, but those pictures were too blurry.

Sydney hung out and Wes brought her a basket of corn. Sweet brother.

Exploring...

The face he's making in this picture is the "oooo...wow..." face.

Wes sorting blocks. In the background, you can see he lined up all the round blocks.

Sydney and me with Dino Sue.

We took this picture to recap a year ago when we were at the Field over Valentine's Day weekend. Wes has changed quite a bit! Brian, not so much.

Wes' favorite thing to do was to find and press all the buttons. He'd look for them all over and then he'd say, "BUTTON!" and run up to them and press them. Here's a video of the event.