Chicago - Day 2

While Phil had a meeting, Henry and I set out to explore the sights! First up was Millennium Park, where we were greeted by a homeless guy who said to Henry, "Hey little dude, welcome to my neighborhood!"

Here I asked Henry, "Can you sit down so I can take your picture by the pretty flowers?".....

.....and oops, this is what I got :) We straightened out the crushed tulip and busted out of there!

Here we are at "the bean" - pretty cool!

The one picture of me from the whole trip!

Next, we headed to Navy Pier. One game of ring-around-the-rosy with the statues before we headed inside.

The ships, the biiiiiiig ships, according to Henry!

After Phil was all done for the day, he took us to his all-time fav pizza place in Chicago!

That deep dish pizza takes a loooooong time to bake.

Henry had to check everything out around the pizza joint while that pizza was still baking!

After a belly full of pizza, we found an actual park inside of Millennium Park. Henry's high for the day.....getting close to those (nasty if you ask me) pigeons!

Chicago - Day 1

Henry and I tagged along with Phil to Chicago for a few days this week. It was my first trip to Chicago in ages, probably 20 years, and it was Henry's first ever trip there!

According to Henry - the high of the trip was going on the train (coo-coo, as he calls them) and the low was checking baggage and then watching his blanket go through security, very traumatic for the poor boy :(

Thank goodness for the play area at Terminal 2 at the Minneapolis airport, it passed a little time before we got on the plane!

Aaahhh, in his glory, first ride on the coo-coo from the airport to the hotel, couldn't wipe the grin off his face!

A first for Henry, no nap the day we flew there, and this boy LOVES his sleep! He was delirious by the time we got to our hotel. I think the only way we must have gotten through dinner at the Grand Lux Cafe was spotting every single bus and taxi that went down Michigan Ave (thank goodness there were LOTS of them) and also the iPod, of course :)

Happy Easter!

We had a nice Easter weekend around here. Grandma & Grandpa came and joined us from J-town.

First things first, an Easter egg hunt in the house (Daddy fertilized the lawn yesterday, no egg hunting in the yard, boo). We had to repeat the egg hunt about 4 more times throughout the day. Who knew yogurt bites, raisins, and puffs would be soooooo much fun to find in the eggs?!

Poor baby had a fever on and off throughout the weekend, not really sure why, still eating ok and running around like a wild man :)

After church, had to test out my new fishing rod that the Easter Bunny brought for me at my Oma & Opa's house. Bummer, didn't catch any fish in the backyard off the deck.

Then after some ham, beans, and a long nap.....a wagon-ride to the park of course. Somebody was showing off for his Auntie Sonja and thought he could go down the slide face-first.

Then unfortunately somebody had a complete meltdown when I corrected him the second time around and made him sit on his butt, pretty much the worst mom ever!

All in all, nothing too crazy, like I said - a nice weekend.....just how we like it!

Hoppy Easter everybody :)

So much to do

Oh man, were we ever busy this weekend, checking everything off our Easter to-do list!

Decorate sugar cookies that my Oma baked.....check.

(Greta was in town too, yay!)

Easter Bunny sighting.....check.

Notice the big bunny didn't even make the photo, he was too far away. Henry gave him a wave from afar. Easter Bunny tried to give Henry a treat bag, but Daddy had to be the middle man, Henry just couldn't get THAT close :)

Hunt for Easter eggs at the park.....check.

Festive wall decorations.....check.

Dye Easter eggs.....check.

I saw this neat little trick on Pinterest to put the egg into a whisk and then it's much more kid-friendly for them to dip it in the dye - I love that idea.

Henry just couldn't resist trying to dunk his hand into the dye as well.....

.....and the result, a stained green hand :)

Stickers were definitely the best part, he's LOVING stickers lately!

Are we ready for Easter??

on a side note.....

.....in case you ever get a tupperware dish from our house, my apologies if there happens to be any of Henry's leftover "nacks" (snacks) in it. He was really in the 'tupperware cupboard' mood the other day, placing one piece of Kix in every single container. Not sure if we found all of them yet :)

Happy Ea..ter?

After 35 years of using these STIK-EES Easter Decorations in the Olin household windows, can you believe we couldn't find the pink S to complete our Happy EaSter? Come on Grandma Judy, how could lose such an important piece after just 35 years? I tried to find a copyright date on these babies but I couldn't.

Here's what we started with.....

.....but thankfully after digging through 2 huge photo albums (yes, we'll be pulling out window decals from the 70s for all the holidays now), we finally found the lonesome little S!

Henry put up every single egg, chick, bunny, and spring flower himself, wanting more-more when he was all done!

And the finished product, ta-da! Looks just like the tutorial above, doesn't it? Well done Henry, now we're ready for Easter, not Ea..ter!

Choo Choo Bob's

With Henry's recent love (and I do mean LOVE) of trains, I scoured the internet last week to find us a fun outing for today, so we checked out Choo Choo Bob's Train Store in St. Paul with Henry's buddy, Harrison.

So, obviously Choo Choo Bob's is a store where you can buy any train part you'll ever need I'm sure, but they also have about 6 large train track tables set up in the back where the kiddos can just play and play and play. It was fun, there were about 15 little boys there that were all just doin' their own thing, heads down, each pushing the trains along the tracks, very seriously too I might add, as you can see below.

Don't mind if I do have a snack out of your cup, Harrison, thank you very much! We worked on lots of "please's and thank you's" today, good sharing between both of the good little boys :)

And then in the front of the store, they had multiple trains going round and round on the tracks they had set up. Here's the big man, Bob, himself, getting this train back on it's tracks after somebody who shall remain nameless just may have stopped it on the tracks (it was just too tempting and he just couldn't contain himself, ok)!

Afterwards, we stopped for snacks at the coffee shop next door :)

Great play-date, we'd definitely go back to Choo Choo Bob's again!