A New Project

A couple of weeks ago, Baird and Drew participated in a market research study involving a new video game.  They took part of the money and bought this enormous Lego Star Wars project.  It's over 1,000 pieces, and the instruction manual is so large, it's actually two volumes.

Drew's been waiting all week for it to arrive, and it finally came via UPS this evening.  This should keep them both busy for awhile!

Homecoming 2011

A Warm Huskie Welcome

Tonight the senior cross country girls welcomed Erin to the team, Huskie style:

C25K

C25K stands for "Couch Potato to 5 K," and it's a program to help inactive people ("Couch Potatoes") get off the couch and get active.  The idea is that if you can run for 60 seconds, you can get yourself into shape to run a 5K race in a couple of months.  Let me be clear about something:  I'm not a couch potato.

I'm one of those typical suburban moms who used to be fit as can be.  I ran 5K races.  I played sports.  Back in the day, I could haul 100 pounds of hog food from one end of a building to another - 50 pounds on each shoulder.  That was then.

Once I had kids, I was still in pretty good shape, carrying them and chasing after them day after day.  Even when Drew was in first grade, I could still lift him up above my head and carry him on my shoulders.  Over these last few years, however, I have felt everything shift.  All the kids are in school all day, every day.  They are too big to carry.  Instead of hanging out with the kids in the park and running around with them, I am driving them from one end of Oak Park to the other.  The week before school started, I logged an impressive 14 hours in the car.  That's when it hit me:  I'm not a couch potato; I am a car potato.  The older I get, the less active I have become, and the pounds have started creeping up on me.  I think it's tacky to speak about weight gain in actual numbers, so I will just tell you that I'm within eight pounds of the weight I was the night I delivered Kelsey.

I don't like being out of shape, and carrying the extra weight isn't much fun either.  This week I'm starting the C25K program.  My goal is to run the Hot Chocolate 5K in Chicago on November 5th.  Stay tuned.

Interpreting for her Family at the Zoo

Brookfield Zoo encourages all its YVC participants to take their families on an almost-behind-the-scenes tour of the zoo and share the animal facts they have learned as a result of being involved in the YVC program.  We started our zoo day in the butterfly exhibit, where Erin and Baird were lucky enough to have butterflies land on them.

One of the things Erin learned this summer was how to remove a butterfly from clothing without injuring the oh-so-delicate wings.

After the butterflies, we toured the Fragile Kingdom exhibits before heading over to the seal and dolphin area.

Everyone who knows Erin knows how much she loves dolphins.  We spent quite awhile viewing the dolphins in the underwater viewing area.  Nea, a four-year-old dolphin, was playing chase with one of the older, larger dolphins.  I remarked to Erin that I'd never seen the dolphins swim that fast in the tank before.  She agreed.  Nea swam around to the other side of the tank that's not visible in the underground viewing area, and we moved on to other exhibits.

It was much later in the day before we realized that that very fast swim of Nea's was the last we would ever see of her.  In a tragic, freak accident, Nea apparently collided with another dolphin and fractured her skull.  She died moments later, in spite of the zookeeper's best efforts to save her.  Erin was shocked at the news.  She was very upset, but she managed to handle herself well the rest of the day.

#5

Kelsey added her fifth cartiledge piercing today

Rehm Pool...

...how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways:

What a perfect way to start the Labor Day weekend, especially when the temps are in the mid-90s.