One Last Quiet Night

As you might have guessed, this past week has been pretty quiet at Chez Wilkes!  Although Charlotte and Elijah are pretty self-sufficient, it just isn’t the same around here with them gone.  I must say that I will be happy to see them come back tomorrow!

That being said, Jeff and I have taken advantage of their absence to fix food that the kids hate and eat in a couple of restaurants that were not exactly kid-friendly.  (Jeremy still sleeps in his car seat at supper time, so he doesn’t count yet!)  I’ve also managed to get the basement picked up and cleaned out again without interruption and even get a digital scrapbook completed and uploaded.  Today, I worked on lesson plans for the high school writing class I will be teaching this fall in the new home school co-op that we are joining.  (It’s also been 10 years since I’ve done anything like that!)  And I’ve read a few books.

And, of course, I’ve spent some quality time with our littlest one, although he won’t remember a lick of it.  Jeremy is turning into little Mr. Personality.  He smiles and laughs and coos and hoots.  He also attempts to shove his entire fist into his mouth when he’s hungry.  I think it’s about time for some rice cereal for this little man!  The pediatrician suggested waiting until he is four months old, and we’ve actually taken that advice this time around.  I remember from last time how much more cumbersome traveling gets with baby food!

The kids have had a blast in Tennessee.  We’ve called them nearly every night, and they have filled us in on their exploits.  Last night, Elijah informed us that he and Granddaddy were going fishing today.  He was planning to catch a six-foot long fish.  I asked him if he was going to eat it.  “No,” he told me.  “I’m going to bring it home and hang it on the wall.  But I’ll put it in a glass case so it doesn’t stink too bad.”

Um, OK.

In face, Elijah and Granddaddy did go fishing, and Elijah caught five fish, one more than Granddaddy.  But they let them all go because they were little.  Afterwards, they went to a garage sale where Elijah got a box of 20 Transformers toys for $5.00.  He was pretty excited.

I hope that Charlotte and Elijah have many sweet memories of their summer time with Grandmama and Granddaddy.  I have a feeling that this could turn into a yearly event!

Hope that your week is going well!

Exciting Times

I woke up to a very special email on Saturday morning: a picture of my brother holding a newborn baby!  Yep, I’m an aunt for the very first time!

Elynne Cara Hoyt was born on Friday night at 9:15.  She weighed eight pounds, eight ounces, and measured 21.5 inches long.  My poor sister-in-law was a week overdue, so little Elynne’s arrival was very welcome.  I talked to Zech on Saturday morning, and Mama and Baby are doing very well.

All that remains is for us to get over to Michigan sometime soon to see the newest member of the family.  Charlotte was thrilled to have a girl cousin, since she ended up with another baby brother, although she was pretty happy about that, too.  I’m excited that Jeremy will have a cousin close to his own age.  Elynne will have two cousins close in age to her, as Alyse’s sister-in-law is due to have her fourth baby in a few weeks.

Jeff and I also celebrated a special milestone last week: 15 years of marriage on July 22.  It was pretty low-key, but we enjoyed it.  We left Jeremy for the very first time with a sitter (our friends, the Fiedlers), and went out to eat.  (The older kids stayed with the Fiedlers, too!)

We ate at Water Street Cafe, a small restaurant in downtown Peoria.  Water Street has fondue on the menu, which is why we picked it.  We started out with a couple of appetizers, which were fantastic: tempura asparagus with a roasted red pepper sauce and duck nachos, which consisted of confit de canard on fried wontons, with goat cheese and mango chutney. 

After we scarfed those down, we were brought salads while our cheddar and gruyere fondue melted.  It was served with carrots, broccoli, bread, and Granny Smith apples for dipping.  We ended our meal with turtle fondue (melted dark chocolate and caramel, with pecans) with strawberries, pineapple, caramelized bananas, and toasted croissants for dipping.  All was complemented with a white wine from Argentina.

Yes, it was all as fabulous as it sounds!  We spent a couple hours eating, reminiscing, and laughing.  We have a running joke about our ending-in-five-or-zero anniversaries.  Our fifth anniversary was in 2000, about a month after Charlotte was born.  We had toyed with the idea of a big trip on our tenth anniversary but paid off our house instead.  (Yes, we are big nerds.)  And what do we do four months before our fifteenth?  Yep!  We had another baby. 

I can’t wait to see what we’re doing come 20 years.  So, supper out and leaving Jeremy for the first time was the best way to celebrate!

And now for something completely different…Charlotte and Elijah have gone to stay for a week in Tennessee with Jeff’s parents.  We drove down to Mt. Vernon, IL, yesterday, which was halfway for both of us, and handed off the kids at the Cracker Barrel.  Charlotte, Elijah, Grandmama, and Granddaddy will head back this way on Friday.  Jeff’s parents are planning to stay for the weekend so that they can get a little time in with Jeremy, too.  (We deemed him a bit young for the week-away thing this time around!)

The kids have never been away from home this long before, and it hasn’t been just Jeff, a baby, and I in 10 years!  But we’re planning to enjoy this, too.  The kids were happily playing the Wii, which we sent with them, and eating their choice of food for supper when we checked in last night.

All is well.

This and That

Well, we survived our week without Jeff.  He arrived safely home on Saturday, very jet-lagged but glad to be here!  He also brought the kids some very cool souvenirs.

Charlotte has been reading a series of books called “The 39 Clues.”  In it, a brother and sister, along with their au pair, globe trot while seeking clues to something that will make them the most powerful people in the world.  Of course, they are not the only ones seeking the clues, and therein lies much of the conflict.  In one of these books, the siblings find a puzzle box that they have to figure out how to open.

Jeff brought Charlotte one such box back from Japan, and she was absolutely thrilled.  Elijah had asked Jeff for a sword, much like the ones Jeff bought for himself years back, and Jeff obliged.  The sword, while not sharp on the edge, does have a sharp point.  So far, Elijah has managed not to run anyone through, but Jeff did have to tell him to quit trying to chop his tae kwon do boards.

That’s my boy.

Charlotte and Elijah attended an evening VBS at a local church last week, which was a lot of fun for them.  It was sports themed, with one different sport each night.  They learned about tae kwon do (and actually got to help their master teach on these nights), football, soccer, and basketball.  The last night was a big family festival with inflatables, a dunk tank, and root beer floats. 

A neat outcome of the VBS was that we met some people who live behind us.  Their daughter is Charlotte’s age and is very excited about perhaps hanging out together.  We had already met one of their sons, who is 14 and spends time with some our neighbors.  It’s nice to put some names and faces together.

And just a couple nights ago, Jeremy started sleeping nine to ten hours at a time.  He has also started eating every four to four-and-a-half hours, which means he only eats four times a day now.  Our other kids did this too, but not quite this early!  He continues to be a very good-natured, happy baby, which makes it very nice for me!

Last night, Jeff and I went to a cookout and spent the evening with a bunch of people we knew in France.  A neighbor girl babysat the older two kids, and Jeremy tagged along with us.  It was a very pleasant evening.  Jason and April Kern were up from Texas, and we had a good time reminiscing about the good old days of weekends in Provence and vacations in Italy.  (What a spoiled bunch we were!)  Good times.

Yesterday was the one-year anniversary of our arrival back in the States.  As another repatriated friend wistfully told me, “We can’t even say anymore that we’re recently moved back.”  When I look back at what a whirlwind this past year has been and how many changes have happened in our family, all I can say is, “Wow.”

And on Thursday, Jeff and I will celebrate 15 years of marriage!  This is the ultimate “where does the time go” event.  We are planning a night out at a local cafe that serves cheese and chocolate fondue and has an extensive wine menu.  And we are leaving Jeremy with a sitter for the first time.  Of course, we’re leaving him with the Fiedlers, but it’s a still a big milestone!

Have a good one!

Progress Report

As July and summer are racing by, I thought I would take a minute to see how it’s all going!

To start, the kids and I are on our own, as Jeff is in Japan for a week-long business trip.  This is the first time I’ve been by myself with three kids, and it’s been a bit daunting.  So far, it’s not been bad, although church was a squeaker this morning. 

The paging system at Richwoods is such that your children (as a group) are assigned a number, and, if your child needs you, that number is flashed up in the bottom corner of the screen during the worship service. 

Our kids are number 186, and I was paged for the first time EVER this morning, much to my shock.  I’ll admit, it shouldn’t have been a shock with a baby, as I’ve been paged at every church in which I’ve had a baby in the nursery, but this is the first time I’ve ever been paged at Richwoods.  I rushed back to the children’s area, and a very young nursery worker was holding my pitiful, red-faced son.  He was no longer screaming, but the hapless worker told me that they had tried his pacifier, his bottle, everything, and nothing had worked.  Jeremy sort of snuffled and snuggled into my shoulder as I went back to retrieve his bag.  (Church was about 20 minutes from being over.)

To my surprise, I saw at least eight babies crawling or lying around the teeny-tiny “Snails” room, where the immobile babies are supposed to be.  Three workers were desperately trying to keep up with them all.  (Our pastor told me a few minutes later that they had something like 18 children in the one-and-under rooms this morning.  Holy smokes!  No wonder they paged me!)  I took Jeremy to the lobby and fed him, grateful that I wasn’t up to do prayer team at the end of the service, as there was just I, and my other kids had to be picked up too!

Our kids truly outnumber us now, and, when one of us is absent, it isn't easy!

In other news, our summer checklist is going nicely.  We’ve visited the zoo, gone to a pool or water park every week, and have faithfully done the multiplication tables twice a week.  The older kids are also playing their daily, 30-minute allowance of video games and spending lots of time playing outside with the neighbors.  This is truly how summer should be.

Yesterday afternoon, the kids and I attended a kick-off picnic for a new Richwoods church campus that will start meeting on our side of the Illinois River in January.  Richwoods has close to a thousand people that attend among three services on Saturday night and Sunday morning, and about a quarter of them drive from east of the river.  The new campus pastor, Ken Stewart, is currently putting together a launch team, the group of people who are committed to attending the new site.  As this new site will be much closer to our community than the current Peoria campus, our family is all in.  (The uber-correct terminology for this is that Richwoods is becoming a “multi-site” church, if you’re interested.)

It was neat to look around last night and see the people with whom we will be worshiping before too much longer.  I recognized very few faces (the downside of a large church), but that will change.  Believe it or not, I met a woman who attended my alma mater, Lipscomb University, and found out that there were several people there who have a history with the Churches of Christ.  As a matter of fact, the campus pastor comes from a Church of Christ background, which we discovered several years back, before we moved to France.  But the new people were fun to get to know.  It really is a small world.

And I’m excited about having the opportunity to be part of both a large and a small church at the same time.  It’s a unique situation that doesn’t come along very often.

I took Jeremy to get his three-month pictures taken on Wednesday.  He was photographed after the tiny six-month-old son of a teen mom.  Jeremy looked like a giant next to him.  The photographer looked at Jeremy and asked, “So, is he sitting up pretty good now?”

I stared at her a second, realized she was serious, and answered, “No. He’s only three months old.  I’m hoping to get some pictures today of him pushing up on his arms!”  The photographer laughed and apologized, and she took some great pictures of him.

Well, that’s how we’re rolling.  Sometimes, I wish it could all slow down, but that’s not the nature of things, is it?

Have a good one!

On the Farm

So, now I’ll head back to St. Louis!

On Sunday morning, we ate breakfast, loaded up the car, and headed to Grant’s Farm.  Charlotte had originally wanted to go to the St. Louis Zoo, but, upon further investigation, Grant’s Farm seemed to be a bit better choice with a baby, and Charlotte thought it looked like fun, too, so that’s where we went.

Grant’s Farm is so named because President Ulysses S. Grant lived there for a bit before he became president.  His wife’s family owned the property and gave a number of acres to Ulysses and Julia Dent when they married.  The log house in which they lived is still on the property.

Some years after the Dent/Grant families lived there, the Busch family purchased the property.  (This would the the Anheuser-Busch people.  After all, this is St. Louis, home of Budweiser!)  They restored the cabin and opened the property up to the public some 50 years ago.  Anheuser-Busch Inc. runs and maintains the Clydesdale breeding facility and animal park that Grant’s Farm now is.

We saw Clydesdale horses and foals, Scottish Highland cows, elk, several varieties of deer, a giant tortoise, alpacas, miniature donkeys, an elephant, a zebra, a capybara, goats, a kangaroo, bald eagles, parrots, macaws, and owls.  In other words, we saw a veritable zoo at the farm!  And it was all free, paid for by beer drinkers the world over.  We did pay $11.00 to park, more than that for lunch, and a couple bucks for milk bottles to feed the goats, but entrance to the park, the animal show, and the elephant show were all free.  Plus, each person of legal drinking age got to pick two, eight-ounce “samples” of the Budweiser family of beers on tap in the food area, also for free.

Not a bad deal.

Upon arrival, we visited the Clydesdale barns and pastures.  Yep, these are the guys that star in the commercials every year during the Super Bowl, and they are magnificent animals.  We even got to see a couple of babies from a distance.

 

After that, we got in line to ride the tram through a large deer park to the actual animal farm.

 

After we disembarked, we headed straight for the Animal Encounters show, a very entertaining half hour in which trained animals performed for us.  Birds did math…

…drew pictures…

 

… and walked tightropes.

This very skittish owl flew from his trainer to a perch a couple of times…and then flew away!  His trainer was still trying to round him up when the show ended!

The show ended with a particularly talented macaw doing his best imitation of the Anheuser-Busch eagle.  Pretty funny!

After the animal show, we looked at a few of the animals, including this camel who actually posed for a picture!

Then, we headed to a grandstand area for an elephant show.  This was better than the circus.  The elephant walked on a narrow ledge, picked up a dime with his trunk, and sprayed the audience with water.  After each trick, he bowed to the applause.

 

As Sunday was just as hot as Saturday, we headed over to the food courtyard for lunch and a bit of time in the shade.  Then, we looked at the rest of the animals and bought a couple bottles of milk for the kids to feed the goats.

This ended up being pretty funny.  These goats were very aggressive, so here are the kids trying to deal with that!

 

Charlotte, of course, wanted to feed the sweet goat who had no interest in the bottle, and Elijah wanted to share his bottle with about six different goats.  I tell you: this was highly entertaining.

 

Since we’ve never been to the St. Louis Zoo, I can’t tell you how it compares, but Charlotte and Elijah definitely enjoyed this place!

 

On our way out, we stopped by the “general store,” where Charlotte and Elijah each used their own money to buy a souvenir.  Then, we headed back into St. Louis for me to my souvenir from the Hard Rock Cafe.

A number of years ago (like, before I was even married), I started buying teddy bears from town that had one’s Hard Rock Cafe.  My very first bear was from Washington D.C. during a college visit.  Jeff brought me one from Japan, and we have some from various European cities from our time there.  (Strangely enough, we’re missing Paris and London, although we visited both places…HRC wasn’t on the agenda, I guess!)

Anyway, St. Louis has a Hard Rock, so we tried to track it down.  This ended up being surprisingly difficult.  The first place we stopped (thanks to Jeff’s iPhone GPS) was an industrial area by the railroad tracks.  The next place was an actual street that looked promising, but still no Hard Rock. 

We finally figured out that it was in Union Station, so we parked close to there and walked in…only to find out that we parked at the farthest possible point from it.  By this time, we were hot and tired and I wasn’t much in the mood to buy a bear anymore!  But we trudged over and went in the gift shop…only to discover that the bears I had bought for years were not available here.  (Perhaps they’re not available at all anymore.)  I ended up purchasing a Beanie Baby-type bear, complete with tattoos, an earring, a leather vest, and a red mohawk.

Oh, well.  He looks a bit out of place with my others, but the times, they are a-changin’!

So, after our last inadvertent adventure, we headed home, making one quick stop in a McDonald’s parking lot to feed Jeremy.

It was a great birthday weekend!  I highly recommend St. Louis.  We can’t wait to go back and visit the Arch and the zoo next time.

Have a good one!

Independence Day

My kids were very happy to be back in the United States this Fourth of July.  Charlotte has been telling me for months, “We missed all the fireworks last year, Mom!  We left France after July 4 and before July 14 (French Independence Day), so we didn’t get to see ANY!”  To my kids, this is something of a travesty.

But we managed to make up for it this year.  Charlotte and Jeff had their second 5K race scheduled this morning, so we decided to attend Richwoods’ 5:30 Saturday evening service last night to avoid having to rush to get back to church.  It had a very different feel from the regular Sunday morning worship, but we enjoyed it. 

Afterwards, we swung back by our house to pick up snacks and drinks on the way to Eureka, the county seat, for its annual fireworks display at the lake.  We attended this a couple years ago with the Pugh family, but they were out of town this year, so we were on our own!  We arrived around 8:15, parked, and made our way over the lake with our chairs, blanket, snacks, and baby stroller.  (Things get much more complicated with a little one!)

Here are a couple of pictures before the show began.  Yes, I bought my kids matching shirts this year.

 

At 9:00, a local group of girls sand the National Anthem, and, then, for the next 45 minutes, we watched an impressive display of fireworks over Lake Eureka.  But none of my pictures is as impressive as what we actually saw, so I’ll spare you!

I figured that we would have an hysterical baby for the fireworks, since Jeremy hates loud noises and likes to cry long and loudly when he hears them.  But, again, he surprised me.  He watched the lit-up sky and, when the sky was particularly beautiful, he would say, “Ooooo!”  Very cute, and absolutely no hysterics!

By the time the traffic cleared out, it was quarter to eleven by the time we got home.  Yikes!  Not the best plan for a race the next morning!

So, this morning, at 6:00 a.m., we all rolled out of bed.  I got myself ready and then quickly fed the baby, who wasn’t overly happy to be awoken that early.

By the way, Jeremy has been sleeping through the night with no interruptions two nights running!  Yee haw!

At 6:45, we loaded up and headed to downtown Peoria for the 29th annual Peoria Jaycees Firecracker 5000.  Here are my two speedy racers before the start.

And here are my two observers.

Just a bit of information…Charlotte has MAJORLY fallen off in her training these past two weeks, mostly due to her participation in sports camps.  She ran a couple of times this past week, but not much.  What she really had going for her, due to her lack of consistent training, was how few kids 10 and under participate in these races.

All of that being said…she still placed first with a time of 27:36, beating the second place finisher by some 20 seconds.  However, this was not a happy race for her.  At one point in the course, the runners passed a sewage treatment plant, where there was a strong septic smell.  Then, they ran along the riverfront, where there was a strong fishy smell.  When Charlotte crossed the finish line, she vomited…three times!

A kind lady brought her to me, where Charlotte tearfully told me, “I wanted to throw up two times on the course, but I didn’t!  But I had to stop like 10 times to walk!  But not for very long!  And then I threw up when I finished!  I feel terrible!”

I mopped her up as best I could with the baby’s burp cloth while we waited for Jeff to finish.  Then, we checked the results and saw that Charlotte had still finished first, despite the drama.  Frustratingly, I didn’t get any good pictures, due to the fact that Jeremy screamed every time I tried to put him the stroller, so I was trying to take pictures one-handed.  Grrr.

 

While we waited for the awards presentation, Charlotte and Jeff hopped in the food and beverage line.  Believe it or not, Kelleher’s Pub, race sponsor and location of the start/finish, was serving Domino’s pizza and light beer…at 8:00 a.m.!  Charlotte and Jeff both grabbed some grub, but Jeff passed on the beer!

Here is Charlotte getting and showing off her latest medal.  By the time we left, she was feeling great.  There’s nothing like getting an award to brighten your day!

 

So, we got back home by 9:00, with Independence Day stretched lazily before us…no plans, no appointments.  Jeff grilled steaks for lunch, Jeff and I took naps in the afternoon, and I went on a quick bike ride with the two big kids after I woke up.

Now, storms are rolling in, and we may play some Wii or watch a movie to round out our day.  And, since Jeff is off tomorrow, we may go to see “Toy Story 3.”

Hope yours was just as good!

A Hot Time in the River Town

As I mentioned earlier, Charlotte absolutely adores amusement parks and fairs, and, now that she is tall enough to ride anything she wants, she can’t get enough of them.  Ergo, it stood to reason that her requested birthday trip would include the best amusement park within easy driving distance—Six Flags St. Louis.

We had never visited St. Louis before last weekend, although it is a popular destination for people who live where we do.  It’s a bit farther away than Chicago, but it’s still not much over three hours.  Our hotel was on the southwest side of the city, so we drove a bit farther, but, all in all, St. Louis was a good place to go on our first real trip with Jeremy.

We left on Friday afternoon when Jeff got home from work and arrived at Homewood Suites around 9:00, after stopping at Steak ‘n’ Shake (Charlotte’s choice) for supper.  We picked this place on a friend’s recommendation because it has two separate sleeping areas; as Jeremy wasn’t yet sleeping through the night when I booked it, we thought this might be a good idea. 

While Homewood Suites is a nice place, we had a less-than-nice experience there.  We had neighbors whose children screamed out in the hall late into the night.  Trying to get breakfast on Saturday morning was a nightmare; the hotel was fully booked, and the breakfast area was in no way big enough to accommodate everyone, even in shifts.  A lady got nasty with Jeff after he told her that he was saving a table for the rest of his family, and our kids were behind people in the waffle line who made waffle after waffle after waffle in spite of the crowd.

After we left our room on Saturday, someone thought it would be a funny joke to put a “Do Not Disturb” sign on our door.  So, when we arrived back from Six Flags, we found a bag hanging on the door containing towels and replacements for anything else we might have used, but the room had not been made up.  While this wasn’t really the hotel’s fault, it certainly colored our view of the place and the level of clientele it attracted.

I honestly try not to let these things bother me, but come on!

Anyway…on to the good part of the trip!

We arrived at Six Flags around 10:00 a.m., thirty minutes before the park opened.  This gave us plenty of time to park, go through security (metal detectors and bag check), and get over to the line into the water park.  Six Flags St. Louis has the traditional amusement park, in addition to a large water park, which ended up being a very nice place to be since the heat index was a humid 103 degrees on Saturday!  Here is the family, waiting for the park to open!

 

Because we wanted a place that we could settle with the baby, I had reserved a cabana in the water park.  I think was the best decision that we made for this entire trip.  The cabana offered shade, a table and four chairs, two loungers, a bench locker, four inner tubes, and four beverages.  I checked in to our cabana at 10:30, and someone was there with Jeremy until the water park closed at 8:00 p.m.  We had a relatively cool place to feed Jeremy and ourselves, a place for him to nap, and a place to relax out of the sun.  Fabulous!

 

I don’t have a whole lot of pictures of Six Flags, but we ended up having a really fun day, much better than my pessimistic self expected.  After all, how much fun can an amusement park be with an eleven-week-old baby?!

But Jeff and I tag-teamed riding rides in the park with the older two kids and watching Jeremy.  I got to read a book and enjoy the sun while Jeremy napped during my shift, and then I got to ride some roller coasters and other rides and float on the Lazy River while Jeff sat with Jeremy.  We had a shady, private table on which to eat our ridiculously expensive lunch from Papa John’s (upside—it was enough food for lunch and supper!), and we never had to wait for tubes.

Because it was so hot, the water park stayed packed, but lines in the amusement park were very short.  The longest wait that anyone ever had was about 30 minutes, and we literally walked right on most of the rides.  When the water park closed, we spent another 90 minutes in the park, and the kids ended up riding everything they wanted to ride, including lots of scary roller coasters and one of those dreadful rides that takes you up 26 stories and drops you.  Elijah rode that one twice!

Here is one happy birthday girl near the end of our time in the park.  She is soaked from a ride on Thunder River!

I guess my lesson learned from our day at Six Flags is to not necessarily listen to what everyone says.  I had just about been convinced that going on a Saturday in the middle of summer on a hot day with a baby was a recipe for disaster.  Instead, it was a great time.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at Dairy Queen for a cool treat.  Day One of our weekend in St. Louis was in the books.

Next time…Sunday on the farm and desperately seeking the Hard Rock Cafe.  Stay tuned!