Wow, here I am again!

I literally just a few minutes ago told my sister that I had read a little of her blog and my blog while looking for a recipe online from our joint blog, and dang it, we're funny! I miss reading her blog and, really, I know I should write more, so here I am again for now.

It's been a LONG time since I last wrote. June 3?!? That's crazy! Since then, we've experienced summer, some family vacations, and swimming in the big pool. It's been a big summer! We went up to Chicago one Friday to the Lincoln Park Zoo. It was a pretty great time, despite my driving in Chicago stress. Let's face the facts...I am a great driver. And I rarely get that stressed out about driving, which is why I typically drive us everywhere. (And also, I get a little car sick unless I'm driving). But, man, driving in the actual city of Chicago gives me anxiety like nothing else! Especially when I'm driving with Austin in the car. You have to be a little aggressive if you're going to get to the lane you want, and I can do that, but I don't like it!

After the zoo, we met up with our friends Jill and Charlie, Jill's parents, and Charlie's kids at Soldier Field. Jill and Charlie had gotten us tickets to the Bears' Family Night event for Nick's birthday, where we got to go and watch them practice, basically. I think we all thought it was going to be an actual game or scrimmage and, while there was a little scrimmaging, it was a lot of stretching and drills. Being someone who isn't that excited about football anyway, this was a little boring to me! But Nick had fun and we had a good time spending time together and with our friends, so overall, it was a good day! However, trying to get out of that area with all the stadium traffic around plus the entire other side of the street shut down from Lollapalooza was rough on our poor GPS! "Turn left...turn left now...take the immediate left..." Sorry, TomTom!

The next weekend, the three of us went to Union, IL to have our Day Out with Thomas! It was pretty cool! We got to meet Thomas the Train and Sir Topham Hatt and take our fun (but brief!) ride on the train pulled by Thomas. Austin loved seeing his familiar "friends" from TV and also exploring the other trains that were there at the train museum. We would have liked to see more of the Thomas crowd (Percy? James? Where were you??) but it was really a good time!