Thanksgiving!

Some years, Thanksgiving is a fairly simple holiday.... families gather, food is eaten, we talk about what we're thankful for, we all go home. This year, our Thanksgiving was a little more unconventional.

This was our year to do Thanksgiving with my family. Originally, the plan was to head up to Wisconsin for a typical sort of weekend, but then, plans changed! There was a move happening in Iowa, and who can sit around in Wisconsin eating when we could be helping? So, to Iowa, the family went.

My branch of the family was a little under the weather, heading into the weekend, so for Thursday we stayed home to see if we couldn't all get further along the path to health. Turns out, a friend of mine from church was having a big dinner and had a lack of guests (and she didn't mind our having colds), so we crashed her dinner. It was delightful!

Then, Friday, only Townshend and I were in condition to travel, so we left Hubby and Moon home and headed to Iowa. Once we got there, we jumped in and helped with the finishing touches of the move-prep.

We worked most of the afternoon and into the evening and got quite a lot accomplished. We even got in a quick load of a few odds and ends to the new place, rain notwithstanding.

Saturday was the big day; big truck, all the helpers and all the stuff. Happily, the rain took a break for the day. We started in early and it was a full force effort! They had a big truck, plenty of space for stowing all sorts of things:

At first it seemed like we might not fill it... however, load by load, fill it we did!

In the midst of it all, we took a lunch break.. food prep while being between houses requires a little ... creativity!

Before too long, it was back to work. We got to the new place and the unloading began. Bit by bit, everything was transferred until the truck was empty.

Slowly, things started to take shape inside... Saturday night the family helped move things around a little in the first baby steps of unpacking and making a new place a home.

view out the new kitchen window, just before the empty truck drove away

Sunday morning there was a storm on the horizon that was predicted to be a doozy.. so, Townshend and I stayed for the first hour of church and then hit the road to try to keep ahead of the weather. Bad weather aside, I really like road trips. There's a beauty to all types of scenery; green forests, urban skylines, deserts, farmland. I enjoy watching it go by and seeing the diversity of the world.

Though we passed several cars in the ditch, we managed to miss most of the nasty parts of the storm and get home without incident. Good thing too 'cuz that night it definitely did storm. Iowa got its 8 to 10 inches of snow and we, here in the Chicago area, got 4 or 5 inches of slushy wet, heavy, messy stuff.. so we got a snow day on Monday! It was perfect. A holiday weekend full of friends, family, helping and then resting.

I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Summer Science - Conclusion

So we've been babysitting some black swallowtail caterpillar chrysalises. My boys thought they were more exciting as caterpillars, but the "sleeping caterpillars" were still kind of novel. Then it was time for us to go for our summer reunion/road trip, and they we still "sleeping".... so, into the car they went!

I tucked the container in, and we started out. Our first stop, on our Wisconsin exploration trip, was at the Jelly Belly Center in Pleasant Prarie, WI. We went in and did the tour and came out to eat a picnic lunch in the grass by the parking lot before heading on to Door County. As we were pulling out our lunch, I noticed that one of the chrysalises had hatched!

I was super excited!

However, the butterfly didn't seem real excited to be out in the world.... I left the container opened and we sat a little ways off to eat our lunch; occasionally going over to peek at it.  Still, at the end of lunch, the little fella seemed disinclined to leave the container.

We debated among ourselves as to the best way to deal with the reluctant newborn. It was hanging onto the stick it had hatched from, the other chrysalis seemed like it might possibly be progressing but we needed to get back on the road. In the end, I decided to gently placed the sticks by a tree with our apple bits from lunch and hope for the best.

I take heart in that the hatched butterfly wasn't there as we drove away. Sure, maybe a crow ate it (a suggestion Hubby enjoyed trolling me with), but I choose to believe it flew boldly away into the wide world.

So pretty!

Family History Weekend

These days, Hubby's family has all moved out to the west coast. That leaves us as the closest branch of the family to the burial place of his grandparents. For a couple years we've been meaning to get ourselves over there and pay our respects, and the other weekend we finally made good on our intentions.

Turns out, the city where Hubby's grandparents rest is quite close to the Indiana/Illinois border, so we were able to make a weekend trip of it. He got off work a little early on Friday and we drove over to our hotel by dinner time. Saturday, we explored the town where Hubby's mom grew up and on Sunday we visited the graves. 

In our exploring, we found a children's museum where boys had great fun!

water room

building room

Moon was enthralled by the model train they had that was driving around a loop near the ceiling

ball pit

Moana is a favorite movie at our house, so this little boat was a big hit!

camping, tent, fireplace fun

digging for dinosaurs

taking a break to color

driving around the track

And a weekend with small kids wouldn't be complete without a trip to a park:

Our visit to the cemetery wasn't as smooth as we might have liked... Their website is less than up-to-date (last updated in 2008) so we couldn't see beforehand where the grave would be. We figured that once we got there, there'd be a map or something to check out. When we arrived, there was an office, however, it was not open on Sunday morning and there was nothing publicly available to search. Happily, Hubby had been there twice before (years and years ago) so we drove around on a whiff of a memory and a prayer, and we found it! Hooray for answered prayers.

I didn't take many pictures here, but we did leave some flowers and a kindness rock, along with our warm thoughts.

Getting a little more in touch with Hubby's Greek roots

It was a fun weekend hanging out with our little family, remembering people who've come before us and talking about memories. We're hoping to go again in a couple years.