Chicago

It is amazing how much can happen in just a short time.  Life flies by and it occurs to me that the past six weeks have included a vacation, Steve's birthday, a visit from Grandma Dallin, softball and T-ball, house projects, home reorganization, a new neice, and loads of fun!  Because I think that the photos are the most important part of our blog, I haven't updated until I could get all 450 recent photos off the camera...The hard drive was full and the external hard drive was taking too long to sync all the old pictures for my short attention span.  Finally, the long wait is over and you can stop crying yourself to sleep at night waiting for the Hunting family blog update.

Chicago

During this year's April vacation we decided to take a short [17 hour drive] road trip to Chicago to visit my parents' new home.  A home is still new if they have been there a year, right?  Chicago is great!  I must say that I envy the parks near their home--we visited 3 playgrounds/parks within 2 minutes of their house!  The kids had a blast!  What was even more exciting is that my sister Liz and her family drove up from Dallas, TX for the week as well.  Jessica couldn't be there because she was nearly 9 months pregnant and Michael had to work, otherwise it would have been just perfect!  They were greatly missed!

Our time together was so much fun, though, and we enjoyed touring The Windy City.  Some of our favorite highlights:

This is my favorite picture.  Dallin looked so adorable that I had to snap this shot before this one started to happen: 

"Don't take my picture, mom!" Of course, I snapped up 4 more of these precious cranky shots before he ran off bitterly.

EAT AT ED'S

Eating at Ed Debevics is quite the experience.  Their job is to insult you.  Of course, my parents didn't tell us this until after we walked in and they said, "Toddlers?  Gross."  and  "Is that old guy with you?" (referring to my father).  My sister and I dropped our jaws and soon after realized that this was part of the "experience."  We then had a hayday with our most entertaining waiter.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

Befor Steve headed home, we celebrated his birthday!  Nothing says happy birthday more than a carry-on bag.  Love you, Steve!  The rest of the party had to wait until we got home so Steve could get his real birthday presents (a new bike and an MP3 player that also holds movies, plus some tools that were mostly a gag gift, since I knew he didn't want those!).  I'll blog about that later...

On the way to the airport, Steve and I had a chance to stop at the Chicago, IL Temple for our church.  This is a very unique temple and looked more like a church or stake center than a temple.  It was cool to visit the grounds for a few minutes.

After Steve left, we mourned his absence for a few minutes before enjoying ourselves some more.  The kids loved riding the train into Chicago to visit Grandpa.

We were relieved to learn that we would all clear security.

By the way, I love Chicago Pizza.

The rest of the trip, we just enjoyed playing and spending time together.