Sidewalk Chalk and Photos of the Four

We played with sidewalk chalk.  Chalk is fun.

It gets all over your hands.
And all over your face, if you're Elias.

I may have given Albert a stick to play with.  Don't judge.  He wouldn't stop eating grass so I thought the stick was preferable.

Then I tried to get a picture of all four of them.  I only have one other picture of all four.  This one turned out okay.  They are all looking at least, maybe not enthusiastically but looking nonetheless.

Albert is really into his stick.

Now the younger two are looking but the older two aren't.

Hey, look...Elias!

Oh, and there's Asher!

That's not bad.  Everyone has some fairly genuine faces at least.

That'll work. I think it's the best.  Aside from Elias' duck face.
Phew.  Are you tired?  Because I'm exhausted.

Sock Puppets and Sitting on the Refrigerator

I've been working on getting a picture of all four kids together.  This is not the winning try.  I love how each of them has a less than photogenic expression.  

Sock puppets. 

Asher and Addilyn sitting on the top of the refrigerator.  They climbed up there on their own.  A few months ago, Tyler set Asher up there and had him hand down ingredients for lunch.  Asher thought that was great fun.  He asked if he could do that again and we said that if he could get up there, he could, thinking that would be the end of that.  Much to our surprise, he actually got up there.  He found a stool and then just climbed on up. Addilyn watched and copied his technique.  Crazy monkeys!

The big kids watching their favorite shows: Word World and Dinosaur Train.  They come on PBS at 11:00 and 11:30, respectively.  I like how they crowd all together so they can fit on the chair.

Word World!

Addilyn was reading to the boys.  They will frequently have story time together.  The youngest two might have been a little distracted in this picture.

Eating tacos.  Please submit any caption ideas you might have.

Washing hands after said tacos.  They are delicious but messy.  Luckily washing hands is just about as exciting as could be (these kids love any excuse to play in water).

Playgrounds, Riding Bikes, and Chapter Books

Isn't this the brightest, most fun playground ever?!!  The bright orange just calls to me.  The kids enjoyed it too.

Until Asher fell down and went boom.  Don't worry; he was back up in just a minute.

Getting ready to slide.

 Climbing the net.  Good times.

One of the things on Addilyn's summer list is practicing riding bike without training wheels.  We haven't been as diligent with learning this skill as we could have hoped but we went out and gave it a try.

Albert enjoyed watching from the sidelines. 

The boys were racing (sort of, not really).  If they're both paying attention and into it, there's not much hope for Elias seeing as his wheels are so much littler.  Luckily, Asher is easily distracted and a little skittish when it comes to bumps and turns.

While we were out riding bikes, the UPS man brought us a box of books.  Grandma B sent Addilyn a box of Junie B. Jones books.  They are her first chapter books.  She was pretty excited and jumped right in.  So far, she enjoying them thoroughly.  How did she get so big?!

Old Camera, New Camera

At the beginning of the summer, our friends gave us their old camera.  It is awesome and so much better than our current camera.  Since then, we have reveled in having much better picture quality.  The only thing we really use our old camera for is for videos (because it's the only video camera we have) and for outings that we don't feel up to taking the good camera, namely the beach where we don't want to worry about sand and biking to the zoo, etc.  Thanks, Butler's for the extravagant gift.  You are awesome (and missed so much)!

So here is what was left on our old camera.  I don't know how old this picture is.  There are books on those shelves and Elias has hair so it has to be OLD.  The boys were playing with all the LEGO sets. 

Do you remember when it was a thing to say, "Oh, gag me with a spoon." No? Well, me neither. 

This is from our trip to Milwaukee.  We had to get rid of some gas so Tyler could take the fuel tank off and fix the seal so we decided to cross something off the ole' Chicago bucket list.  It was rainy and a bit cold that day and the kids weren't super excited to back in the van after a very short trial at a playground.  It ended up being a fun day with a stop at a very interesting mall (which we drove under) and a tour of Milwaukee (which turned out to be unique and somewhat interesting). 

All dressed up and ready to go out for our anniversary dinner.  We went to Kiki's Bistro on the northside of downtown.  It's a French restaurant and the entire experience was incredible.  The food was phenomenal, the ambiance was quiet and intimate, and they brought us a special dessert just because it was our anniversary.  On the whole it was a capstone Chicago eating experience.

This is the best picture we have of all our children together.  I don't know why but we still haven't gotten a better one of all four of them.  We also still don't have a picture of all six of us.  Welcome to the family, Albert; we'll document your addition to our numbers eventually.

The Zoo

Last week we went to the zoo.  We saw the giraffes.

The Lincoln Park Zoo is a free zoo. It's just a few blocks from Albert's doctor's office so while Albert and I went to an appointment, the rest of the family headed on to the zoo.  Here they were monkeying around outside the gorilla cage.

Then we went inside and saw the gorillas some more.

Addilyn took this picture of the male gorilla.

Everybody checking out the kangaroos.  The weather was absolutely gorgeous and it was a perfect day to wander around the zoo.

Our own wildlife.

Our biking limousine.  Tyler biked 3 of the 4 kids to the zoo by himself and this was his set up.  It worked really well and looked awesome!

The Beach

On Monday, we went to the beach.

We've been to the beach a couple of times but mostly as an afterthought during one of our bike rides.  This was the first time we went with our sole intention being to play at the beach.

It was pretty fun.

It was the perfect day to go too. Monday was warm enough to be able to enjoy swimming (the rest of the week wouldn't have been) but not so hot as last week when it would have been miserable to be out in the sun.

Jumping over the waves.

Making a sandcastle.

Daddy and Asher buried in the sand.

Addilyn buried in the sand.

Elias flying through the air.

Albert wasn't really thrilled with getting wet.  We got his legs wet a bit but I think the lake water was just too cold for it to be fun for him.  Instead he enjoyed chewing on Daddy's hair.

And hanging out with Mommy.  All in all, our afternoon at the beach was a smashing success.  Who would have thought that we've lived here 4 years and never had a beach day before?  That's one more thing to officially check off our Chicago bucket list.  Woohoo!