Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Back Again...

What a crazy last couple of weeks!
 
I was in Chicago for a conference last week.  It was a conference that I had been looking forward to going to for the past 5 months, but with all of the travel I had been doing to Atlanta, I actually didn’t want to go anymore…but I did want to go…

I went back and forth; I talked to John; I weighed my options.  And in the end, I registered for the conference the Wednesday before it started.  I knew that I would miss so much if I ended up not going.  So on the Tuesday after Labor Day, I boarded a plane and headed to Chicago.
 
The weather was gorgeous and the city, what little I saw of it, was amazing.  The first day we got there I got to walk Michigan Ave. and see the Millennium Park and buy all the souvenirs for the family.  After an afternoon of walking around, we boarded up a bus and headed to the Shed Aquarium for a wonderful night of seeing large aquatic animals, eating good food and meeting some great people.
 
The next morning the conference officially kicked off and I went to a bunch of sessions and heard some great speakers.  That night we had dinner at the Field museum, and again, met some nice people (there were about 500 people in attendance).  The next day was more sessions and dinner at Union Station where Second City performed a custom performance for us.  The last day was a few more sessions and then a plane ride home.
 
Saturday Kylie went to gymnastics and then the whole family headed down to Athens for the first Bobcat game of the season.  It was also Colton’s first Bobcat game!  It’s sad, Kylie, Josh and even Ryan went to tons and tons of games as babies, but by the time Colton came around, I was done with walking babies around the stadium because they were unhappy sitting in the stands for hours.  So at the age of almost 20 months, we finally took Colton to his first game.  And he did pretty well!  His downfall is that he just has a short attention span.  So while he loved watching the band and watching the players, he had to keep moving…sitting on laps, then on the bench by himself, then standing, etc.  It was exhausting, but definitely not unbearable! 
 
Kylie, Josh and Ryan were awesome!  They watched the game with no problem and looked adorable in their OU clothes.  We all lasted the whole game and then finally got back to our house around 1:00 AM.
 
Sunday was church and then misc. stuff around the house.  John and Josh had their first football practice that evening, and I had plans to take the other kids to the grocery store and make enchiladas for a late dinner when everyone was back.  However, Colton did not help my plans by taking a super late nap!  So we didn’t finish up at the grocery store until 7:30 – not enough time to make the enchiladas and then the thought of having to clean them up was too much…I called John and told him to meet us at the new Mexican restaurant :)  We had a great dinner (Colton was a MESS of refried beans and salsa) and then got home and quickly got everyone to bed.
 
It was a great weekend and a great ending to my FINAL traveling for a long time!

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