Our trip to Chicago....

So I guess I should put up a post on our trip to Chicago, well Gurnee actually. First of all let me just say my sister is awesome, she made a huge sacrifice letting our family of FOUR stay in her 1, that's right ONE bedroom apartment. It's actually a nice sized one bedroom but there were six of us in it, got kinda cramped but we survived and the kids did too :) Kim and Tyler then went over the top and offered us their room so that the kids had a place to sleep behind a closed door and didn't have to sleep in the living room, her and Tyler would take the blow up mattress in the living room, awwwee so nice of them! J took the walk in closet in the master bedroom which worked out nicely and he actually kind of liked it in there and E took the floor in the master bedroom with us.

The trip up was long, longer than it should normally take, but we left later than planned and hit Chicago at rush hour. So it was stop and go, and creep and go and lots of construction for a long time until Gurnee. It seemed like we paid a million tolls and the roads still sucked! The kids did great in the car, better than I thought but movies helped. Once we hit Chicago and were stuck in traffic and they got hungry that is when it got harder but they survived and we stopped at a Mc-Y-D's that was in the weirdest place I have ever seen a McDonalds, in the middle of a high way, smack dab in the center it was weird and cool and we were greatful it was there! The trip back home we took a different route and it was so much shorter less construction and out of the Chicago area so we got home faster which was nice.

The first day we lazed around played too much X box and had fun sucking it up doing that :) okay I sucked it up! But E loved it and liked watching us play. We hit the pool the next day and had fun in the sun. We didn't actually go to Chicago since Gurnee is like 40 minutes north of Chicago and we did NOT want to go through that construction again, it was not fun! So another time we'll go down town Chicago. We did a local fair near Gurnee and got rained on lots but it was still fun. Then we went to the beach, lake Michigan which looks like the Ocean it's so big! But it's COLD! That was fun to visit the lake and it ended up being a nice day for it. The kids had a ton of fun collecting rocks and sand for Grandma Celia and Grandpa George. E built a sand castle with Auntie Kim and J just loved being in the nice weather near water and surrounded by a ton of "ocks" or rocks, he LOVES rocks!

So our last fun thing on Tyler's Day off we did the Six Flags thing and I'm bumbed I forgot to take a picture of all of us out in front, oh well. We had a ton of fun, it was nice to be able to be so close to the park so we could walk, the only down side our feet hurt so bad by the end of the day that the walk home seemed to take forever! We went in the morning and did the trade off thing, they did the Adult rides and we took the kids to the kiddy land and they had SO much fun. J laughed almost the whole time on their first ride, it was so cute! He screamed and cried when I had to take him off but then he got over it when he realized there were more to go on. Then we met up with Kim and Tyler and switched they took them on one more ride and the home for lunch and nap while C and I did a couple of big kid rides. Two is all we got through, poor C got sick after the second. He gets motion sick on rides and swings etc. so I wasn't terribly surprised he got sick, but only after two, oh well. He said they were both fun, but at the end of the second one I looked over and I knew by looking at him he was done. The one ride we did that scared the *@$% out of me was called Maximum Valocity or some thing like that. It was CRAZY I tell you! It is a big U shaped ride with one side that cork screws a little but that is not the scary part the scary part is that it shoots you up the cork screw side going 55+ miles an hour only to yank you back up the other side at the same speed then again up the other side and back and then jerk you to a stop at the top, all while your feet are hanging! I have never screamed that loud on any ride I've ever been, I don't think I've ever screamed that loud ever in my life! I tried to stop but I couldn't, it just kept coming out and C laughed at me, of course. My throat hurt so bad after, but it was a rush and it was fun after I got off :) C loved it and when he got off he said he felt a little uneasy but was okay for another ride, little did he know.....We went on the Batman one where your feet hang next and it was fun but a little to twisty turny for C and that is why he got sick. We headed home to eat some lunch and nap then back to the park. We finished off the day at the water park which was fun I wished we had a whole day at the water park, the kids loved it. C then left with the kids and me, Kim and Tyler stayed to do a couple more rides. It was a fun day I'm glad we got the chance to go to a big theme park. I think that is C's last time doing big rides, he's getting OLD :) If it weren't for his motion sickness I'm sure he'd be back on that crazy Velocity ride if he could. Any way I got some pictures from our trip, well these are just of Six flags but I'll put up more later. Thanks Kim and Tyler for letting us invade your newly married lives for a few days E still talks about her Aunt Kim and Uncle Tyler and how she wants to see them again, she loves you!

Look how cute they are laughing on the lady bug coaster. This was the first one they went on, J was not happy to get off.

E said this one was her favorite because she could control how high it went and she liked it all the way up!

At the water park. E did this slide a ton of times she love it and was so proud of herself for doing it all by herself.

The kids were a little cold by the end of the day but they had a blast!

Okay I told Kim I was going to put this picture up, it cracks me up! This is Kim after the superman ride when she peed her pants, ha ha! I'm kidding. She peed her pants before the ride, she got so scare watching all the people on the ride screaming out of fear.

Okay I'm totally kidding, we did the superman ride after the water park (which it was actually the coolest one I think because you are strapped in laying face down it is a cool way to go on a roller coaster) so her bathing suit was still "leaking" and we joked with her the whole time that it looks like she is peeing her pants out of fright and the people around us thought it was pretty funny so we had to take a picture! Love you Kim :) I told you I'd put this one on here, Sorry!
Thanks again for the fun weekend!