father’s day

Five Fridays of Fun – Beautify the Neighborhood

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Initially, Evie was distinctly disappointed with our second Friday of Fun.

“It’s clean up time, it’s clean up time.”

Make your neighborhood a more beautiful place. Put on gloves and see if you can fill up the trash bag. Then, come inside and make a stepping stone that we can use to decorate.
Tip from the guy at Michaels: use slightly less water than directed & a hair-dryer can help it set if needed.

Compared to going to the zoo, I guess it was a little disappointing. She was definitely not jazzed about picking up trash. However, once we got going, we still had a lot of fun (even picking up trash!)


One advantage vs. going to the zoo is that we have something tangible to show for this one; a stepping stone. The kids were very excited to “stand on it”, but it had to dry for many days before that was possible.

The other thing tangible that we had was an enormous bag full of trash! We barely made it halfway down the alley before we filled our trash bag. The amount of trash around our house is absolutely astounding! Doesn’t anybody in Chicago put anything in the trash can?

Five Fridays of Fun – The Zoo

/ Shane / Leave a comment

This year for Father’s day, rather than get me one gift, Sara got me “Five Fridays of Fun”. Every Friday we would select a random box and open it, and it would give us materials and instructions on what to do for the day.

I had absolutely no idea what sorts of things were in these boxes, or even a ballpark estimate of what to expect. So on the first Friday of Fun we opened the box and saw:

The things in this box are a clue
as to what you might see and do.
Pack your lunch and bring it too
so you can enjoy a day at the…
…………(can you guess?)……….
…………………………………..ZOO!

I can’t remember exactly what was in the box, other than some animal crackers to take with us as a snack.

Evie in particular was very, very excited to open them up each week. Sometimes I was a little nervous, because I didn’t necessarily feel like embarking on some big adventure for the day. However, it always turned out great! It’s hard to explain, but here’s just something about having it all prepared with instructions that’s better than just thinking about it on your own. I would never just say, “Hey kids, lets just up and go to the zoo today.” It has to be a big thing that’s planned out in advance. But when the magic box says we have to go to the zoo, we go to the zoo. And then guess what? We have a great time! We probably should just up and do things like going to the zoo, and this was just the little nudge that we needed.

Also, it was a great gift because instead of just getting one thing, we had about a month and a half worth of enjoyment out of it. There was anticipation leading up to it, the actual doing of it, and then the retelling of everything to Sara later.

So for the rest of the week I will be presenting each of the Five Fridays of Fun, in the order we experienced them.

Father’s Day

/ Shane / 2 Comments

Evie composed a song for me, totally on her own. It went like this:

Happy Father’s Day to you!
That’s all the things that you do!
and I love you!

For the rest, I’ll let the pictures do the talking:


Father’s Day

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Well, another Father’s day came and went. The thing about Father’s day is that, by definition, it is not relaxing. Because, in order to participate in Father’s day, you must have had some kids somewhere along the way.

So the day was a little hectic, but we had a really good time nonetheless. Evie gave me a card in which she wrote “Daddy”, so that was pretty cool. It was so cute, Sara told me she had to redo it a second time because she made a mistake the first time and she didn’t want to give me the one with the mistake.

The best part about the day was the time we spent playing in the “zero-depth” reflecting pool that Sara discovered close to our house. Zero-depth means that the water is maybe an inch deep; when I stand in it the water doesn’t even cover my feet. Evie just loves it, and we got some great pictures.

This thing is so cool, and huge too! It looks awesome. It’s amazing that such a thing could exist so close to our place and you wouldn’t know about it.

It looks cool day...

...or night.

And I guess we weren’t the only ones who didn’t know it was there, because very few people came over while we were there. So we pretty much had the thing to ourselves. We ran and splashed, played hide and seek and pretended we were dinosaurs. Like I said, the best part of the day.

Our dinner plans included grilling some shrimp for pasta. However, when I opened the package to clean the shrimp, I found out the shrimp was already cooked! So, I saved myself all the time of cleaning, skewering, and grilling, but I was a little disappointed because I had been looking forward to it! Finally, we capped off the day with some strawberry rhubarb crisp from the strawberries and rhubarb we bought on Saturday at the farmer’s market. Heavenly! I’m glad Sara discovered she likes rhubarb, because it’s one of my favorites. Evie likes it too!

So anyway, that was father’s day. Thanks to the well wishers, hope everyone had as good of a day as I had!

Hand, Foot and Mouth

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Some friends came to visit over the weekend and, unfortunately, Evie wasn’t feeling very well. On Sunday, Evie woke up at 4:15 (Happy Father’s day!) and proceeded to have an absolute fit until maybe 6. It was a doozy and I was very embarrassed to have her behaving as such with company over. It’s one thing for us to wake up at 4:15, but quite another for the entire building to wake up then.

We soon realized she was sick with a cough, a runny nose and a slight fever. She’s pretty much always sick though, so we decided to proceed with our plans anyway. We hit up the Pirate Exhibit at the Field Museum…so maybe it was a successful Father’s Day after all! She had a good time at the museum, but on the way home she was clearly exhausted.

Sara had noticed that she had a rash on her hands and was a little suspicious, but later when Evie fell asleep and Sara took off her socks and shoes to get her into bed easier without waking her up, she confirmed her suspicions when she saw a rash on Evie’s feet. It was not surprising, therefore, when we noticed some sores on Evie’s tongue: she had hand, foot and mouth disease. I will save you from seeing some of the awful results that show up in an image search, but if you’re a glutton for punishment it is quite disgusting.

We confirmed with the doctor that there is really nothing we can do except ride out the virus. Our friends wisely ducked out once it became obvious that “irritability” and “tiredness” (which are more or less the same thing) were actual side effects, not just the idle threats.

So we had a couple of rough days, although she seems like she is on the mend now. She can’t bring her plague to daycare this week, so her grandparents are staying with her.

I feel really bad for her because she was probably as miserable as she has ever been in her short life. One of the things we did to help her feel better was allow her to watch a movie. Now keep in mind this is only the second time we’ve ever let her watch T.V. The first was an Elmo potty video. And you can tell she doesn’t see much T.V. because when the movie started and Tinkerbell came out and painted the Disney logo, Evie said, “That was great!” and jumped down from her seat and made to leave.

The height of movie technology

The height of movie technology

She enjoyed the movie, especially the songs, but she got bored before the end. One of the best parts for me is when she went over to our cat and said, “Nala, I’m watching a movie about you. You’re big now.”

(Note to grandparents, this does not mean she’s allowed to watch T.V. whenever!:) )

Another funny thing that happened this weekend, obviously we were taking her temperature a lot due to her illness and, as usual, she replicates what she sees. Therefore there was a very awkward moment for both Sara and I independently when she pretended to take our temperature…let’s just say we don’t take her temperature orally.

In completely other news, the other night I had a dream that I was in Wisconsin and I got a fine for not having a moustache.