We had Grandma Z and Grandpa Z come visit us from May 27- June 5. They stayed at our home for a couple days, and then we all drove to Chicago for the rest of their visit. We had a great time together!!
They arrived after bedtime on Tuesday evening. Everyone exchanged cards, gifts and hugs.
The next morning, the boys played with the grandparents while Jeremy and I went to work. They went to the new Spam Museum and then a restaurant for lunch.
At bedtime, Grandma tried telling a story about when she went to a house in the woods, but Tanner caught on pretty quickly that it was the story of Goldilocks and the three bears. Also, both evenings after the boys went to bed, Jeremy read parts of his autobiography to Mom and Dad. We loved hearing the way he writes about his experiences. Lots of laughs. I can’t wait until he gets it all finished.
On Thursday morning, we all went to the new nature center.
It was a beautiful day outside!
After that, I dropped the clan off downtown, where they shopped at Salvation Army and ate at another restaurant for lunch. Later, I met up with them at Sweet Reads bookstore. That evening, Jeremy took the clan down to the creek across the street from our house where they went fishing while I made dinner.
Grandpa helped Dallin catch his very first fish EVER!
That evening, we roasted marshmallows over the fire in the backyard. We only had mini marshmallows, so that was a bit tricky, but still fun to roast and eat.
Dallin tried to help blow the fire.
He made the funniest faces taking deep breathes!
Chilling with the family like this was one of my favorite parts of the week!
The boys were talking about batteries, and Grandma told them she has a battery in her body! So she showed them where her pace maker is for her heart. It blew their minds quite a bit.
It was such a beautiful evening!
On Friday morning, we took the Z-parents to the Hormel Historic Home for their very first time. They seemed to really enjoy it, and the boys had fun pretending to be butlers in the tea nook.
Cooking in the kitchen and passing off the food to the server.
Bringing in the cake.
This is a working Victrola record player.
Can you tell that my kids and I love this home?!
I love the sitting room upstairs.
Tanner and Dallin did the scavenger hunt throughout the home, and they got a SPAM bank as a prize!
After seeing the home, I took them to Tendermaid Burgers, which is also a historic site and famous for their loose beef burgers that are steamed!
Then we stopped by the “green park” before heading home.
That evening, we packed up and drove to Chicago! This made it our fifth trip there!
Here is the packing list I gave the boys. They did an awesome job reading the list and checking off what they packed. Tanner even folded all the clothes and laid them in the suitcase so neatly, it looked like a grown-up had done it!
The drive to Chicago went well. The Z-parents joined us in our car, and we fit pretty nicely. We played some road trip games, read chapters out of Stewart Little to the boys, ate at a crappy restaurant in Wisconsin, and finally got to Uncle Doran and Dianne’s house at 11:30 pm. On Saturday morning, Dianne had a wonderful breakfast for us! Then we headed out to the Museum of Science and Industry.
We got to watch a system of robots make a toy for us!
It was a spinning top!
Grandma liked it so much, she decided to get her own toy from the robots.
Her toy didn’t pass the inspection test. So the assembly line started another one for her. In the end, she ended up getting two tops!
There was a cool exhibit about math in nature, including this amazing mirror maze that we all get mixed around in several times. It was super cool!
Can you find me? I’m actually staring straight into the mirror, but you can’t see me head on because of the mirror’s angle.
Grandpa carried Dallin and Tanner on his shoulders a bunch.
Grandma created something in the creation station.
We ate lunch at the museum cafeteria which was super yummy with lots of options. We lasted at the museum until about 4:00pm, then we were tired, especially since we were watching an exhibit about sleep.
The rotunda is really cool and really tall. I decided to lay down in the middle of the floor and take a picture of the ceiling…
And a picture of me on the floor under the ceiling.
I love the energy and scenery while you stand in the rotunda and hear all the excitement from the exhibits. Unfortunately, Tanner had a hard time with the storm exhibit behind me. It was noisy, scary, and there were a lot of lights and commotion. He was begging us to leave the exhibit most of the time we were in there. We all tried keeping him focused on the cool things in front of us, but finally, I decided to give up on learning more for myself in that exhibit and I took him away to a quieter location. I was able to get him some ear plugs in hopes that it would help in the next exhibit, but that didn’t last very long because Tanner didn’t like the way they felt and I couldn’t get them to stay in his ears. We waited for the others to finish up with the storm exhibiti, and he hated that. He was very concerned about Grandma and Grandpa getting lost from us. Luckily, once we all moved on to the next exhibit together, he was much happier.
That evening, we joined up with Doran & Dianne, Spencer & Tessa for deep dish pizza! I didn’t get any pictures though, bummer! We had a great visit and enjoyed the yummy food.
The next morning, we went to church in Doran’s ward for sacrament meeting. Then we headed to the free zoo at Lincoln Park. We had a really good time there, even though it was hot. Here’s Tanner and Grandpa in the Lion House.
Monkey House
Outside of the zoo.
Playing in the backyard with Gramz before dinner.
That evening we had a wonderful Sunday dinner at Doran and Diane’s house with Spencer, Tessa, Doran, Diane, Gramz and Grampz and…Brian and Callie Hill and their kids!! It was awesome to catch up with them again. The best part was that all of our kids had a great time playing together!
I don’t want to jinx anything, but every time that we get together, these two kiddos hit it off really well! They are only one week apart in age. I think it’s especially fun to see them get along so well since we only see each other about once a year.
For my own enjoyment… 😉 ….Here is a flash back at some fun pics with these two littles…
year 2011- four months old
year 2013- two years old
year 2014- three years old
year 2015- four years old
year 2016- five years old
And NOW!!!
They chased each other all around, not wanting to say goodbye.
Sorry, Tanner, you cannot go home with the Hills. Get back in the house!
On Monday, June 2, we began the day with a yummy breakfast at Wildberry Pancakes Cafe.
YUMMMMM
Then we walked across the street to see THE BEAN!! We’ve only seen the bean one other time, so I was really excited to see it again!! Everyone seemed to really enjoy it. Between this and the mirror maze, we had some pretty psychedelic experiences in Chicago!
Can you find me with my turquoise phone?
Can you find me now? I’m in about 6 different places.
Don’t get squished!
We’re just about to leave…
Oh wait, there’s more reflections to discover!
This is what they are looking at!
After we pulled ourselves away from the bean, we walked to Maggie Daley Park.
The park had awesome views and awesome playgrounds.
Tanner had a lot of fun at the playgrounds that were more removed from the crowds. When we were at the big one with a huge bridge and lots of noise, I noticed him getting disregulated. I tried a few things to help him calm down, trying to avoid complete sesnory overload for him. There was a strong breeze, and I could tell he was cold, but he refused to put a jacket on. He was really impatient, and I figured out he needed to go potty, so we went potty. After that, he seemed to find some solace by sitting with me for little bits at a time and just watching the other kids. Then when he was ready to go back into the chaos, he would kind of forget that he was upset, and he’d join Dallin or someone. Before his diagnosis, I would get all annoyed with him about not playing with everyone while we are here at the park to play. This time, I tried to respect and understand his needs and accept that sitting and watching other kids was just as good of a way to enjoy the park as anything else.
We even did 18 holes of put-put golf as a family at the park! Dallin and Tanner had some pretty interesting coping strategies (or lack thereof) for getting their ball into the holes. Tanner would get really upset and quit pretty easily with a very dramatic exit. Dallin would keep hitting and trying again and again, we practically had to pry him away from each hole. Haha, my two boys. So different!
Then it was time to end our amazing trip. We walked back to our car and gave hugs.
We dropped the Z-parents off at a bus tour, and headed on the freeway home. The boys were really upset about saying goodbye to their grandma and grandpa.
We stopped by A&W Rootbeer on the way home to help the boys be happy.
We had a ton of fun with Grandma Z and Grandpa Z! Thank you for coming to our home, playing with the boys so much, and going on a Chicago adventure with us!! It was epic!
