Estes Park

We just got back from Estes Park, CO for a Butler family reunion. It was beautiful and perfect weather while we were there and we had a lot of fun spending time together with all of Jared's siblings and their spouses. It was an adult-only reunion (except babies under 1 year) so we left Abbie and Leah at home with some friends and had a few days with just Porter. He was a great traveler, especially after we missed our flight coming home and had to spend a lot of unplanned time in the airport and on overbooked planes. It was a great vacation, otherwise, and I already miss that fresh, clean mountain air. Here we are on top of a mountain:

The beautiful view. We took a tram up and walked around the top for a while.

Jared swore that if you held a peanut up in the air, a bird would swoop down and take it right out of your hand. He stood like this for a couple minutes waiting for it to happen....pretty funny! I don't know if I'll believe it until I see it!

The chipmunks did eat the peanuts right out of your hand, though. Some of them had huge cheeks and were pretty chubby.

Porter hanging out with the men, waiting for the women to finish shopping in all the little touristy shops

I think someone was drinking a little too much tequila when they made this sign! We ate at this Mexican restaurant one night and it was pretty good (and no, we didn't drink any "tequela")!

Racing against a few family members on this huge slide at the fun park

And the winner is....ME!

We did lots of other fun things like hanging out in the hot tub at our cabin, staying up late singing songs to Grandpa's guitar, going to church together, eating out, shopping and chatting and driving around to see all the sights. We all had a great time without all our kids (we love them, really we do) but it was fun to spend time together without all the distractions and work that it takes to care for 22 kids under the age of 14. I say we do this every year!

Vacation in Mackinaw City

We just got back from celebrating our 10th anniversary up north in Mackinaw City, Michigan. We had a babysitter for the kids so it was great to have some alone time and to be able to eat when we wanted, sleep when we wanted, and just see all the sites without worrying about naps and tantrums. We have never visited northern Michigan and were impressed with the beautiful drive, huge bridge, quaint island, and pretty beaches. Here are a bunch of pictures from our trip...

We ate at a yummy Italian restaurant called Nonna Lisa's the first night, it was decorated cool and had pretty good food at affordable prices. I think the best part was being able to eat my food while it was still warm and not trying to force my kids to eat something or be quiet.

The next day we took the ferry to Mackinac Island, about a 20 min ride.

They don't allow any cars on the island so you have to walk, ride bikes, or take horse-drawn carriages everywhere.

There are also a million fudge shops (17 to be exact, as one employee told us) on the island and we stopped at several and got free samples. At one place they told us that during the busiest time of the summer, all the shops combined sell almost 10,000 lbs of fudge a DAY! This place was pretty cool since they show you how they make it right on the marble slabs. It smelled so good and tasted pretty good too!

We walked up the hill to Fort Mackinac

This was the awesome view from on top of the hill

We walked for about a mile through a pretty forest to see Arch Rock, which was beautiful.

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Then walked a mile in the other direction to get to the Grand Hotel, where they filmed "Somewhere in Time", that early 1900's movie with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.

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Here they had beautiful landscaped gardens and tulips and it was pretty fancy. We didn't stay at this hotel since it costs almost half as much as our monthly rent for just one night!

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Riding the ferry back to the mainland with the Mackinac Bridge in the distance, which is almost 5 miles long! It had rained while we were on the island and had just started to clear up as we rode back on the ferry so it was pretty cold in the wind!

We then found a little public park to eat some lunch and enjoy some hot chocolate while walking on the beach and enjoying the view. Notice the kids in swimming suits behind me. It was only in the 50's with lots of wind and they were swimming, crazy!

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The nice view, both the lake and bridge and Jared:)

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Walking hand in hand on the beach, ahhhh!

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I finally got brave enough to take my shoes off and go in the water a little. It was a nice feeling, warm sand on my toes. Makes me miss the warm sunny beaches of southern CA! (I lived there for a while when I was younger and we have visited my Dad a couple times in San Diego)

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The beautiful sunset on Lake Michigan. It was freezing cold that night too, our car said low 40's after the sun went down! Next time we go, we're waiting until July or Aug!

The hotel we stayed at was right on Lake Huron
And we had a jacuzzi in our room, which came in very handy since it was much colder than we expected most of the time.

The view from our room in the morning

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It was an awesome vacation and I'd recommend it to anyone who hasn't ever been there, if you live near Michigan. Just go later in the summer, it should be much warmer, I hear. Oh, and if you're confused if it's Mackinaw, Mackinac, or Michilimackinac, join the club. There were signs everywhere that said different things and so we finally asked and were told that the mainland, the southern Michigan side is spelled Mackinaw, the island goes by Mackinac (but the c is silent so they still pronouce it with -aw), and Michilimackinac is the original Indian name for the area. The Upper Peninsula of Michigan (UP) uses Mackinac, which we did spend about an hour at after driving over the Mackinac bridge, which separates Lake Michigan on the west and Lake Huron on the east. For a visual image, go here: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Mackinaw+City&state=MI . Anyway, that's your geography lesson for the day!

I'm back!

We just got back from a trip to Washington State to visit Jared's sister and family and had the best time. Here's some pictures of the kids playing together and some places we went. Overall the flight was fine, we had a few meltdowns but made it back in one piece and now we're glad to be home!

We don't have a piano so the kids had a lot of fun with this new toy!

Playing with their cousin Hailey
Visiting a corn maze and pumpkin patch

Sitting on the "cowch"
How the kids spent a lot of their time
Visiting the Space Needle...

And Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle

All of us before a night out on the town!

Thanks, Josh and Susan, for a wonderful time. We can't wait to see you again!

My kind of town, Chicago is...

We finally made it back to Chicago! It's been four years since we've been there (for Jared's certification exams) and we've been wanting to go back ever since. For those of you who don't know, we lived in Chicago for six months back in 2002 when Jared went to Northwestern for his Orthotic schooling. We had the time of our lives living there right on Lake Shore Drive and visiting museums, eating out at all the great restaurants, and just enjoying big city life. Then we moved to Michigan to do a residency and had kids and just haven't made it back. Well, we finally got the chance with a work-related conference and so I lined up some great babysitters for the girls and we took off for three days! Here's Jared visiting his old stomping grounds. Do you think he planned to wear that?

The Wrigley Building across from our hotel. Isn't the city beautiful at night? We walked up and down the Magnificent Mile a couple times going to different places and it was fun to remember all our favorite stores and restaurants. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner one night and Ghiradelli's for ice cream another night. We walked up to the Hancock Tower on Michigan Ave, over to Northwestern University and Navy Pier, down along the lake front, and back in along the Chicago River the first night.

I was really there, see? I wasn't just dreaming!

The next day I walked around for hours south of the river and came across this by the Art Museum. It's called the Bean and reflects the buildings and skyline and was just really different and cool. It wasn't there back in 2002, I'm pretty sure I would remember it!

I also did an Architectural boat tour which was really cool. I learned more things about all these skyscrapers in 90 min than I learned from 6 months wandering around and reading two guide books before. This was the one thing that I really wanted to do this trip because I didn't take the time to do it back then.

Here we are eating at our favorite restaurant, Giordano's Pizza, which lived up to the expectations we had built up in our minds the past four years. We could eat this everyday (we used to almost once a week) but good thing we don't now! I don't know what we're laughing at but doesn't that pizza look heavenly?

This was the first time we've been away from both kids overnight and I was a little nervous about how they would do but they (and the babysitter) did great, everyone survived and was alive when we got back. It was nice to not have to worry about the kid's schedules and all their stuff (strollers, diapers, clothes, food, tantrums in public, etc.) for just a few days and to visit some of our favorite places.

We did good representing UM while we were there, notice Jared's shirt and hat. And I had a UM umbrella which came in handy since it rained all day Friday and Saturday. It didn't put a damper on our mood, though, because we were in Chicago, baby, without the babies! It doesn't get much better than that!