A Day at Six Flags Great America in Chicago

Marc saw a deal on Twitter for tickets to Six Flags Great America for $15 each. So he decided to get them and begin looking into hotel prices. He then found a Fairfield Inn at $47 a night. He did all this on Wednesday. He decided that we should go this past weekend. We left Friday afternoon and went directly to bed. We spent all day, 10:00am-10:00pm at the park. We slept in on Sunday, hit an outlet mall on the way home, and got home Sunday night. We found the secret to getting the kids to sleep in, keep them at an amusement park for 12 hours the day before. ;)

Marc was very excited to go back to Six Flags. It has been 2 years since we have been there. Samantha got to experience her first amusement park ride. It was a ride on the Mystery Machine from Scooby-Doo in the kids area.Marc enjoyed seeing all of the characters. When he went to see Daffy Duck, Daffy took his hat and put it on his own head. Marc enjoyed that!Marc has really gotten into Scooby-Doo lately, so he was thrilled when we found Shaggy in the park!We were able to find a few rides that Samantha was able to go on. She did a couple in the kids area, the train ride, the carousel (her first one by the way) and the space needle.
She really enjoyed the carousel, but it was too long for her attention span. She got really wiggly about half-way through the ride.Both Marc and Samantha enjoyed the space needle ride. Marc had fun playing eye-spy and finding rides he had already been on. Samantha enjoyed sitting on the seat (somewhere other than her stroller) for awhile, and then got wiggly, again, so we let her stand up and look out the window.Marc wasn't tall enough to ride any of the roller coasters last year, but he is this year. We call him "our little thrill junkie" so we decided that we would try an old-fashion wooden roller coaster. It was called the Viper. Daddy Marc is not a huge fan of roller coaster and I enjoy them so I got to take little Marc on it. We stood in line for about 30 minutes. When we got into our "car" I got him buckled and the lap bar down. I sat with my arm around him, hugging him to my body to make sure he was safe and didn't go anywhere (I was being paranoid). We went down the 1st of about 9 hills, and I hear next to me "Mom, I don't like this!". All I could do was squeeze him tighter and talk to him as we were going the rest of the ride. I swear he told me about half-way through the ride that he was going to throw up. He says he didn't say that, but I swear he did. I will always remember his first ride on a roller coaster!After a full day of rides, food, and fun, we settled down to watch the evening show and following parade. They had about 5 of the characters and a bunch of singers/dancers singing some songs and all dancing around. It was at night so they had a bunch of cool colored lights lighting up the stage. After the show there was a parade. Again, since it was at night, each float had a character and lots of cool looking lights.
We arrived at the park when it opened at 10:00am and left the park when it closed at 10:00pm. We wiped the kids out!

Tonsils :(

When we went to Marc's 5-year well child appointment in November, our doctor told us that his tonsils were huge. She referred us to an ENT. Her name was Dr Eyed. I will NEVER refer anyone I know to her. She was rude, cold, and was not very child-friendly. She asked me some questions about Marc, like if he snored, if he has trouble swallowing. She asked m if he had any speech problems. I told her he was in speech class. She asked me what sounds he was working on, so I told her. She very rudely told me that those sounds had nothing to do with his tonsils. She said that she couldn't just take them out for no reason, there had to be be reason behind having them removed. She said the only option was to do a sleep study at the hospital and that we would not be allowed to stay with him. I cried, then called my primary doctor. We decided that that was going a little to the extreme, so we decided not to do the sleep study. My doctor told us to keep an eye on Marc and to watch for a few signs that might lead us to having him looked at again. She had us look out for recurring sickness, snoring, or signs of sleep apnea. After going on vacation with him in May/June, we discovered that he snores, ALOT! In June he kept clearing his throat all the time. When we asked him why he was doing that he said it felt like there was always something stuck in his throat. So, I made an appointment with our regular doctor to take a look at him again. We decided to have him see a ENT again. i told her that I would NOT go back to the same doctor again. She asked me if I knew of a ENT that we wanted to go to. We went to see Dr. Winkle (thanks for the referral Tracey!) on Friday. The whole office was great. All of the personnel were friendly to us all. Dr Winkle was nice. He was shocked at how big Marc's tonsils are! He asked if we had ever seen any signs of sleep apnea. We said no, but we aren't usually in the same room with him when he sleeps. He said that with tonsils that big, that he would be shocked if he was not having any apnea while he slept. So we decided to have his tonsils taken out. We are a little worried about having it done, but know that it is the best thing to be done.
He will be having them out on Monday, August 17th. Marc is looking forward to being able to eat a lot of ice cream, pudding, jello, and popsicles. We would appreciate any and all prayers that can be said! Thanks!

15-Months Old!!

We had Samantha's 15-month well child check-up on Friday. The doctor says she :looks great". She is THRILLED with Samantha's vocabulary. She was not concerned that she is not completely walking on her own yet. She said as long as we keep seeing progress, not to be worried. Here are her stats:
Height: 31 3/4 inches - 82nd percentile
Weight: 22 pounds 3 oz - 36th percentile

Masterpiece

I have discovered that having 2 kids makes it harder to do "messy things" with one of them. Marc gets kind of bent out of shape when we pay some special attention to Samantha and not him, so while he was napping I took advantage of the time and let Samantha make her first coloring picture.Here is her finished masterpiece!!Near the end of her coloring time, Marc woke up, so in the video you will see her watching something next to her...it is Marc.

Her masterpiece will be hung up with all of Marc's masterpieces! :)

Say Cheese!

Samantha was in a very smiley, photogenic mood this afternoon....so I took advantage of it! Here are a few cute pics. :)

Smiling for the camera.

Hello out there! Watching Mommy through the window.
Nice Teddy!

Reading her new book from Grandma.

Ham bone!!

My baby girl (well I guess toddler girl) is so darn cute! ;)

Meijer 75th Anniversary Company Picnic

Meijer has been around for 75 years so they decided that they would have a company picnic to celebrate. The one for the Grand Rapids area was on Saturday. It was very nice...and very free. :) They has about 12 midway-type games for Marc to play.....and one of the workers felt bad for Samantha so we let Sam play one of the games....and with every game, whether he "won" it or not, he got to pick out a prize. They were all Oriental Trading Company type prizes. But, like I told Marc, at least we didn't have to pay $5 for him to win each prize.There were about 8 bouncy things for him to play on. Here are a couple of pictures from them.There was a radio controlled car race track that had 6 cars on it.In addition to all of the "kids" activities, there were 2 Wii stations set up to play, bingo (with "real" prizes, some "games" for older kids (like basketball, golf, soccer, and baseball). They also provided hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad, cookies, and water for us. We spent about 2 hours there and had a great time...and didn't have to spend a dime! :)

First Steps!!

Yeeaa!!!! We were over at a friend's house this afternoon and Samantha took her first steps!! She took 2 steps, 2 different times, and 3 steps the last time. They are not very big steps...they are just baby steps! ;) I have a feely that when she becomes more comfortable with her balance, now that she has figured out that she can take steps, that we will be chasing her pretty soon. Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Marc!!

Every year for the now last 3 years, Marc has chosen his birthday lunch to be at a Mexican restaurant called Chevy's. We just happened to find one 3 years ago and now he wants it to be a birthday tradition. They have good food, but I think he goes there for the birthday sombreros they give you. I told him that the one he got this year is not staying in my house (I don't need 3 of them floating around the house). He will either take it to work or I will donate it to the preschool I teach at. After the wait staff got done singing to him we let the kids take turns wearing the hat.
Happy Birthday Marc!

Chicaho Trip: Day 3

Today we explored downtown Chicago. We went to the Hershey's Chocolate store. Inside the store we were able to pay to let Marc "run" the factory machine.After he cranked the wheel causing the lights to come on (picture above) he got to turn some other wheels and make all the candy dump out of the machine and into a bucket. The "factory supervisor" then put some of it on top of his hat.
He even got his own employee ID badge.After Marc got done being a factory worker, Samantha wanted to borrow his hat.Since Daddy helped Marc run the machine, he got a hat too.This is a picture of the candy he got in his bucket.We all had so much fun that I thought the kids needed a souvenir, that wouldn't disappear into our tummies, to remember how much fun we had. Since Marc loves cars, I found a Hershey's car for him....and a stuffed bear for Samantha.Enjoy the videos of Marc & Marc "making" candy. :)




After getting our chocolate fix, we headed over to Millenium Park. There was a corn maze that Marc lead the way out of.One of the biggest attractions in Millenium Park is a huge water fountain. There are 2 separate structures about 40 feet apart. There is continuous water flowing, so there is a couple of inches of standing water between the structures that kids like to play in. Every few minutes, water sprays out of the structures.We had a good last day in Chicago!

Chicago Trip: Day 2; Part II

After Legoland and some lunch, we headed to the Morton Aboretum. That place is HUGE! There is a Children's Garden as well as there "park area". The rest of the Aboretum is so big that we drove through it. They have all of the trees grouped a like and labeled to be read as you drive by. We drove through on the way out. We started in the Children's Garden (it closed the earliest).The first "activity" we found was a huge ball that sat in a base filled with water and Marc could help spin it around in the water.There was a huge rope "spider web" for the kids to climb across.There was a whole series of streams that connected together that kids could walk through, or as some did, swim in.There were about 4 tree houses that had crawling nets and a bunch of neat things for the kids to explore.There were old fashion pumps throughout the children's garden for the kids to pump and play with. Marc and Daddy had fun pumping the water and having water fights......and getting wet in the hot afternoon sun.There was a huge maze made from hedges that we had fun wandering through.Since there was some really pretty scenery, we decided to take advantage of some photo opportunities. Here are the best of the bunch.This place was absolutely beautiful! We were there on a sunny afternoon so sll the trees with the back drop of the sun was beautiful!