Troll Hunt

We loaded up the bikes on the new hitch/trailer for a Father's Day bike ride at the Morton Arboretum.  They were in the final days of setting up the Troll Hunt exhibit which has 7 giant troll scenes made from reclaimed wood.   I can't wait to go back to see the completed exhibit - like the car that is now being aimed at by the first troll!   Our bike ride was an hour in the shade to see 4 of the trolls and another 45 minutes up hill in the heat to see that last 3.   We actually missed a few that were too far off the bike trail and not marked yet, so we're looking forward to going back.

 

It's so much fun now that William can ride bikes with us.   We have a few more trails scoped out for future family bike rides.  And no surprise, after a morning of family bike riding, we had an afternoon of family napping!  My kind of day! (Side note:  William is covered with my Machu Picchu souvenir: an alpaca fleece blanket with alpacas and Peruvian designs on it.)

Baseball and Soccer

We were a two-sport family this spring with William playing both soccer and baseball.  Three sports if you count John's softball (which he didn't get to play for the first three weeks due to scheduling conflicts).    I thought soccer was fine. . . but I loved our first season of Little League.   This was William's third baseball year but the other two were park district coach pitch and machine pitch.  This year with the boys in 3rd/4th grades, it was all kid pitch.  

Both teams were generally school boundary based, but due to so many kids that play both sports, our school had boys on two teams for each sport.   In both cases, that meant half our team was Brookdale boys that knew each other and the other half were kids from a second school that knew each other.  

Our friend coached the soccer team, and I felt horrible for her.  I watched one practice and was so angry at the boys for being insolent.   It was complete chaos.   Games were better but they didn't play as a team very effectively, since it was very player centric instead of team centric.   And the most annoying kid had the most annoying (to me) mom!  LOL.  Nonetheless, William enjoyed the season, and since he asked to play, I'm glad he got the chance.

The chaos of soccer was in complete contrast to our baseball team.   The boys' coach took no nonsense from them - or us - and I loved it!  Her twins are 4th graders, so she coached this team last year, too, and the boys knew her.   She spent just as much time teaching them field etiquette and good sportsmanship as how to pitch and field.  You can just feel the passion she feels for raising strong ballplayers and good humans.  I'm already sad that we won't have her next year since her boys age up.

 First game!

 Last practice was a slip 'n slide ballfield!

The last game was SO HOT!  

We didn't mind the boys spending some dugout time saving caterpillars.

 Playing catcher his last inning

  Team celebrations (before the ice cream party)!

Deloitte Impact Day

I joined in Deloitte's 18th annual "Impact Day," where all of our people have the opportunity to volunteer in our communities on the second Friday in June.   This year I joined a team at a local homeless shelter.  We had groups that served lunch in the soup kitchen, cleaned recently vacated housing, and organized the household donations warehouse.  I spent the day in the warehouse.  Part of the day was organizing/moving the best clothing for the guests to "shop" through the next week.  Most of my time was organizing household good donations for "starter kits," that will furnish the outside housing where guests leaving the shelter are placed.

9th Birthday and 17th Anniversary

My baby boy is already 9 years old!  We celebrated in April by getting him his new bike.  And we celebrated a week early when Grandma Joni and Uncle Ryan were in town by having cookie cake and getting their gifts.   On his birthday, I stayed home to volunteer at the school field day.   That evening we went to the fancy movie theater to watch SOLO/eat dinner.  And finally after all of that, we ate ice cream at home at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday night school night!  Oh well, there were only 3 days of school left!

 

And I've been married for 17 years!   On the last day of school, William had an evening birthday party to attend, so we snuck off to Morton's for a delicious anniversary dinner!   The most memorable part of the evening was how chatty my husband was about the week's events!  I loved it!

 

 

Memorial Day Weekend

We spent part of the hot, sunny Memorial Day weekend at the pool.  And the rest of was spent car shopping.   I love the pool!  I hate car shopping!  Luckily, our city has most of the car dealerships all within 2 blocks of each other and within 5 minutes of our house.  So we just worked our way up the street to test drive the three SUVs that I was considering.   I ended up driving 4 cars over 2 days and then bought my first ever brand new vehicle.  

Bye  bye Audi A4

I loved driving my little A4 for the past 6 years.  I loved the fact that it was a compact car for parking and maneuvering.   But it was too small too many times for "stuff" that I wanted to haul.  That day in April when we drove William's new big bike home from the bike shop with its trunk flapping open and drizzle starting put me firmly in the buy an SUV camp!  

But since this is my car to drive every day, I didn't want it to be too big.  We were very surprised at how much we loved the BMW X3, so it made the decision easy!   Our perfect combination of car and SUV.   And we also bought a bike rack that fits on the hitch so we can haul all three bikes for trail riding!  Family fun starts this summer!

Peru - The Amazon

The last part of our trip was three nights/four days in the Amazon Rainforest.   We flew from Cusco to Puerto Maldonado which is a tiny, developing town, on the Madre de Dios River, a tributary of the Amazon River.   From the airport, we were taken in a van to the "port" - more like a dock - to load in our motorized canoe for the 30 minute ride down river to the Inkaterra Reserva Amazonica eco-lodge. 

While I knew there were periods of the day where there would be no electricity (3:30-5:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m.-4:30 a.m.), I was spoiled after the free wifi in all of our hotels during the week and it came as a shock to hear on the van ride that we would have no cell reception or wifi once we left the airport area.   Cue panicked text messages to all of the grandparents at home with the kids that we were going off the grid for four days.   I was also disappointed to know I couldn't keep my inbox cleared out.   The grandkids were all fine without us; my inbox and its 450 messages when I got online Friday night was less amazing.

Cabana #9 was our home.  I was initially confused why we weren't issued room keys upon our check in.  Well....because the doors didn't have locks.  The cabana was one big, screened-in room.  One-third was the living room complete with chairs and hammocks.  Behind that was a bi-fold screen that closed off the sleeping area for privacy.  And in the middle of the sleeping area was a king size bed complete with mosquito nets.   Behind the sleeping area was a vanity flanked on one side by a tiled in shower and the other with a toilet room.

 

The view out the front room was the river (and other cabanas).  The view out the shower was the Koudele's cabana!  That made for lots of good jokes as we could clearly keep tabs on each other without cell phones. . . ."Are the Koudeles at lunch?  No; they're sitting on their porch watching a movie on their laptop."  "No, John isn't ready, he's standing at the sink shaving." 

 

Since there was literally no where to go and nothing non-resort related to do, they do provide a number of complimentary excursions into the rainforest.   Most were 8-11 a.m. or 2-5 p.m.   We did several but the most amazing was Hacienda Concepcion where we saw 50+ monkey in the trees.  We also did a jungle walk around the property where saw a sloth that was in the very, very top of a high tree.  And we did a canopy walk on another morning where we climbed stairs 100 feet in the air before working our way across a maze of six suspension bridges and then back down 100 feet of stairs. 

 Our guide Michel on our orientation walk telling us not to touch anything!

 Sloth!

 Rubber tree

 On top of the first platform before we did the canopy walk

 Guess who went first?

 I went second.  This is Keith coming behind me.

 Above the trees

 Monkeys!

 Lagoon tour complete with brown water, more monkey, and asthmatic birds

 

This stop was a once-in-a-lifetime and glad I did it but don't need to do it again adventure.   I loved having an excuse to go to bed at 10 p.m. each night.  And I loved napping and reading in the hammock.  But next time I think I'll do that somewhere without giant mosquitos, fire ants and 100% humidity!   Besides the monkeys, our favorite was a paid excursion for just the four of us to a private island for a bonfire, star-gazing and drinks/snacks. We felt like we we had won the Survivor Reward Challenge!  It was an amazing way to end the trip!