THIS IS GOOD

A friend emailed me this. Had to share. I love this! Click to make larger!

Zoo Time

We have Zoo passes each year and Brandon has been dying to go to the zoo. It is a small zoo, but it is nice to walk around and see the animals, have a snow cone and play on the new playground. We escaped the house since Logan was staying off his feet that day and Barry was painting the garage door, front door and mowing.

Birthday Boys

This past weekend we celebrated the boys' birthdays. Brandon had a swimming party and then on Sunday evening we celebrated both birthdays with the grandparents. Hard to believe that I have a teenager now and Brandon is officially 10 on Thursday! Their birthday lists are the typical. Logan loves Game Stop and anything in it and Brandon is into these little Bakugan things that I don't quite understand. It is the latest fad, I guess. He talks about it constantly. Doesn't even watch the show, thank goodness, but he sure has learned a lot about them on the school bus from his friends!

Chicago Weekend

Barry and I headed up by train to the Credit Union of Illinois' Annual Convention at the Hilton Chicago on Michigan Avenue.He had some meetings throughout the days on Thursday, Fri, and Saturday. At night our job was to take his board of directors out for dinner (on the credit union's bill). It was their thank you for serving the Credit Union another year. They are all nice people and we spent the dinners just chatting and eating, of course. We went to The Chop House and Fogo De Chao's. Oh my.....these places were amazingly good. The Hilton was a very nice hotel and close to everything. Thursday afternoon I walked to the Shedd Aquarium. Friday I walked for HOURS! I wanted to find the Macy's on State Street and did that successfully and then walked to find the Grand Lux Cafe(yummy asian chicken salad!) to meet a friend. I had lunch with Karna, a high school friend and got to rest for a great lunch visit. Karna works at the Sears Tower so it is nice that I can have lunch with her now each Spring when we go up there for the convention. We ended up at Water Tower.I was so pooped that I took a cab back to the Hilton. I walked around the exhibit hall in the afternoons with Barry. They were all eager to give their speech to him on why his Credit Union needed their product. I was there to smile, shake hands, and of course, take all the free pens, paper, magnets, etc. that I knew the kids would LOVE.

I roamed around and took lots of pictures, too. It was a fun weekend...exhausting, but fun. It was nice getting a closer work at what Credit Unions do. It was interesting learning some new things at a couple of the meetings that I went to. I won't dread next year, but I look forward to it now.

The train back was interesting with a horrible passenger that we had to sit near. He got kicked off at Joliet, but it sure was the LONGEST ride until he was off. He was cursing, threatening passengers, calling people names (including my husband!). It was very bad. The conductor did apprehend the man and put him in holding or something after things got bad near us.

Thanks to the Grandparents at home who took care of the Schmidt Trio at home and also my friend, Elisa, who helped with Brandon!

What else is up?

We are just still crazy here. We do finally have a signed contract on the blue house! YEAH....finally last week, the guy who owns the house we would like to buy finally accepted our offer with a contingency. Persistence paid off. I think he thought that a ton of people would be lining up to buy his house...not. He just did not want a contingency that stated we had to sell our house first in order to buy his. Finally he accepted it. A couple would like to buy our house, too, and they have a house to sell. It had been sold and that fell through, so they are skeptical about making us an offer. So, they are trying to sell theirs now. SO, we'll see......

Easter Weekend

Been a little busy here, but here are the Easter pics. Anna was excited to wear the same dress as last year. It was the Chinese Dress from American Girl. Can't believe it is still long enough. Barry's sister and her family were up here for Easter so we got to see everyone on Saturday some and also Sunday. Sat. night we went to my Grandma's. The kids enjoyed the Egg Hunt outside on Easter Sunday after church.

Egg Hunt/Gotcha Day

After Brandon's soccer game today, we picked up Justin and we also had Nick with us and we headed to Anna's preschool for an Egg Hunt. This is the mother of all Egg Hunt's! Seriously. It was packed, but in the 5-7 year old range, very few kids were there, so Anna and Justin really got a TON of stuff. They were so cute running around stuffing their baskets. It really bugs me every year at an egg hunt that I am always by myself and they separate the kids. I can't be in 2 places at once, so I always have to stay with the littler ones. I didn't get very many pictures of Nick and Brandon, but I did try to run over real quick to catch a glimpse of their faces in all the excitement. After we dropped Nick back off at the soccer field we headed back to take Justin to the restaurant. We drove right by Nelson Park and had to stop and get pictures with the beautiful daffodils. I would love to take Brandon back when we has a different color shirt on, but I doubt he will be cooperative. Actually he is such a ham, that he probably would agree!

Happy Gotcha Day Guiping Girls!

 

 

 

 

Today marks the day we met our JIN YAN YI four years ago in Nanning, Guangxi in China! It was such a wonderful day! As wonderful as the day my sons were born to us. The journey to China was long and worth every minute it took to get there and the few months of waiting and paperwork. We met this scared little tiny 17 pound bundle of joy who was 13.5 months old. She quickly melted my heart and her daddy's, too. Barry and I will never forget being in that room with the 9 other families were were "giving birth" at the same time. Many babies were crying and it was quite a loud room on this Gotcha Day! My dad was videotaping the momentous occasion and it was really neat to have him in China with us. He shed a few tears that day, too.

Happy Gotcha day to the 9 other families that shared this special day in China with us on April 4, 2005. It has been so wonderful having all of you as "family".