Last week marked our annual whirlwind trip back to the Chicagoland area to visit friends and family. Allison and I employed the same travel strategy as we did last year it seemed to work well. I get 13 hours of peace and quiet driving to Chicago while Allison handles two toddlers on a plane for 2 hours. Which would you choose?
That said, we have become pretty adept at managing toddler idiosyncrasies while traveling by plane. Delia has now inherited her brothers backpack (leash) while John Grayson can now be thoroughly entertained by DVD's of Dinosaurs while consuming many treats that he wouldn't usually get at home.
Once we got to Naperville, JGray could not have been more excited to see his cousin Jacob. In addition to telling Jacob about all the things that he is going to teach him about, he also got to help him eat! He definitely felt like a big boy here!
On Monday morning we headed down to Naperville's annual Memorial Day parade. Note that this is us walking across town to get to our parade spots. Although not depicted in this picture, note us not checking the weather forecast as we walked across town. 
We had all kinds of fun waiting for the parade and when the parade started the kids could not be more excited. We saw police cars and firetrucks and the Naperville Municipal Band. While this was going on we noticed dark clouds rolling in (note the lady in the back of the picture below did look at the weather forecast). After about 15 minutes of parading the police along the route announced the parade was canceled and soon after we had a downpour. We managed to make it to a shelter in the Riverwalk where we got cozy with a bunch of other folks and half the of the St. Raphael marching band waiting for the storm to blow over.
On Tuesday we headed over to the DuPage Children's museum to play with Robbie Weiss. I guess in my head I thought when we would go to the children's museum with others that the kids would all generally play in the same area ... not so. Below is the closest that we had to all of the kids in one area as each one of them had their own agenda and Nicki, Allison and I had to chase them everywhere. Luckily we also planned lunch together so we had some time to catch up and hear some exciting news :)
On Thursday we headed down to the Brookfield Zoo, this time about 20 degrees cooler than our visit last year, so much more enjoyable. Both the kids loved seeing all the animals and making their sounds. Although when you ask Delia to make any animal sound it sounds like a panting dog.... something to work on.
I have to confess, when I saw this picture below I wondered why we sat Delia in front of a big pile of poo, but on further inspection this was a big bronze statue of walrus that she liked... my bad.
No trip to the Brookfield Zoo is complete without a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. John Grayson being the oldest got to pick the animal he wanted to ride. I don't know if I would have gone with riding a snake, but it was the adventure he wanted to take on.
Delia on the other hand had no choice as she had to ride the animal next to the snake. She seemed pleased with her dolphin but as you can see it didn't seem to be moving nearly as fast as JGray's snake at this point.
As a special treat, John Grayson and Allison took the train back from the zoo to Naperville while Daddy and Delia drove home. This was JGray's first ride on a train and it more than exceeded his expectations. Not only did he get to ride the train, he was able to see many other trains and their conductors waived to him. He talked about this for days!!
Still enamored with his train riding experience, we went to the train restaurant the following day. Have you ever seen a bigger smile?! While I thought the concept of having a train bring you your food is novel at first, it absolutely never gets old to my boy.
No trip to Naperville is complete without a ride on the paddleboats downtown. JGray, Grandpa, and I took to the waters to paddle around the riverwalk. It ended up being Grandpa and Daddy paddling while JGray told us where to go. He very well could have a future in management.
Delia on the other hand, too young to ride the paddleboat, played on the lawn with Mommy. Allison and I found this ballerina skirt at a store earlier in the week and Delia loved dancing around it it. She probably would have worn it all week if we let her.
As always, we got to spend some good time with Great Grandma too. We made many attempts to get a picture with her and the kids, but our youngest was always trying to escape so this was the best we can do. Great Grandma loved watching the little ones run around. It is a really cool experience to see 4 generations interacting with each other, very special memories.
This is the trophy. And yes, that is a BOY gymnast!
Our sweaty little gymnast. He is soooo proud of himself!
