We have had a whirlwind of driving to various things lately, all in Illinois. Not that I mind, though, because we have a nice vehicle that gets pretty darn good gas mileage (actually, the Mazda gets the best, but it hates me right now for not keeping up on necessary maintenance... so it stays within an hour-and-a-half drive of home). Anyways, the weekend of the 13th-14th of August was the first IL weekend. Skip unfortunately had to work, so P and I were on our own.** We rode down to LaSalle with Steph and Mike for Jes's baby shower. It was nice visiting with the Hackers on the way down, and seeing everyone at the shower. I am so excited for Jes and Charlie and to meet that little one when he/she decides to make his/her entrance!
After the shower, Preston and I transferred our stuff and rode into Chicago with Shay and Lindsay. A couple hours and some nasty weather/traffic later, we arrived at our hotel downtown and met Sarah and Andy and the girls. Preston and I weren't up for going out to dinner, so we just hung at the hotel while the Harrisons went out. We all pretty much crashed really early that night, especially since Sarah had to get up at the crack of dawn Sunday morning for the Rock & Roll Half Marathon she was running. She woke me up to say bye at about 5:30 that morning, then Andy and me and the kids got up and moving around 7. We had a nice breakfast at the hotel, then walked down to Grant Park to meet Sarah at the finish line. She finished in about 2 1/2 hours, which she was very proud of! We were proud of her, too! We hung around the hotel for a little while before heading to Union Station to catch our train home (thanks, Linds for keeping the car seat overnight!). Preston absolutely LOVED the "choo choo," that is, until we both totally fell asleep. Something about the chugging of a train just lulls you to sleep... (Thanks to Sarah and Lilly Weseloh for picking us up from the train station in MKE!)
This past weekend, Skip and I dropped Preston off in Racine to spend some time with Mannings, while we went down to Morton for my friend Rusty's wedding. It was great to get a chance to catch up with a great friend and some other folks from my band days at Augie! I am so happy for Rusty and his new family. After Morton, Skip and I decided we would come back up north via Chicago, which ended up totally sucking in terms of weather. I don't have issues driving on Chicago expressways, but thunder, lightning and torrential rain don't make for much fun. So we stopped for lunch (and respite!) at The Parthenon. It was super quick, but as always, a wonderful meal! The weather had stopped by the time we got back in the car, so it took us no time to get back up to Sturtevant (to get Scotch from Meshenkys) and Racine. Preston and Mannings had a wonderful visit together!! We pretty much took it easy for the rest of the weekend...
As for this coming weekend, P and I are back down to IL, and Skip is back to work :(. My uncle Steve and aunt Jill will be in CL, so we're going down there for a quick visit. Hopefully we'll get a chance to see the Dwyers as well, as it's been too long since we've visited! We'll be back up in WI by Saturday evening, and plan to hit up a cookout with our good Knightwind friends Roger and Kathy, then maybe do some house stuff. We had some informal "estimates" from Skip's buddy Nikolai on what we can do to our upstairs, so it looks like we're going to get the ball rolling on that sooner rather than later! How exciting!
** A little disclaimer, here, in case you are thinking to yourself after reading through my posts: "gee, Skip seems to work a lot and is never around..." Not true. Not at all. Our schedule is totally weird and atypical, I'll give you that much. It's not one that many people could handle, and to be honest, it's not what either of us prefer at the moment either. However, we do what we have to do. I work over 40 hours per week, and only get nights and weekends off. The only thing is that it's constant and predictable. On the other hand, Skip works an average of 60 hours every two weeks, occasionally more or less depending on his on-call hours at the ER or when he's on the ambulance. So technically, he's home more often than I am! On days after Skip's shifts (which are typically from 7pm - 7am), Preston will be at the babysitter so Skip can sleep. Otherwise, Skip is a part-time stay-at-home-dad, which is wonderful. The only problem is that weekends are free game for him to work, which means that a lot of the time I'm on my own with Preston on the weekends. It sucks, because Skip does miss out on some fun times with friends and family, but we're doing what we have to do right now. Skip absolutely loves his job, so there's no changing it for now. We will handle what comes to us as it happens!