The Party!

This weekend was the Garage-Mahal party and quite a busy weekend it was. It started with the Toppenberg family meeting us at church at 9.15am on Saturday - which was quite a feat seeing as it is a 2 hour drive from their house to Bay City, they have 4 & 6 yr old boys and just got back from 5 months living in Germany on Tuesday to a mould-ridden basement requiring hygiene people and air testing and commercial cleaning people etc etc. Very cool that they showed to visit us!! Home for lunch and an afternoon visit in the park during which I stayed home with Cooper and he (thankfully - in hind-sight) slept for 3 hours! After they left the next group of guests began arriving and we had Pumpkin Soup (with curry) and/or Tomato-Balsamic soup and NZ cheese-straws followed by coffee which seemed to be continually brewing until about midnight. Cooper was infatuated by Shelly so poor Nana Finch was ditched for stories and tours of the house with her (I think he was impressed by husband Gordon's trucks and tractors we told him about that are just like in his books!) . Beds and sleeping spaces were allocated and by 1am we were settled in for the night. It was fun to have a full-house and to make use of all the rooms and space we have! Up early at 6.15am to text messages from Andre to say he was on his way for 8am F1 motor-racing on the big screen and by 7am Jamie was enthusiastically headed downstairs to make eggs and vege-bacon for the guys whilst I got dressed/organised for the big day ahead before the wee man awoke. Cooper was very excited about the race cars on the big screen before coming to join us downstairs for more Shelly-time (thanks, Shelly I got a lot done!). The overnight guests were helpful in getting things together for lunchtime BBQ-ing (thanks Kat for cookies, Grant for buying ice & bread-rolls/buns & putting the towels in the washing machine (you can come back ANYTIME!), Rick for fire-starting, BBQ-ing & general co-ordination and lots of appreciation to everyone for complying with my requests to have the new area looking neat and tidy for the rest of the day's visitor tours!!). It was great to see Cheryl and Craig and their gorgeous children (see pics) and thank you for looking after/playing with Cooper a lot of the time you were here! (Also to Ellen & Amy for watching Cooper along with Bella when there was lots going on). We had quite a cooler day than we have had recently so it was a good excuse to get the new fireplace going and to turn on the lights on the fence and in the trees. Anyway, without further ado, here are the pics.......

21 month pic with Pooh Bear

Here we are for the 3 monthly picture with Pooh! Compare with earlier pics...Just born and 3 months!!

A tricky balancing act whilst eating breakfast

Playing house in a box in the garage

Chicago

Last weekend was a long weekend (holiday weekend for Labour Day) and we went to Chicago.
Chicago is about 5 1/2 hours from here so we left early Saturday morning and met Jamie's mom in time for Sabbath School (lots of children in Cooper's age group so that was fun) and church in Lansing, then had lunch with her and continued on. We can highly recommend the Westin Chicago River North - make sure you have a river not a city view - we requested a city view but on check-in the woman suggested we change as city views apparently look into other buildings rather than out across the city. Only issue was that we were on the 4th floor so had quite a lot of street noise - next time we would go for a much higher floor!After checking in we walked downtown and had a delicious dinner at an Italian restaurant a few blocks away. Again, another recommended stop if you are in Chicago en route to visiting us! Fine dining restaurants can be a bit of a challenge at times with a one-year old, especailly when there is a 30 minute wait to just get a table and it's already after his bed-time. But Cooper managed well - asking the waiter for "hunna-toast" (honey toast!). They did oblige, although I dont think they had a toaster there as the bread came out lightly fried in butter! Quite the treat ("ooooooooh ma-ma" was the comment made). Jamie had the Basil pesto pasta but was disappointed - but only in that 'we have that at home' and indeed it tasted exactly like the pesto pasta I made from the mountains of basil we have in the garden so I was quite flattered but that (I recently made it following the Tra vigne recipe!! - BTW have you seen the Tra vigne circle tour on their website? Very cool - for those who dont already know the connection, Rebecca & Jeremy had their USA wedding reception at this restaurant in California (and Jeremy used to work there once-upon-a-time) and we have the cookbook! It was also the inital inspiration for our back patio!). Anwyay, back to Chicago..... I had the spinach risotto - quite delicious (and Cooper ably assisted me in finishing it once he had finished his toast and a couple of olives)
Breakfast the next day was at Grand Lux Cafe which we can also recommend although don't go there if you have problems making selections from extensive menus! Quite the awesome surroundings as you can see from this pic from their website. We spent most of the next day wandering about downtown and down to the lake (it still seems funny to me that lakes have beaches looking exactly like you're a tthe sea but there is no saltiness!)

Later in the evening we walked down to Navy Pier which is quite the place with all sorts of entertainment and restaurants, boat cruises etc. Cooper's highlight was a ride in the "blue train" as seen below....

Monday morning before leaving it was great to see The Freihammer family - we try to catch up once a year if we can (see post from Feb 2005). This was my first experience at a Swedish restaurant (Ann Sather is the name of the restaurant - Jamie thought it a little odd to have meatballs served alongside his pancakes!). Then back to the Westin to thankfully locate Jamie's watch in amongst the bed-covers (luckily that although we had checked out a couple of hours earlier, they hadn't cleaned the room just yet!) and back home via Lansing for a swing in the park with Nana.