Chicago

July 9-July15 we went on a family vacation with the Cole family in honor of Jess's graduation from high school. She chose Chicago as the destination. We travelled by Amtrak so that we would not need to bother with driving (or more importantly parking fees). We stayed in an absolutely beautiful condo that overlooked Grant Park. It was a 3 bedroom, 2 1/2 bath gem. Very comfortable. We centered the trip around the St. Louis Cardinals/Chicago Cubs baseball series that fell that weekend. It also happened to be Ryan's 30th birthday, so the trip could not have worked out with better timing.
It would take a long time for us to describe in detail all the awesome things we did that week but we'll sum up with the weeks itenerary:

Thursday: Arrived in afternoon--settled and got groceries; cooked dinner at the condo and Ryan and Shane went to see the Blue Man Group show. (We had been given two tickets from a friend of Grandma Pelhank.)

Friday: ESPN Zone to watch the 1st game of the series: Cards won 8-3; Navy Pier in the evening: saw the anchor from Grandpa Pelhank's Navy ship--the U.S.S. Chicago--took lots of pictures; ordered Giordano's Chicago-style pizza for dinner and played some poker.

Saturday: Shedd's Aquarium in the morning; Back to the condo for lunch and the Cards/Cubs day game--we lost 2-4; Took Brendan swimming in a big boy pool for the first time (some great pictures of that) and BBQ-ed dinner in the common area of the condo.

Sunday: Baseball Day/Happy 30th Birthday, Ryan! Went to Goose Island Brewery in Wrigleyville to watch the 1st game of the double-header: Cards lost 3-7; met up with our buddy Alex at the condo and went to Wrigley Field to watch game 2 in person: Cards WON! 4-2.

Monday: Sears Tower and shopped the Magnificent Mile.

Tuesday: Museum of Science and Industry where they had the Harry Potter Exhibit. That was "wicked!" Ate at Ed Debevic's. Ryan and Mandy went to see the midnight show of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

Wednesday: Ate breakfast at the Bongo Room and then departed for home.

Phew! It makes me tired just thinking of all that stuff we did. But we had so much fun! We hope you enjoy the pics.

Brendan's 1st Birthday Party

OK, so I'm a slacker. It's taken me way too long to put up these pictures, and this post. At any rate...Brendan's 1st birthday party (back on June 6th) was absolutely wonderful. It was a little warm that day but not anything like this miserable heat we've had recently. Just warm enough to heat the pool. We had an Under the Sea theme to go with his new swimming pool. The birthday boy was taking a nap when everyone arrived. At about 2 hours into the party everyone was threatening to wake him up! So we went in to check on him and he was just stirring from his long nap. He handled the surprise of all the people very well. He loved pool time with his cousin, Jaxon; eating cake for the first time; and all of the extremely generous gifts. Thank you to all of our family and friends who were able to attend. It was a wonderful time full of friends, family, food and fun.