Millennium Park - Chicago

As you can see by the posting below we spent a week in Chicago with Ryan(who was there on business). The last day in Chicago we checked out of the hotel and had about 3 hours to wait for dad before we headed to the airport. One of the activities that Dalby loved was to people watch at the Millenium Park fountain. This fountain(if you can call it that) is really cool. It is two large rectangular towers that face each other and display videos of faces. These faces stay on the towers for a few minutes and then switch. On the towers are spouts that spew water. The water spewing is timed with the video and the faces put there lips in a position that looks like they are spitting the water. At the time of the spitting of the water the kids running in the couple of inches of water go nuts. It is such fun to see all of the kids and on a hot summer day the fountain is packed! I had not let Dalby out because I was afraid of all of the kids running around and how hard the ground was......well we were watching all of the kids on the other side of one of the towers and I saw a little boy crawling in the water. He seemed to be having a blast. I thought - who cares if the one year old is in her diaper. I have a few changes of clothes for the plane ride and her blanket if I need to dry her off. She would have a blast playing in the water.....I am so glad that she got a chance to play in the water.

A picture of the fountain from the end where we were taking a dip. The other tower has the same face on it......we stayed behind the faces because it was a lot less crowded.

Maybe the picture will better explain then the words above.....

My kind of town....again

Two weeks ago we were fortunate enough to fly from Kansas to Chicago to hang out with Dad for the week. We had a nice time walking around Chicago, it was hot but pretty. Also, one of Ryan's co-workers and his wife have memberships to several museums, which were close to our hotel. So we got to go to Shedd Aquarium and the Art Institute. The passes were great! Our time in the museums is limited so not having to pay the entrance fees made it so much more relaxing because I knew we could always come back later in the day if we wanted to......

Sitting by Lake Michigan near the aquarium...just relaxing and people watching.

Kicking it at the aquarium...


Standard sleeping picture mom always finds funny......

Kansas Trip

A few weekends ago we flew to Kansas for Grandpa Dalby's family reunion. It was a fun time and look forward to the next one in three years. The reunion was at a campground near Leavenworth where Great Grandma lives. So we got to stay at Great Grandma's house. These pictures are from her house.

Helping Grandma Dalby pack
This chair is like my white chair at home....
Great Grandpa Dalby made for two stools like this one, one for each son....

ABC....

Just happened to catch a dancing baby....she usually doesn't dance this long....maybe she was performing for the camera:)

Fangs

We have been working hard lately at getting two new teeth. The two teeth happen to make it look like Dalby has fangs.

Not so thrilled with mom trying to catch me smiling.

Ok so I will give you a funny face!

Now we can see the fangs.....

Daddy's Little Helper

One of Dalby's favorite places to be is outside. Her first word is in fact "Bye". She will go to the back door and say "Bye, Bye, Bye" to go outside. She loves riding in her stroller because it usually means a trip outside. If anyone is going outside you better be ready to take her with you. She loves to watch outside activities too. Including her dad grilling and mowing the lawn. We haven't figured out a good way to watch dad mow the backyard so she usually just supervises the mowing of the front lawn. Often times Dad stops his mowing to wave and check into make sure he is doing his job correctly.

Cleaning up

After all that birthday fun there was a lot of cleaning up to do - mainly several baths. I was cleaning up the high chair and kitchen after one of the cupcakes and heard a lot of laughing from the bathroom. Dad and daughter were having some fun!

Ymmmmm - Birthday Cupcake!

Ryan and I fed her a "practice" cupcake a few days before her birthday so the last two pictures are from her "practice" round.

Birthday Presents

How cool is this......I can rip this paper and not have to worry about getting in trouble....and even more neat is there is something inside for me to play with too!!!!! But I kind of think the ribbon, paper, bag and tags are soooooo much fun! It took forever to get the first present open, especially because you will notice that there was a dancing break:)

Birthday Fiesta

All dressed and ready to go eat some birthday dinner. We walked down to the little Mexican restaurant at the end of our street. The waiters tried to bring a kid's sombrero and sing to her, however the only part that didn't scare her was the whipped cream on top of the flan:)

Happy Birthday!

I promise to get some birthday pictures up on our blog. For now our friends Courtney and Clinton have helped us with that task. We had a nice birthday Sunday and yesterday. Sunday we went with some friends to eat Mexican and then came back to the house for cupcakes and ice cream. Then yesterday we went swimming and to lunch with our neighbors and then got to go to Courtney, Rodney and Clinton's house for dinner. It was a fun day. Check out some cute pictures on Clinton's blog: http://tennesseewilliams.blogspot.com/2008/07/happy-birthday-marin-dalby.html