Giant City State Park

We had a couple goals for Memorial day weekend; get out of the city, experience quiet, and enjoy some sun...we did manage to accomplish the first and last goal. We headed down to southern Illinois ending up about 6 hours from Chicago near Carbondale, and found a nice campground on a lake...only to find out that our neighbors were living at the campground for a month and found it necessary to run a generator and radio. So with quiet being out of the question we decided to go for the sun. The first day we did a little hiking and found some trees to climb and great rocks to boulder on.

On our second day we set off on a beautiful 12 mile hike. The woods were awesome as well as tick infested...yuck yuck yuck!

All in all we had a great time and would go back in a heart beat.

I'm flying out for Montana in the morning and Jason is going to join me next week for Ronan! We're very excited to see our families as well as some Mountains. Maybe we'll get quietness afterall!

Hotdogs, coffee, & US Cellular

US Cellular field is only a couple blocks from our place and on game nights we hear the homerun fireworks. So staying loyal to our neighborhood...at least for one game...we bought tickets to see the Sox beat the pirates. We ended up with really good seats, the sixth row off the grass. It was a low scoring game, but we had just as much fun watching fans as players.

Italy in a day

Today after morning meeting we ventured to a new Costco, and were surprised to find that the Leaning Tower of Pisa was on our way! It's in Niles, IL and was built as a replica of the tower in Pisa, Italy. It is about 70 feet shorter and only leans 7 feet versus 15. We thought it was pretty cool none the less. It's amazing the places we've been able to see without leaving the city!



We strapped on our rollerblades and headed out for some exercise the other night. We headed along the marina and found a neat trail through a little nature preserve/bird sanctuary where we were threatened by adult geese protecting their gosling. Sounded very similar to a hissing snake!

May Flowers

After surviving our fair share of April showers we are finally seeing the benefit. Tulips and daffodils are everywhere, green grass is showing and the water has returned to the city's many fountains. I took advantage of our nice weather today for a bike ride along the lake. Unfortunately, Jason is once again in finals week so he wasn't able to join me. He has been very busy studying and has one exam down, only four to go! After this week he will officially be in his 3rd year of Optometry school!

Melissa and I in front of the Buckingham fountain.

Millennium Park

Jason's friend Patrick stopped by for a short visit a few weeks ago. We really enjoyed seeing him and wished he could have stayed longer!