Exploring the Arboretum

Our dear friend, Heidi, kindly gave us a temporary membership pass to the Arboretum. She gets her membership through work and is allowed to share the guest passes with us. This is totally cool because we can go anytime we want without having to be with a member.

I presented our little pass to the welcome window lady yesterday afternoon and breezed on in. The Arboretum is a fun place to go with little kids. They have an entire section set up for toddlers, preschoolers and elementary kids to explore, hands on. Here are some fun shots from our day.

Call me "Crazy"

Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard with the exercise on Saturday. Here's how it went down: First I went to the gym in the morning. I wasn't going to do much, but I got on the treadmill by the windows that look out over a cluster of trees and some open fields. When I do this, I tend to loose myself in my thoughts way more than if I choose to use the machines that overlook the entire gym and face the televisions. With that said, I programed my machine to do a 35 minute run. Well, I was feeling so good that ten minutes into my run I decided it would be fun to do sprints and hills. So I proceeded to do two minutes on/ two minutes off sprints and hills for 14 minutes. When I finished, I had run a total of 4.2 miles. Then I did some ab work and left the gym.

When I got home I had precious little time to shower, dress and pack up the stroller and day bag for a day in the city with our friends Ana and Kristina. We picked them up and made it to the train by 11:30 a.m. Just in time to park and get our kids and stuff onto the station platform.

We arrived in the city just before 1 p.m. We knew we had exactly three and a half hours to do whatever we wanted before we had to be at Kellogg to meet up with my hubby, who was to drive us home.

We set off for Navy Pier from the train station--an almost two mile walk. It was a beautiful day, a little cloudy, but warm enough to be comfortable doing all this walking. We arrived at the pier, had some snacks, took a few pictures and headed for the beach. We had only about an hour and a half left at this point.

The babies loved being in the sand. C found all kinds of treasures and really seemed to enjoy watching the birds dive in and out of the water. I brought along her shovel and star sand toy so she would have something to play with. I'm glad I did because this allowed me some respite from all the insane exercise I got that day. We sat on a blanket and played in the sand for quite some time.

After some time we felt a few rain drops which prompted me to look at my watch. Sure enough we only had about 35 minutes to get to the school. We put the kiddos back in the strollers and headed up the lakeside walkway to the Chicago St. underpass. This would have been perfect except that the underpass was filled with about three feet of water. There was no way we could take the strollers in there--nor would I want to. So we had to turn around and walk all the way back to the beach to use the Navy Pier underpass several blocks down. This little mishap took up 20 minutes of our time so we had to move fast. We got to the school with five minutes to spare. Phew. We were pretty tired by this point. But all was well because we found C's daddy and he took us home.

Later I went to one of my favorite websites http://www.mapmyrun.com/ and mapped out our trip all the way from Union Station to Navy Pier to the beach, down the walkway (and back), then to Kellogg Business School on Superior St. All in all it was 4.1 miles. So there you have it...a little over 8 miles for me that day. And wouldn't you know it, I went walking with a friend this morning and am headed to the gym in a few hours yet today. I guess I am a glutton for punishment. I should have listened to my mom years ago. She always said, "No pain. No pain." I kind of like a little pain. It lets me know I'm really living.

Do Ducks add Value to a Home?

A few weeks ago we saw a nice Mallard duck couple shopping for real estate. Usually they could be found hanging out in the back yard behind the shed. But one day when I was emptying the flower boxes out front to prepare them for new spring flowers, I noticed a hole to the left of the front door. I didn't think much of it at the time. In fact, I thought that I somehow created the hole by dumping some dead flowers there just before winter hit last year.

Apparently I was innocent of the dumping because last week we realized that the hole was in fact a nest for the female's eggs. Most days you can spot the female Mallard sitting on her nest. But when she is away, you can clearly see six large eggs in the nest just outside our front door.

We were just wondering if it is a good sign that this family decided to choose our home to care for their unhatched babies? I do hope it adds some value to our property as we are trying to sell it.