"Hmmm," I thought. "Good question." I started mentally considering our summer calendar and realized how quickly it was filling up. After consulting with my mom, we settled on the last weekend in July for a visit. As we were driving from the Interstate to Evanston it became clear that Daniel thought we were heading straight for the beach. He was not at all pleased to learn that this was to be our Saturday morning activity. And he let that be known. Loudly. At the end of a four hour drive during which he slept for about 25 minutes. Not our finest travel moment.
Luckily, he was easily distracted upon arrival and spent the next two hours along with Edward bouncing from one zone to the next, as if every time he started playing with something he suddenly remembered something even cooler and abandoned the current activity in favor of the newly-remembered one. Not to worry, because the abandoned would soon switch places with the newly-remembered and on and on all afternoon.
Since the boys are early risers, we ended up arriving at the beach by about 8:45 a.m. (it doesn't open with lifeguards until 10:30 a.m.! My mom said that as she was enjoying the morning breeze and watching the boys play she was thinking to herself, "I wonder why it's not more crowded on such a beautiful day?" Then she remembered it was not yet even 10 a.m.!) The water was calm and shallow and warm enough for the boys to just jump right in. The rest of us were more comfortable wading up to our knees.
My Dad saw a school of fish and held the boys still long enough to see them without scaring them away.
And of course, self burial is an essential part of beach going.
This is what you look like after about an hour of submerging yourself in sand. We ended up leaving just after the lifeguards arrived at 10:30, but not before the boys stood at the foot of the lifeguard chair, mouths agape in pure awe/admiration of the mighty guard. They also wanted to help dig the sand into a pile at the foot of the chair to cushion the jump down, but we persuaded them that they'd just be in the way.
The other item on Daniel's wish list for the weekend was riding the subway. We've ridden the "el" a few times, but have never gone all the way downtown to go underground. This was the time. Aunt Nora met us upon our return from the beach (and may have been scarred by the discovery that I'd stripped the boys and wrapped them in towels for the drive home. They still lack even a modicum of modesty so when the towels fell off while dashing from the car to the hose, they did not hesitate for a moment, leaving two naked boys dancing around my parents back yard.)
After lunch, the five of us headed for the train with PopPop's advice to "sit in the front car so you can see it going down into the tunnel.
The ride from the suburbs downtown was a bit longer than they'd bargained for with too many stops for Daniel's taste. Leave it to Aunt Nora to turn it into a game though--she soon had the boys counting down with each stop, how many more until we go in the tunnel. It was all so dramatic!
Once downtown we came up to see the skyscrapers, walk over the drawbridge over the Chicago River, stop in the very middle (on the crack!) and admire the boats.
We kept walking another few blocks in search of ice cream before the return trip. We found a frozen yogurt place and decided it would have to do. The boys were pleased with the "serve yourself" set up. The adults were less than enamored of the chemically taste of the fake ice cream. But it was a good stop since the trip home was just as long and without the eager anticipation of the subway tunnel (though we did sit in the front again so we could watch the climb out into the light.) We said good-bye to Aunt Nora at her Addison stop and continued on.
No time for naps amid all this excitement, which led to some truly exhausted boys. We left them in excellent grandparental care for dinner and bedtime and took advantage of the opportunity for a dinner/movie date.
In anticipation of our arrival, my mom unearthed a huge tub of Lego that had belonged to my brothers, and Nora brought back a box of random pieces my mom once sent her for one of her students. Thank goodness professional ethics prevented her from giving them away because her box contained several pieces vital to the building of Edward's long-desired fire station. Luckily there were several sets of building instructions, including one for a fire station. He wanted it built immediately and had no patience for the need to sort through thousands of pieces in search of the ones needed. He contented himself with a few small structures and vehicles, but once we got it all back to Iowa it was time to get serious.
Hundreds of TINY pieces were scavenged and within 24 hours of our return he had the beginning of the structure--enough room to park two of his existing trucks. Over the next several days we did lots more hunting and sorting (Daniel was quite exasperated with us on several occasions.) When we went to Target for Edward's kindergarten school supplies, we also picked up some organizing bins, which ultimately led to this taming of the chaos.
Now we're waiting for him to be inspired to build his own creations. Also holding our breath a bit to see if he'll modify his Lego wish list or if he still thinks he needs the 2011 version of the fire/rescue station. Could cause a bit of a "debt ceiling" issue for Santa.
