Their first graduation

May 15-16

I’m playing catch up on the blog, so I’ve forgotten what we did on May 14th.


This weekend was big. We went to Steve’s sister’s graduation from Bradley College in Peoria. The kids were great in the car. It’s funny how many parents rely on DVD players and video games for longer trips in the car. I guess there’s nothing wrong with them, it’s just that you miss out on so many things that you can’t do otherwise like take in the scenery, talk with each other for longer periods of time, learn so many things like mileage, geography and so much more.
We picked up Shara at her apartment and went out to lunch at a local restaurant. They still have a hard time sitting still for long, especially after sitting in the car for such a long time. It’s amazing that they don’t like to eat that much. We had pizza and the whole time they wanted us to feed them ice out of our glasses.


After lunch we checked out Shara’s apartment. They have a basketball net that sticks on the wall and Jared loved shooting baskets while Alexa wrestle with her granddaddy. There were these chairs that were sort of like hammocks that the kids kept calling their dinosaur eggs. They’d pretend to hatch out of the eggs.

Then we went to the hotel and everyone jumped in the pool. We all had a really great time. I usually don’t like going in pools, one because I can’t really swim, and two because I hate cold water. I was so relieve the water wasn’t that cold. I think this was the first time the kids were in a pool. We did go to a few water parks last year, but the just waded near the shallow part. Jared actually tried to swim while we held on to him. It makes me think we could try swim lessons some time.

After swimming, we ate at Culvers, came back to the hotel, read for a while and then tried to get the kids to sleep. We had saved points through our bank so we were able to get a $180 room for $30. It was with a suite so we could go out in the living area with everyone while the kids sleep. Well, of course the kids had a hard time settling down with everyone in the next room, so I slept by them for a while, wound of falling asleep myself and missed out!

The next morning Steve's brother and three girls came to our room for a while and the kids had a ball playing, jumping on the bed, and sounding like ten kids instead of just five. We then drove to the graduation. It was a loooooooong graduation. After an hour of speeches, calling the names took two and a half hours! We were seated very high in the stadium, so my fear of heights were really put to the test when we had to keep climbing up and down the stairs with the kids. They'd play with their cousins in the seats for a while, then want to go downstairs, only to want to go back up within ten minutes of climbing down the stairs.

Well, we finally made it to the restaurant where Shara works. We had to wait quite a while to get seated and then wait about an hour for our food to arrive, which at that point the kids were not going to sit still anymore, so we shoved down our fillet minon as fast as we could and tried to keep Jared from crawling over the railings and them both from running around the restaurant.

After taking pictures outside, we headed home. On the way home we ate at Cracker Barrel. The kids are in a big soup faze, so they ate really well. They had a little peg game Alexa liked. And Jared amused himself for a long time picking the paint and wood off of the railing. We checked out the store and headed for home.