Day 4 – Tuesday, July 6, 2010

The first location on Tuesday’s agenda was the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower.  The Willis Tower is the tallest building in the western hemisphere.  It was called the Sears Tower until a year ago.  I still want to call it the Sears Tower, mostly because that’s the most popular and recognized name of the tower.

A relatively new feature of the Willis Tower Skydeck is The Ledge.  One side of the building’s skydeck has 4 sets of plexiglas boxes protrude out from the building.  You can stand on the ledges and find yourself essentially standing over 103 floors of air.  I didn’t experience The Ledge.  My sisters & mom did, though.

After we left the Willis Tower, we took a taxi down to Chinatown.  I’ve never been to NYC or anywhere with a Chinatown so I had no idea what to expect.  The ones that had were pretty disappointed.  They expected some good deals but over half of the shops were groceries and/or restaurants.  All I know is that it was HOT.  Some of the shops we went into weren’t even air conditioned.

Click here to view my photo album from Chicago.

My sister Shelby won a state competition (& a trip to nationals) for a high school club she is a member of.  The national competition/convention was in Chicago.  Mom, Lindsey, & I decided to go along and make it a girls’ vacation while we were at it.  We left Saturday July 3rd and came back Thursday July 8th.  We packed a lot of sight seeing (& heat) into the 4 full days we were there.  I’m going to do a blog entry for each day so I don’t have to pack several stories and a lot of photos into one entry.

Day 1 – Saturday, July 3, 2010

We got into town late afternoon (after having a slight airplane delay).  We checked into our hotel and decided to walk down to Millennium Park (which was only a couple of blocks from our hotel).  We saw Pritzker Pavilion and the Bean (actually called Cloud Gate).  Everyone had fun taking pictures of themselves in the Bean.

The one aggravation we had the entire trip revolved around paying for meals.  There were a total of 9 people in our party.  1 person was not paying for all 9 meals.  However, almost every restaurant we ventured into required us to submit one payment instead of the 6 splits we needed.  It became a math session for some of us to sit and calculate how much everyone’s meal, tax, & tip amounted to and then to try to come up with the right amount of cash (because no one dared put the whole thing on a debit or credit card).  Is it really so strange to want to pay for our own meals?  I’ve never encountered this problem at home.  (As a matter of fact, I went out to eat with my family last night.  We had 13 people and most of us paid separately.)

Click here to see the photo album from my trip to Chicago.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mother!  I love you!

I know we won’t be home to celebrate this day with you until this evening but I wanted to go ahead and post this as just a little reminder to you of how much I love you.

PS…Get ready for Saturday!  Lindsey, Shelby, Rachel, & I have a great day planned for you, Nana Pat, & Carol.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that rain is causing weekend plan problems right now.  It is after all April.  Rain just seems to be throwing kinks in the weekend plans constantly right now.  Yesterday was supposed to start with the Race for the Cure and then heading up to Missouri to Lindsey & Grayson’s to help with their flower beds.  Instead, we had pouring rain that lasted off and on all day.  We did end up going up to MO for supper so the day wasn’t a total loss but it is still disappointing, nonetheless.

Last weekend, the NASCAR Sprint Cup series was at Texas Motor Speedway.  The forecast was showing a small chance of rain all weekend.  Our hope was that 30-40% wasn’t going to hurt the race on Sunday.

We went down to DFW on Friday.  We stay in Frisco right next to IKEA and Dr Pepper Ballpark, which is home of the double-A Texas Rangers team the Frisco RoughRiders.  Our hotel room had a great view down into the ballpark.  It’s too bad they aren’t ever at home the weekend of the NASCAR race.

We spent Friday evening at my uncle’s house in Dallas.  It was a great visit with him & Rod and a great home cooked meal!  I took tons of pictures of their flowers & plants while I was there (of course).

On Saturday, we got up early and went to the Dallas Farmers Market.  We left there with several fresh vegetables & some berries.  We also left seeing all of the great flowers blooming and wishing we could go home and plant them all in our yards.  Saturday night, our group of 13 met at Babe’s Chicken House in Frisco for dinner.  For those unfamiliar with Babe’s, it is a restaurant where you pick your meat you want to eat (fried chicken, chicken strips, pot roast, chicken fried steak, etc) and then all of the vegetables are served family style.  (NWA Peeps:  Think Monte Ne Inn here in Rogers, except there are other meats to choose from besides fried chicken.)  This is our second year in a row to eat there.  It’s very good!

Sunday was race day (or at least it was supposed to be).  That 30-40% chance was pretty well 100% at the track.  We headed out there hoping the rain would stop and the track would get dry.  No such luck.  The race was postponed til Monday.  (Shelby, Mom, & I headed on home Monday so Shelby & I didn’t get to see the race.)

While we were at the track on Sunday, NASCAR 4-time champion Jimmie Johnson held a Q&A session at the Chevrolet stage.  The major topic of the questions was that he & his wife Chandra are expecting a baby girl in July.  His words…”I hope she comes during the off-weekend in mid-July.”

2009 was quite a year.  The most important and exciting thing that happened to me this year is that I bought my first home.  I’ve looked and talked and planned for several years.  The pieces all fell into place very quickly at the end of July for me to officially begin my search for a home.  The house I bought was the first one me & the realtor that assisted me looked at together.  Greg (my realtor & Lindsey’s father-in-law) found me the perfect house.

My other major purchase of 2009 was a Nikon D90 camera.  I’ve had fun playing with it this year.  Although, I haven’t ventured far from the automatic settings yet.  One of my goals for 2010 is to learn more about what all my camera can do.

Lindsey, Kelly, Hayley, & I saw the Paisley Party Tour stop in Tulsa in January.  It included Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley, & Darius Rucker.

My mom’s birthday in January marked the beginning of a very bad ice storm.  I don’t remember ever having weather like that.  The ice was crazy.

In March, Kelly & I went to San Antonio for a few days.  We saw a bit of a history at the Alamo, had dinner on the top of the world, and even visited the beach.

In April, we took our annual trip to Dallas/Fort Worth for some NASCAR.  While down there, we visited the Sixth Floor Museum & Dealey Plaza where JFK was assassinated.  Jeff Gordon finally won a race at Texas Motor Speedway.

Memorial Day weekend I traveled to Charlotte, NC to visit Penni and go to the NASCAR races that weekend.  It was a weekend full of rain but it was a great weekend of visiting old friends and meeting new ones.

In June, I went to a couple of concerts.  The first one was Casting Crowns at the Church at Pinnacle Hills.  The second one was Chuck Wicks at the Poultry Festival.  I got to meet Chuck in person twice (once by accident) that evening.  It was great!  He’s hilarious and very down-to-earth.

Lindsey, Shelby, & I made last minute plans to go to Junction, TX in July to our cousin Lacey’s wedding.  We made Mom come too.  We took our time going down to visit Mom’s brother (our uncle) Mark and also to visit Dublin for some wonderful Dr Pepper.

In the beginning of October, Shelby & I traveled to Dallas.  The University of Arkansas Razorbacks played the Texas A&M Aggies in the new Cowboys Stadium.  Shelby, our uncles Mark & Rod, and I went to the game.  It was an awesome game in an aswesome stadium.  I’m hoping we get to go again next year!

In mid-October, I traveled to Phoenix with a couple others in my department for an SAP conference.  Besides the conference, we took some time to do some sight-seeing.

The last trip I took in 2009 was with Shelby the first weekend of November.  We went back to Dallas/Fort Worth for the NASCAR race.

Here are the blog entries I wrote this year related to my year in review.

January 3, 2009 10:57 pm - The Nikon D90
January 4, 2009 5:54 pm - New Camera – Day 2
January 10, 2009 10:32 pm - New Baby
January 11, 2009 2:38 pm - The Red Coat
January 24, 2009 8:56 am - Tulsa Bound
January 26, 2009 6:40 pm - Family Tradition
January 28, 2009 1:34 pm - Be Still!
January 29, 2009 6:32 pm - Tulsa Time
January 29, 2009 8:27 pm - Ice Storm
February 1, 2009 12:02 pm - Ice Storm Aftermath
March 5, 2009 9:00 am - San Antonio Bound
March 6, 2009 9:25 pm - Where’s Dad When You Need Him?
March 7, 2009 8:31 am - 173 Years Later
March 14, 2009 3:03 pm - Life is like a box of chocolates
March 14, 2009 3:59 pm - A bit of history
March 15, 2009 6:38 pm - The San Antonio Zoo
March 15, 2009 6:57 pm - The Texas Beach
March 15, 2009 8:03 pm - Sea World
March 21, 2009 2:40 pm - Tower of the Americas
March 21, 2009 4:15 pm - San Antonio Re-Cap
April 18, 2009 4:05 pm - Who Dun It?
April 18, 2009 4:45 pm - He finally won
June 20, 2009 3:58 pm - Chuck Wicks Times 3
June 27, 2009 4:47 pm - Casting Crowns
August 9, 2009 4:58 pm - My New House
August 23, 2009 5:42 pm - My New House – Before
October 7, 2009 9:52 pm - Long Wait
November 6, 2009 3:32 pm - Shop a Little, Race a Little

As far as 2010, I don’t really have any plans for any major traveling.  I know we’ll go to both NASCAR races in Texas in April & November.  Other than that, this may be a year that I take it a bit easy as far as traveling goes.  I do need to catch up on here with some blog entries.  I really want to share what my house looks like now that I’ve gotten it painted and decorated.

We stayed at the Little Rock version of the famous Peabody Hotel (originally from Memphis).  We made sure to time our trip on Saturday so we could see the duck march.  (We also made sure to time our trip for a stop in Russellville on the way back to eat at Feltner’s Whatta-burger but I guess that’s another story)  The little honorary duck master was adorable, as were the kids waiting very patiently to see them.

Oh yeah…Arkansas played Troy on Saturday evening in Fayetteville (3 hours away).  Troy’s band stayed at the Peabody Friday evening & then went on to Fayetteville on Saturday.  Evidently, there weren’t any hotels large enough to hold them all available up anywhere closer to Fayetteville.  The duck master wished Troy luck but stopped short of cheering them on.  We were still in Arkansas after all!!!

After the musical, we grabbed some groceries and headed up to Lindsey’s place in Missouri.  Harley is the welcoming committee.

Mom & Lindsey spent Saturday evening and most of Sunday working on curtains.  They dyed some existing ones and also sewed some new ones.  The ones I saw completed looked very nice.  Good job!

Lindsey had me take my camera up there so I could get some pictures from around the farm.  On Sunday morning, we went driving around.  Here are some of my favorites from the day.

We even found some wild blackberries.

I like to joke with my mother about this “flower”.  At some point when I was younger, I said that this was one of my favorite flowers.  The sad part is is that this is the bloom from a thistle.  I grew up with them coming up in our fields and surely knew what it really was at that time.  I guess the weed annoyance didn’t cross my mind when I decided to share that opinion with my mom, though.  I love seeing thistle in the fields now so I can share my love for them with my mom.  I personally think she thinks they are very pretty too!

On Sunday, I cooked lunch.  The new Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market in the Rogers Pinnacle area has a great meat case.  I got some chicken and beef kabobs and cooked them on the stove top (because I had issues with the grill).  With them, I made some fresh corn on the cob.  Yum!

After lunch, mom & Lindsey finished up the curtain work and we headed back home.  Overall, it was a great girls’ weekend.  Thanks for letting us spend the night Lindsey!

I went to North Carolina Memorial Day weekend.  The weekend before that we all went up to Grayson & Lindsey’s place in Missouri.  Mom & Dad helped Lindsey plant some flowers.

Lindsey & Grayson have a female cat that has had more than one litter of kittens.  They still have a kitten left from the last litter.  It isn’t real friendly but it did let me get relatively close to it so I just shot several pictures in a row.

Shelby & I drove around the farm a little bit and I took some pictures.

We were sitting around the yard enjoying the nice day and I caught Dad whittling a stick.

I’m not really sure how this picture came to be.  I can pose Shelby but there’s no way we can pose Bo so it is cute that it worked out that we got them posing for the camera.

Speaking of Bo, isn’t he the cutest dog?  (He actually is full-grown and not just a puppy.  He’s a mix of something that makes him smaller than what you’d expect.)

Hayley is a longtime friend of Lindsey’s (and the daughter of a good friend of my mom’s).  She’s going to be getting married in late June.

Mom & Lindsey decided to host one of Hayley’s bridal showers.  Me, Shelby, and a couple of Hayley’s friends hosted it as well.  This a photo of Hayley & the hostesses (minus Jenna who had to attend another shower and wasn’t able to stay the whole time).

We had a lot of fun hosting the shower.  We decided to get fresh flowers to decorate the house with.  This was the centerpiece.  We went to the Fayetteville Farmer’s Market Saturday morning and got the snapdragons (tall flowers in back) and then actually found the gerbera daisies and spider mums at Sam’s Club.

It was fun incorporating Hayley’s wedding colors – pink & lime green – into the decorations and the food.  Electric green, although it looked pretty yellow on the M&M website, turned out to be the perfect green.

Instead of purchasing a cake or something like that, we used a recipe Pioneer Woman had shared a while back for cupcake bites.  The green “icing” on top wasn’t quite the color green we needed but it did the trick.  We thought they ended up looking pretty cute.

We used a wide variety of dishes to display the food.  My grandmother loaned us the dish above.  It is the pattern of dishes that her mother had.  I think they are very pretty and I’m glad Nana let us borrow it.

Even though it was drizzly outside, I think the shower went really well.  Hayley got several cute gifts, including this Razorback platter.

Here is Hayley with her grandmother and mother.

Here is Mom & Robin (Hayley’s mother).

Here is a slideshow of several of the photos I took before and during the shower.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom!  I love you!

I’d also like to wish all of my readers that are mothers or mothers-to-be a Happy Mother’s Day.