(Sorry this is so late. I thought I'd posted this last month!)
Ah, the great American road trip! Who hasn't taken one of
those during the infamous Summer Break? This year, I had the chance to go on a
road trip with Annika to visit family in the Chicago area. For us, this was a
big hairy deal as it isn't often just the two of us get to spend time together.
So, of course, there was the prerequisite planning for the
best way to get there. For Annika, one highlight was finding out it was legal
for her to ride in the front seat through three states.
For me, the best part was picking our music playlist. So I
chose about 30 CDs that I know my husband doesn't particularly like listening
to that I thoroughly enjoy. En route, Annika then got to choose which six went
into the CD player.
Dan and I have quite a CD collection which doesn't get used
much now that he has a small mp3 player. But me? I'm old-school. I have a
"dumb" phone and don't text. And I don't own any cool little musical
gadgets. I mean, I just finally got rid of my Sony Walkman about two years ago.
I still haven't gotten rid of all my cassettes yet. Fortunately my Swagger
Wagon (a term coined by Toyota in some of their ads for the Sienna mini-van)
still has a cassette player.
But I do love my tunes, and this was my chance to help
Annika become a renaissance kind of girl, well-rounded in her musical tastes.
(This comes after my successful campaign to help my "baby" brother
become a renaissance man which included holding doors open for me and being
able to correctly identify two singing cowboys!)
So, armed with our Pringles and Crystal Light To-Go packets,
Annika chose the discs as we began our eight-hour voyage. Now any of the
selections would have been fine with me. What's great is that Annika really had
no idea what any of them were. I mean, what nine-year-old has heard of Barry
Manilow? (I admit, when I was 17, I went to one of his concerts with my mom at
the University of Minnesota. I don't think there was a single guy in the
audience.)
Annika chose The Monkees, Songs that Got Us Through World
War II, Celine Dion, Nichole Nordeman,
Stacie Orrico, and Jake. So we covered pop from the 1960s, classic tunes
(like "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy") from the 1940s, adult contemporary
from the 90s and Christian Contemporary that was cool 10 years ago.
Well, Annika has a new favorite group--The Monkees. I'm kind
of hoping that since I got to her first she'll be more partial to my styles of
music than Dan's (which include a lot of "hair bands" from the 1980s
along with U2). So far, so good! (Alas, when we got to Celine, Annika deemed
the music "cheesy" and then asked what cheesy meant.)
The long drive to Chicago went quickly and was surprisingly
like taking a road trip with a friend. During our week-long stay, we stayed
with my aunt and uncle. During the day, we had no plans which was fabulous. We
would just go with the flow.
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| While in Illinois, we had a chance to go garage saling with my Grandma Dawn. This was at one of the sales! |
What Annika wanted to do many days was learn how to sew! We
had brought some sewing pieces from my Gramma (yes, that is the correct
spelling for that grandma!) that Annika wanted to stitch together as a shirt
for her 18-inch doll. She began by taking some of the Americana fabric and
piecing together, by hand, a folk-art United States flag for the shirt design.
Because it was only her second time sewing and hand-stitching is painstakingly
slow, that's as much as she completed during her several sewing sessions. But
she got rave reviews from my aunt on her neat, small stitches.
My uncle also took us to see some of the best thrift stores
in the area. We had a lot of fun picking out some wonderful finds. And, since
we had driven to Chicago, we had plenty of room to take all of our finds back
with us!
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| My sisters Sara and Becky also made a quick trip to Illinois. This is Lucas and Kennedy in Uncle Brian's back yard. |
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| Go, Brody! Rockin' the Hula hoop. |
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| My cousin Judy wearing the mini-Hula. Oh, if only my waist were this small! |
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| While in Illinois, we went to a baby shower for Laura, my cousin's wife. She has since given birth to healthy twins! |
On our way back to
Minnesota, Annika and I made a point to go through Lake Geneva, Wis., and pass
by Stone Manor, the largest mansion in that area. Built by a Chicago real
estate tycoon in the early 1900s, the 18,000-square-foot Italianate palace is
now houses five condos priced at over $1.6 million each. But the building is
still amazing. (You can take an online tour of one of the home here: http://bit.ly/Stone1.)
And it gave us a chance to get some Caribou Coffee and Potbelly sandwiches
before returning home.
**
While at Uncle Brian's, we had dinner with quite a few people, including the boyfriends of my two cousins. This vid shows the crew getting into the fun of freeze tag as JC and Judy chase the kids (much to the peril of JC's health) and Nick helps unfreeze my nephew...
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