A perfect summer night at the beach

Summer happenings thus far...

Friday before Memorial Day Micah, Adelyn, and I headed downtown with Nancy  for the Memorial Day Parade.  The weather was perfect so we staked our blanket and had a little picnic lunch and enjoyed the parade.  It was a very small parade but since there was a fire engine and police car and motorcyles it was a hit.  And as a side note...Nancy brought the "side dishes" for our picnic and we got hot dogs out. We had a bogo coupon for a coney dog so we each got one but not before the man behind the counter could tell us what they are really made of.  If you don't know and you like coney dogs you may not want to know.  I could barely stomach mine and felt sick even though it tasted good!!! :)  You can see below that Micah had no problem with his hot dog.  He even enjoyed "dipping" it in the cooler of ice...gross I know!

 Here is sweet little Adelyn having fun (ok probably for about 5 minutes) in her exersaucer.

We also had a little parade in our neighborhood on Memorial Day.  All the kids can decorate their bikes/wagons/strollers, etc and then we did a loop around our neighborhood and headed to a neighbors for refreshments.  The neighbor who is a farmer even brought his tractor along which was big hit! It was fun and a great way to get to know some of our neighbors better.

 We also made our 2nd annual trip to Chicago to meet up with Jessica (Corey's sister) and her fiancee (Matt) and go the the Lincoln Park Zoo and Pei Wei for dinner. It was a great day and I'm sure we'll be doing it again next year!

We have also been enjoying lots of time downtown at the beach, carousel, getting ice cream, playing on the playground, and playing at the fountain.

The cutest little firefighter you ever did see!  There was a firetruck that came while we were at one of Corey's softball games.  They let the kids get in the firetruck, gave them each hats, and spent probably 20 minutes letting the kids check it out.  Micah was thrilled!

Now that summer is here we've also been doing our fair share of grilling out.  I picked up this kids grill at a gargae sale for $1 so now Micah gets to grill with Daddy!

And our most recent summer happening--hand, mouth, foot disease!  This has not been fun...poor little guy is    just miserable which translates to us all being miserable!  It started Saturday night but just looked like a few bug bites on his feet and him complaining of his mouth (which I translated as throat and was thinking strep) hurting.  By the time I got him in on Monday it was really bad--his poor little feet (esp the bottoms of them) are covered and it had spread to his legs, elbows, hands, and mouth.  He spent most of Sat/Sun crying and screaming and unable to sleep or eat.   We've basically just been doing benadryl before naps/bedtime and tylenol and oatmeal baths. Not to mention lots of ice cream and popsicles. He is starting to feel better  (though still hurting) and his doc said he isn't contagious anymore so hopefully we'll be able to get back to doing things soon and he'll be back to his old self.  It doesn't help either that Adelyn is sick...she was also miserable today with a fever and bad cold.  I had her looked at Monday thinking she had something going on but her ears and throat were ok.

Glad summer is just beginning and we still have lots of fun times ahead of us!

Prayer Request Update

Well, my dad officially finished 6 weeks of radiation on May 18.  It was a fairly smooth process....just a long 6 weeks for him as he traveled to and from Chicago every morning for 8 minutes worth of radiation.  He was however very blessed to have different friends, co-workers, people from church drive him in every day.  He actually even started back to work 2 weeks ago.  Fast forward a few weeks to Wed of last week when he started to have some swelling on his head/eyes/face area.  Not a huge deal at first as this has happened before and resolved itself so the doctors were not concerned.  This time however, the next morning, my dad's speech also declined.  Later that night he also had a fever and with all those factors and the concern of infection he was taken Northwestern ER.  It was determined that he did have an infection and after an infectious disease consult and an MRI it was also determined that surgery would be necessary. So Friday night my dad had yet another surgery.  This time however part of his skull was removed as this was the source of the infection and itself was infected.  In 8-10 weeks he will have another surgery (once this infection is completely gone) to put a synthetic bone back in.  On Saturday I met up with Shelby in Chicago and we were able to spend the day with my dad/Jamie.  It worked out perfect as Corey's parents already had plans to go to Chicago for the day so I rode with them and we picked up Shelby from the bus station.  My dad is recovering well and the plan is that Corey will go pick him up tonight so he can come home.  He will just need to be careful what he does and has been fitted for a helmet to wear.  I think it was just surreal for us and him ....almost like we can't believe he has to go through this again.  In the midst of these trials we thank God for the blessings.  My dad's MRI showed that there was no new tumor growth and also the doc said that had my dad waited 2 more days to get the ER the infection could have already penetrated the brain and that would have been very bad.  Thankfully God is in control and He does answer our prayers and we have seen His hand of protection on my dad!!!!

(Please also keep my Uncle Neal--my dad's brother--in your prayers as he is back in the hospital.  See his blog called Trish's Health Update on the side bar)