The View

Vacation at Wisconsin Dells. 

Quiver

Ready to head to the water slides. Check out more pictures of our vacation at the "Family Pictures" link. 

Refreshment

Next week we will take some much needed time off. We are going to take our first true break since coming back to Illinois. We will have a few days of vacation time with the kids, and then a few days at a conference without the kids over the weekend (grandparents are wonderful!). We really need to relax, to be honest. :^) Should be a good time.

Three Generations

It was great to have my (Steve's) parents in town for Wednesday and Thursday. We at some good food, discussed deep topics, watched the Cubs get whooped, played some wiffle ball in the backyard, and gave lots of hugs.


Gramma, Sarah, Elijah, Jack, Daniel, Grampa, and Molly 

First Day of Homeschooling

Looks like we have a nice set up for homeschooling. The kids are ready to learn, even Dan (sort of)!


Homeschoolus interruptus. 

Should Be Illegal

I can't help but brag on this beautiful mother of four.


Am I the only one who thinks Molly should be fined for looking this good? 

Parents at Portillo's

Steve's Parents and Jack with a Portillo's hat. 

WWH and Van Tai Cao

I was great to have some visitors for Labor Day weekend. Wes and Van are guys I worked with at the University of Kentucky. They are now out of school and wanted to make the trip up to visit. What a great weekend.


Wes, Van, Steve and Kentucky ginger ale 

They arrived Friday night at about 9:30pm and we went straight to Buffalo Wild Wings in Lake in the Hills, about 20 minutes from home. Sometime around 1:30am we went to bed. Next morning we started with a big breakfast made by the lovely Molly. I had an important meeting from 10am-1pm out of town, so we put Wes and Van on the Metra train into Chicago where they base-jumped off the Sears Tower (well, they took an elevator to the top, anyway). Then they ate Chicago style pizza and came home.

Sunday afternoon we took them to Portillo's, another Chicago style restaurant with italian beef, italian sausage, Chicago style hot dogs with all the fixins and more. They loved it and so did we. It's a favorite McCoy family restaurant.

They spent a lot of time playing with the kids, which was a blast for the kiddos and wore out Wes and Van. The kids cried when they left because they wanted Wes and Van to live with us. Uh...I don't think so.

It was so great to have them here, and they even granted my wish of reloading my fridge with Ale-8-One, a popular Kentucky ginger ale (pictured in our joyful hands above). You guys are welcome back anytime. It was a blast.

Pics

We have some new pictures at the top-right link "Family Pictures." Enjoy.

my homeland

Sarah and I were in the car last night with a couple of high school students. One of the students mentioned the city of Lakewood here in IL.

I said to Sarah, "Hey Sarah, you were born in a city named 'Lakewood' in Colorado."

She responded, "Is Colorado near here?"

"No, it's far away."

She wailed, "Oh, I miss my homeland!"