Monthly Archives: July 2009

All this week, Brittany has been in a leadership program sponsored by the City of Aurora.  This “Aurora Leadership Institute” was held at the Illinois Math and Science Academy and taught them all kinds of leadership skills such as:

• Ethics
• Teambuilding
• Communication
• Relationship Building
• Team Dynamics
• Values
• Service

Today Brittany graduated from the program and was honored by the Mayor of Aurora for her achievements.  We attended the graduation ceremony where she got her diploma.  We found out that this is the first one held and from the positive experience that came out of it, they hope to do this in many years to come.

Brittany with Mayor Weisner of Aurora and the Police Officer on the staff of the program that mentored her.

Brittany and her graduating class of 2009 from the Aurora Leadership Institute.

Congratulations Brittany!  She was in the program with a friend from Still (and fellow track team member) Katie Benson.  It was good for her to have another friend with her.  After the graduation ceremony, we treated them to frosties at Wendy’s on our way home.  🙂

Tonight we went to a great concert at West High School in Aurora.  The group was called Ac Rock and is an A Capella Rock and Roll group.  They sing selections from the 50’s to the 90’s and are very good.

Ben was rocking out back and forth, and the girls really loved it.  At first, they were a little skeptical, thinking that anyone who sang 70’s and 80’s music was a goofball like their father 🙂 but ended up really having fun!  After the concert, we bought one of their CDs and had them all autograph it for us! To learn more about them, you can go to http://www.acrock.com.

Carmen gave us a call this evening…  She said that she made it home safe and thanks again for the great time!  With the delays, she didn’t make it home until almost midnight their time.  When they called, it was about 2 in the morning and they were tired!  🙂  That’s a LONG time to be traveling.  I guess they made it in 4 hours late but the next flight wasn’t until after 9 pm!  She had to wait around the airport for almost 8 hours or so.  I’m guessing that this is the case.

Anyway, you probably won’t see as many blog messages going forward, but we will definitely keep you up to date on what’s going on in our family!  The daily blog messages and pictures were mainly as a “e-newspaper” for Carmen’s family to keep them up to date on what we were doing and the fun we were having…

Today Carmen headed back to Spain and we were all sad to see her go.  I picked up 20 packets of pink Kool-Aid for her to take back with her which she was very excited about.  They don’t have that there and she probably drank at least 15 liters of it while she was here.  Brittany had to leave early for her leadership meetings and so she woke Carmen up and they said their good-byes.  I called Carmen from work and did the same before  Angela, Sarah, Kirstyn, Zach, and Ben took her to the mall parking lot to drop her off to go to the airport.

They said their good-byes and Carmen piled into a rented stretch hummer with some other kids to go back to the airport.  The rest of the kids rode a bus.  Zachary did OK with the good-bye part.  He told me he was very sad but he didn’t want to cry.  🙂  Angela said that there were a lot of emotional people there at the drop-off place and said that Carmen was also very sad to leave.  She had told us many times that she considers us her family too.  What a sweet girl she is.  We have really grown to love her like a daughter and sister.  We look forward to seeing her again.

From what I understand, they got to the airport just fine but their flight was delayed by 5 hours.  Instead of taking off at 4:40 pm, they didn’t take off until 9:23 pm!  That will cause some jet lag!  🙁  The flight ended up landing in Madrid at 11:42 am local time which was 4 hours late!  Hopefully Carmen was able to find a flight from Madrid home easily!

Tonight I got home from work to a much emptier home 🙁 and took Brittany to her violin lesson.  After the lesson finished, the kids had burgers, chicken nuggets and frosties (sorry Carmen, we wish we could have got one for you too!) and Angela and I went out on a dinner date to Zaidi’s (a nice restaurant here in Naperville).  We had Pan Roast Alaskan Butter Fish with clams, mussels and scallops and ribeye steak.  It was expensive (fortunately we had a gift certificate) but very good.

After we ate dinner, we went and got ice cream at Baskin Robbins, picked up a movie (“Knowing”), and then went home, put the rest kids to bed, and watched it.  We didn’t end up going to bed until almost midnight!  🙂

This month has been one of the funnest we have had as a family.  We were so blessed to have the experience of having Carmen in our home.  We learned a LOT about Spain, she learned a LOT about the United States, and we had wonderful times together that we will never forget.  We look forward to keeping in contact with our new daughter and sister (and her family) via e-mail, Skype, Tuenti (Spanish version of Facebook), and hopefully visiting there soon (or her coming to visit us)!  We would highly recommend this experience to anyone!

Today was the last full day with our family!  I can’t believe it’s already been a month and Carmen is going home tomorrow.  We will miss her very much.  She has really become part of our family.  Hopefully she will be able to come back soon or we will be able to go over there and visit her.

Even with us being sad that she is leaving, we did have a great day today!  We spent the morning playing Wii and Marta ran on the treadmill.  Zachary was also acting VERY weird and made a helmet out of some pillows and a plastic container!  🙂

For lunch, the girls made us tortilla de patatas and they tasted wonderful!  Angela took Marta to buy a small carry-on bag for the flight home tomorrow because her suitcase is HEAVY and she needs to get rid of some of the weight!  🙂

After shopping, we all went to Kirstyn and Zachary’s swimming lessons at the Phillips Park Pool.  Here are some pics…

After swimming lessons and having fun in the pool, we packed everything up and drove home to have dinner.  We had tasty grilled chicken, rice, salad, and then for dessert, we had pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.  Carmen and Marta LOVED them.

We had family home evening together for the last time and for our family activity, we watched the photo video that I compiled for Carmen.  It was a good way for all of us to look back on the month of all the activities and fun times we have had together.

After watching the video, we played cards until late, laughed and had a great time together.

Brittany and I said our good-byes and we all went to bed.  This last 4 weeks has been absolutely wonderful!  We have not only had a great time as a family, but also gained a new daughter.  She has really become part of our family and it will be weird when we look around the dinner table and not see her there.   🙁  We will always look back on this experience with great fondness.

Today was quite relaxing yet busy at the same time.  Angela left early and went with a bunch of her friends from church to the Chicago Botanical Gardens.  They had a very enjoyable time there and she got some great pictures…

She said it was absolutely beautiful and there were so many wonderful gardens and flower types to see.  They even went to a cooking demonstration there.

While she was gone, the rest of us ate a liesurely breakfast, cleaned up a bit, and then watched TV and played Wii.  Carmen is AWESOME at tennis and knocks everyone out at boxing.  I can humble her a bit in bowling, golf, and baseball, however!  🙂  It was nice to just sit back and relax after the long day and much walking yesterday.

At about 2, we all got ready (except Angela who was still gone) and went to the farewell party for the Spanish students.  It was at Centennial Park (near Centennial Beach where they had one of their excursions).  It was a very nice place, and we had a large pavilion just in case it rained.  We had burgers, hot dogs, and a TON of food.  Everyone played soccer, volleyball, sat around and talked, and had a great time.  I got to meet some more of the host parents.  We are very (hopefully our schedule will allow) to do this again next year!  Here are some pictures of the event:

Angela got back from her trip and got to the party about 15 minutes before it ended.  It took a little longer to get back than she had expected, but made it there.  🙂  Gaul’s are going on vacation to Disney World and so we will have Marta for the remaining 3 days they are here.  They had to say goodbye to her there at the park and we all had a group hug…

I think it was a little hard for Marta to say good-bye to them.  We’re not looking forward to saying good-bye on Tuesday either!  🙁  It will be very sad to lose our new-found daughter.

We went home, and spent the rest of the night relaxing and watching a movie.  Angela has to speak in church tomorrow so she spent the time working on her talk, and I spent most of the evening working to finish up a digital photo album for Carmen as a memory of her time spent with us.  I think Brittany came up and told us good night at about midnight (long after we had fallen asleep)!  🙂

Today was very tiring but a wonderful day as well.  After getting up and eating a great french toast breakfast, we got ready, piled in the van, and drove to downtown Chicago.  We went to the Field Museum of Natural History.  We are members there (purchased a family membership this year) and thought it would be a fun thing to do.

We parked (as we usually do) under Soldier Field where the Chicago Bears football team plays.  Below is a picture of that as well.  About 61,000 people can fit in this stadium.  That’s not very big considering Carmen said that some of the stadiums in Spain can fit between 80,000 to 100,000 fans!  🙂

We walked a LOT and saw a lot of things, from Egyptian mummies, many wild animals, dinosaurs (the most famous being Sue, the T-Rex that was discovered in the Dakotas and where the whole head is in tact), and much more.  One of the favorite parts of the museum we went to was the underground adventure.  This took you underground and into the world of a bug.

Here are a couple more pictures from the museum I thought would be good to include as well…

Angela also took Ben and Zach and played in a family area that they absolutely loved while the girls and I walked around and saw more of the museum.  After doing this, we were dead tired and very hungry, so we ate burgers and chicken nuggets at McDonald’s there in the museum.  After that we were all very full and happy!  🙂

We then left the museum and walked up and down the part of the Chicago lakefront near the museum.  It was a perfect day… not too hot, and not too cold.  We enjoyed taking a LOT of pictures, enjoying the day, and getting some exercise.

After our long walk, we were dead tired and had sore feet (as you can tell by the kids soaking their feet in a fountain near the Shedd Aquarium.   It felt good to get hot feet cold.  🙂  After soaking for awhile, we walked back to the car for the drive home.  The traffic was terrible (due to an accident) and it took over 2 hours to get home (normally about 1 hour).  Everyone slept well during the drive (except me of course)!  🙂

When we got back home, Carmen asked me if we could go shopping and get some flowers for Angela.  She wanted to surprise her and thank her for everything she has done over the past month.  I gladly said yes, so off we went again.  Brittany came with and helped pick out a dozen roses.   Carmen brought them back home, wrote a note to Angela, and gave them to her.  Angela definitely was surprised and very happy.  She loves flowers!

The rest of the evening was spent playing Wii, watching movies, eating Cheetos, popcorn, and ice cream with hot fudge along with drinking mass quantities of strawberry lemonade!  Angela and I watched a movie upstairs, while the girls played Wii and watched one of the Harry Potter movies downstairs.  At about 11pm, we all finished up and went to bed very tired, but very happy!

Today was a great day!  Things were pretty quiet until about 11:30 at which time Angela took Carmen to the mall parking lot to go on the last excursion of  the trip…  a Chicago White Sox game.  When they arrived at the mall, 3 limousines pulled up to take them downtown!  There were 2 stretch Hummers and 1 black Lincoln stretch.  Most of the kids eyes bugged-out when they saw them pull up.  In Spain, we were told, only movie stars ride in limousines!  Everyone crowded around them trying to get a good seat.  The Hummers looked to be the favorite!

After the kids piled into the limos and were off to the game, Angela came back home and worked on her talk for church on Sunday.  She is speaking about music in the home and how it helps our family.

I got home at about 5 and Angela and I went out on a date.  We got a quick bite to eat at Steak and Shake and then went to the Food Storage Center to can some food storage.  This year, our ward (church congregation) has been focusing on self-reliance and each month, we have the opportunity to order food for this.  We have been doing this to supplement what we had already, and now have enough food stored to last our entire family about a year should something happen (loss of job, natural disaster, etc.).  It’s very comforting to know that we are covered should something happen.  Tonight we canned wheat, white beans, refried beans, and flour.  We also also got some apple slices.

Meanwhile back at the house, Brittany cooked dinner for the kids (macaroni and cheese, vegetables, fruit, and strawberry lemonade).  To top it off, she cooked a white bundt cake with chocolate frosting.  We appreciate Brittany so much for her ability to take care of her brothers and sister so Angela and I can go out and have some fun once and awhile!  🙂

Carmen came back home at about 7:30 or so.  She said that the game was very fun and that she had a great time!  The limousines had taken them downtown, and then they had taken the train back home.  The group this afternoon witnessed a piece of history at the game…  The White Sox pitched a no-hitter!  This is only the 17th regular season no-hitter of all time!  Carmen said the crowd was going wild and cheering like crazy toward the end of the game, hoping that this would happen, and it did!  I was very jealous that she got to see this and I didn’t.  Initially I had suggested that Angela and I get tickets to the game and go, but we decided not to.  Now I regret it!  🙂

We also found out that the kids were on the news after the game!  There was a video clip posted to the local ABC News site that showed some of them celebrating!  The kids were shown on the news, but on the internet, they were only shown on the video introduction splash.  It is below:

After Angela and I got home from our date, we got Kirstyn to bed (fortunately, Zach and Ben were already down and asleep), and then Angela, Brittany, Carmen and I decided to watched a new movie we just got.  The name of the movie is “Forever Strong” and was very good.  It’s about rugby and how people can change their lives.  Very good movie.  The Elder missionary that is serving in our ward right now (Elder Stroud) was in it as one of the rugby players.  It was fun to see him pre-mission!  🙂

The movie got over at about 11:30pm and we were all tired so we all went right to bed to get a good night sleep!

Today was a GREAT day!  Most of the success of the day goes to Angela who worked tirelessly throughout the entire day getting the house ready for the evening’s festivities… a surprise 1/2 birthday party for Carmen!  While Brittany and Kirstyn helped Angela prepare, Carmen had an excursion to the outlet mall with their group.  They had a great time shopping.  I picked up Carmen, Marta, and Miguel from the outlet mall and took Marta and Miguel back to Gaul’s home to hang out until it was time to come to the party.

We had it all planned out on how to get Carmen out of the  house so the decorations could go up, the food could be prepared and set up, and the guests could arrive.  Zachary almost blew the surprise by talking about a surprise we had for Carmen and people coming over, but we quickly covered it up and changed the subject before Carmen could understand what was just said!  🙂  We had 90 minutes to spend until I was supposed to bring Carmen back.  I was nervous that we wouldn’t be able to kill that kind of time with what we had to do.  I took Carmen, Zachary, and Ben, and we went and picked up our family pictures we had taken 2 weeks ago.  They turned out well.  We are going to frame two 5x7s in a single frame for Carmen to take home with her.

After we picked up the pictures (which took less time than I thought), we decided to walk around the mall and find some Chicago stuff that Carmen could buy to take home to friends and family.  Fortunately, we found a place right outside of JC Penny (where we got the pictures done), and Carmen went  wild!  🙂  She found everything she needed and even got back out of line a couple of times to go looking some more!  I kept telling her to take her time and that we were in absolutely no hurry at all!  🙂  WHEW!  After she purchased all her things, we still had about 15 minutes to waste, so we went to Home Depot and she bought her American flag.  This was the very last thing on her list and when we got out to the car, she threw her arms up in the air, smiled a huge smile, and yelled YES! YES!  I am done!  🙂  She was so happy to have found everything she was looking for!

By that time (after 3 or 4 calls back home), they finally told me that everyone was there and I could come back home now.  When Carmen walked through the front door, she was met by 25 people yelling SURPRISE!  She had no clue and was VERY surprised and happy herself!  She couldn’t believe that we had done this for her and that all these people had come!

Fortunately, everyone we had invited was able to come…  The Gaul Family along with Marta, the Oscarson Family along with Maria and Luis, Miguel, and Elena.  All in all, there were 6 of the Spanish kids there (including Carmen).  After the surprise, we had a great dinner of hamburgers (of course), hot dogs, chips, salsa, fruit, vegetable tray, and a huge cooler full of strawberry lemonade.  I think that the burgers and the strawberry lemonade were the hits with the kids.

After finishing eating, everyone hung out, played games like croquet, Apples to Apples, Wii Sing, ping pong, and much more.  A couple of pictures from the festivities are shown below…

After playing games for while, we called everybody upstairs and had cake and ice cream.  We got a chocolate cake with vanilla cheesecake filling and white frosting.  On the top, we put the US Flag, and below that we had them write “Happy 1/2 Birthday Carmen.”  We lit 14 and 1/2 candles (cut one in half) for her, sang happy birthday to her in both English and Spanish.  She blew out the candles and we cut and served the cake with vanilla ice cream.

After everyone had their fill of cake and ice cream, we gave her our gifts.  The Gaul family gave her a photo album to put her photos in from her trip to Chicago.  Brittany and Kirstyn made her a card and we gave her the gift from us..  a red exercise ball!  She absolutely loves the one we have in the basement and is always sitting on it, rolling it around, etc.  As you can tell from the picture, she was VERY excited and surprised to get it!  🙂

When all gifts were opened, everyone packed up and left, all wishing Carmen a happy birthday again!  She could not stop saying “thank you” for everything.  What a relief that we were able to keep it a surprise, despite what Zachary had said.  At that point, we were dead tired (around 11 pm) and all in need of our beds, so we hurried and cleaned up what we could, got ready for bed, and out went the lights around midnight.  🙂

Happy 1/2 Birthday, Carmen!  We hope you enjoyed your day!

Today was a busy but enjoyable day – even for me who had to go to work.  Brittany and Zachary both had to go to the doctor for their school physicals (Brittany for sports and Zachary to start Kindergarten), and Brittany also had an Orthodontist appointment to have her braces adjusted.  In between all of that, Angela took Carmen and Kirstyn shopping at Boomer-T’s to find a hooded sweatshirt while Brittany tended the sleeping boys.

It took Carmen awhile to decide what kind of hoodie she wanted, but finally decided on a gray one with the Neuqua Valley Wildcats printed on it in Navy.  Sarah will freak-out at that when she gets home because she thought Carmen should get a Metea Valley High School one (where she is going this year).  Neuqua is a rival high school in our district!  🙂  Oh well, Carmen likes it and that’s what matters…

After shopping for the sweatshirt, Angela took them food shopping at Costco, and as a reward, bought them Churros.  Carmen said that these are not at all like the Churros she is used to in Spain, but she really liked them.  After all, Churros are a dessert, and we all know that Carmen LOVES desserts!  🙂

After finishing their shopping, Angela took Brittany and Carmen to Phillips Water Park to swim and go on the water slides.  They had a great time hanging out at the pool and enjoying themselves.  While they were swimming, Kirstyn, Zachary, and Benjamin did a little bit of getting wet themselves in the back yard.   They put the hose at the top of the slide and went down it wet and fast.  They also got sprayed a bunch by their dad.  While they were playing, Angela cut the grass in the back yard, and Kirk pulled out some bushes and weeds.  It’s funny to watch Benjamin.  He doesn’t care if his clothes stay on or not.  I had to take a picture of him as his swimming suit was about ready to fall off!  🙂

At about 6pm, the girls were starting to get a little cold, so they called us and we picked them up a little early from the pool.  On the way back home, we went by Giordano’s and picked up 2 Chicago stuffed pizzas as we promised Carmen we would do.  We got 1 large pepperoni and 1 medium Canadian bacon.  We brought them home and dug in.  Carmen couldn’t believe how thick these were.  After a couple of pieces, she was totally full and couldn’t eat any more.  We put the rest in the freezer for re-heat later.

After we filled ourselves with pizza, we all sat down in the family room for our weekly Family Home Evening.  We sang songs, had family scripture study and family prayers together, and had a lesson on the beginning history of the Church.  We watched a video about this (The Restoration).  Carmen thought it was very fascinating.  During the time we were reading the scriptures together, Zachary wanted to read them in Spanish, so Carmen helped him pronounce the words and he read a verse.  He had absolutely NO idea what he was saying, but it sounded cool to him!  🙂

After Family Home Evening, we got the boys to bed and then the rest of us watched most of another one of our yearly family DVDs (this time the one from 2006).  We ended up only watching about half of it since we were dead tired from the days activities and all needed some good sleep!