The sign-in poster before the run began

13 hours in and already more than 150 miles.

I have to confess to you, in the past I’ve felt pretty good about the way I’ve shared my faith on this little piece of the world wide web.  And while its true that you don’t have to read many posts in DRRF to catch a glimpse of what we believe- I was convicted while running this weekend that it might have been only a glimpse.

This time, I don’t want to miss the opportunity to be very clear.
One of Craig’s requests was that he and his family use what they are experiencing, his battle with Cancer, to share something with others.  So, I would be terribly remiss to not take an opportunity in a post about this prayer run to share with you.

Wanna know what in the world would motivate people to run in the middle of the night?
Or worse, in the middle of the day in August in TX?

We believe that we are all totally messed up.
None of us are perfect.
I am far from it.

But I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
I believe He came to this Earth, lived as both fully God and fully Man so that He alone could pay the ultimate price for all of our sins.  Horrific, torturous death on a cross.

I believe that in Him alone is found a power to save.
I believe He is able to heal Craig completely.
But, I also believe someday our lives as we know them on this Earth will end.
And when that happens, I believe that Jesus has already paid the price for salvation for all, for eternal life.
We believe that we ALL need to be saved.
And we believe that Jesus is the way to the salvation.
There is nothing we’ve done to earn it.  There is nothing we can do to lose it.
And its for you, too.
All you have to do is believe.
That’s it.

I want you to know what I believe.
Don’t let me over-complicate it.  Don’t let me cloud it.  Don’t miss it.

If you don’t know the Truth about the saving power of Christ.  If you don’t have a community of people that encourage you to know a Lord that saves you by Grace, and not by anything you can do- I don’t want to let another moment go by without being the one to tell you.

That’s why we ran.
ABL

ABL

I love how Lou adds emphasis to just about anything she says.
And I can understand where she is coming from. 
I mean-
Why just tell me about your day when you can start with “MOM. You will NOT BELIEVE what happened today…”

Why would a simple “I love you” suffice when you can say “You are the bestest Mommy in the whole wide wuhld”. 

Why would you simply ask for something when you can say “Can I petty petty petty petty puhhh-lease….?”
(have I mentioned before that I’ll be sad when she finds her “r” sound? once or twice, maybe)

This summer, I watched her stand confidently in line for a bounce house obstacle course.  As she was surrounded by kids twice her size, I wondered why it didn’t bother her.  Maybe she genuinely doesn’t notice that she is so small.   Or maybe she is just so confident in herself that she simply doesn’t care.  Unless there is a dog present, This girl does not know the meaning of “you are too little”. 

And in at least one way, I know that it is true.  She isn’t too little.  She’s not too little to teach her momma a few things about putting emphasis on the right things.  The true things.  The hopeful things.  The lovely things. 

I’ve clung to this sweet reminder from her sweet little mouth.  Like many of the things she says, I’m quite certain she does not fully comprehend what she is repeating.  But like many things she teaches me, I’m also quite certain its much less complicated that I try to make it.

His word.  Through her mouth.  I hope you are as blessed by it as I am!

Momma

This may or may not be the FOURTH post about our trip to Chicago.  It was that noteworthy (scroll on down and see for yourself).  But don’t worry, school is starting soon around here so I’m sure there will be lots of first-day-of-school posts and the like.  Then, we can all get back to your regular favorites- adorable pictures of my four blonde.  You are welcome.

But its my blog.  So, first I think I’ll post a few more Chicago photos. (doncha just wanna go there?)

The thing that was awesome about visiting Chicago was there really is something for everyone.  You could spend nothing.  Or you could spend a whole stinkin’ lot of money in this city.  We did a little of both.  I absolutely loved, though, that just about everywhere we went there was something to see.  The views were incredible.  Here are a few of my favorite views of the city:

My first view as I walked into town.
Yes, walked.
I bought a CTA card and was determined to not take cabs, I went the whole 5 days only getting in a cab once.  So, after researching the safety factor, I took the train from the airport and then walked a mile (suitcase for 5 days in tow).  But with views like this, I’m so glad I did.  I texted Ricky (since I arrived two days before him) and said “I can’t decide whether to send you pictures or just let you experience the view for yourself”.

From the John Hancock Building

Our first incredible view after RRL arrived.  This was a great tip we got from a local.  Dessert at the lounge in the Hancock building.  On the NINETY-FIFTH floor.  Hard to do that view justice in photos.

It was awesome because you didn’t have to pay to go to the official observatory, and you didn’t have to have reservations at the restaurant.  And we still got to watch the sun set over Chicago.  Perfect.

And this, female friends, is the view from the bathroom. (that’s no painting by the sinks)

From the Ferris Wheel
I mentioned that we did not really enjoy Navy Pier.  Too many people.  But, the view from the ferris wheel was spectacular.  In the 7 minute ride I took a TON of pictures.  But mostly I was snapping away to keep my mind from thinking too hard about how high we were.  Check out the grip I had on the beams of our little “cabin”.

From Grant Park Music Festival
Quite possibly one of my favorite parts of the trip (after the DIY Chocolate tour, of course).  A free symphony in this amazing park amphitheater, with the lights of Chicago coming on as the backdrop.  A perfect date night.

The view from Church
So glad we did this.  Willow Creek, that we’ve heard so much about, has a congregation in the city.  The speaker this Sunday was an incredible woman seeking to move their community of believers to further love their “neighbors”.  Its so lined up with the movement we’ve been learning about at our home congregation.  It was incredible to experience the spread of the Gospel, to feel like I’m partnering with these strangers in this city.  And, it was pretty cool that the service was inside this incredible theater.  So, this was our view during worship.  Not too shabby.

AND FINALLY
A view of our food.
Seriously, pretty much every person we talked to about visiting Chicago started with recommendations of where to eat.  And we did our best to taste a huge selection of those recommendations.  We ate everything: chocolate (of course), pizza (twice), hotdogs in park, stuffed lobster at a crab house, brunch at a swanky mexican restaurant, and a couple of the best sandwiches I’ve ever tasted…in THREE stinkin’ days.  Good thing we walked so much 🙂 So yes, we found some food in Chicago.  Thankyouverymuch.

I tried to warn you- its not slowing down anytime soon. You are going to continue to be barraged by “Chicago this” and “Chicago that” for at least one more post (after this one).  Seriously.  You know you love it.

Here’s a post about one of my favorite subjects.
“How to plan a trip.”

Its no secret- I like to plan things.
What I’ve only recently finally learned about myself, though, is that I tend to under-estimate and over-complicate things.  A deadly combination.  But I will say, when it comes to planning trips, I’ve got a pretty good balance.

When I found out that we were really going to make this happen- this Chicago for the weekend thing- I could be found just about every night with no less than 15 internet tabs open on my computer.  Reading reviews, getting ideas, polling facebook friends, making reservations, saving maps, reading some more reviews, visiting groupon.  Its important when you only have 3 days to see a place you’ve never been, to know what you are walking in to.  How else will you know what you absolutely can’t miss?

But here’s the part that might surprise you- I actually don’t plan EVERYTHING.

Here’s our basic strategy:
We choose one thing for each day that you really want to do and plan for it.  Then, we have a list of other things you’d like to try to do and fill in the rest of each day with those things.  Usually we lay in bed at night and decide which “fluff” things we want to do the next day.  And we almost always have a back-up plan.  But we plan for the days “big event” to the nth degree.  Coupons, reservations, transportation, etc- all arranged ahead of time.

Here’s how that played out for us in Chicago-

What worked:
The DIY Chocolate tour
So yeah.  This is my blog.  So I kinda feel ok about getting a little arrogant here once in a while.  But seriously, ya’ll.  This one was B-R-I-L-L-I-A-N-T.  Ok, so I can’t take complete credit for it.  RRL definitely helped.  But anytime it seems like maybe we took something and way over complicated it but somehow still pulled it off…that’s the mark of yours truly.

When I saw a groupon for a Chicago Chocolate tour, I immediately forwarded it to RRL with the subject line “This is calling my name”.  Sight-seeing via chocolate.  What could be better?
Well, I’ll tell ya what could be better-
Sight-seeing via chocolate.
Without following a tour guide or her crowd.
(because that would have totally conflicted with the “just us” part of this trip.)
PLUS, we were quite certain (and correct) that we could get more chocolate for less money by doing it ourselves.

The website for the chocolate tour actually listed the chocolate shops they’d be visiting so I penciled the locations on to my paper map that also conveniently identified key landmarks.  So we’d buy some chocolate, walk a little bit, then stop at a landmark to sit and eat chocolate and see the sights.

Here’s the tour:
Chocolate Mint Pie from Frango Cafe (here’s a great reason to plan ahead. never would have found this one on my own, and its my favorite of all the places we ate in Chicago.  just a little sandwich/soda shop hidden behind the main eating areas at Macy’s).  In addition to the amazing pie- we LOVED the Pesto Chicken Salad Sandwich.  YUM, I wanna go back.

 Next stop, my least favorite, the Toni Patisserie.  We ordered the Brownie because it was supposedly the specialty, but it just tasted like a brownie.  But they did make a mean Arnold Palmer and the view from this corner cafe was fun- lots of good people watching.

Last stop- the most interesting and the one we were proudest of finding.  In a basement of a building, a sweet lady is living out her childhood dreams of making and selling her own candy.  The sea-salt caramel
“la-dee-dah” was DELICIOUS.  As was the bing cherry almond bar.  It just felt like we got a little peek into seeing someone accomplish a huge dream.  And we might have missed it if we hadn’t done a little research ahead of time.

We ate these magical pieces with this view- from inside the Thompson Center

 a PERFECT afternoon.  seriously, this was my favorite date EVER.

As a side note- I’m thinking about doing this for a living.
Anyone want me to take you on a tour where we spend several hours seeing the sights all while eating Chocolate?  Bring your own paper map, skip lunch, and we’ll be on our way!
YES, PLEASE!

The Boat Tour
Other than amazing places to eat, many told us that we should take an architecture boat tour.  This time we did opt to pay for the “official tour” feeling quite certain we could not recreate this one on our own.  I think the pictures pretty well speak for themselves (and this is narrowed down from about 4012923462 pictures we took in that 90 minutes).

This tour was an AWESOME way to get views of the city for the river and lake and learn fun facts about all of the cool architecture in Chicago.  LOVED THIS!

In the interest of transparency, here’s
What didn’t work:
The one thing everyone told us to do (well besides all the AH-MAZING restaurants) was Shedd Aquarium.  But it actually wasn’t one of our “bigs”.  So, on Saturday we just went out there.  When we arrived I was totally kicking myself for not planning this out more.  Why IN THE WORLD did I not do more planning for the one thing everyone recommended?  The fact that everyone recommended it should have told me that EVERYONE (and their mother, uncle, children, friend, sister, cousin) would be there on Saturday.  Sheesh.  The line just to get inside to purchase a ticket was TWO-FREAKING-HOURS (and a half).  We did not stay.  This is as close as we got.

And to make things worse, our “back-up plan” for the Aquarium was Navy Pier.  And any of the above listed everyone’s relatives that were not at the aquarium… were at Navy Pier.  And its a Pier.  As in an unshaded piece of concrete sticking out into the water.  Which equals H-O-T.  Not our scene.  But we did ride the ferris wheel.  And didn’t hate it (pictures of the great views coming up in the next post).  But we also left quickly.

All of that to say, when you take this approach of planning a few things really well, you have to be prepared that sometimes the things you don’t plan will be a major flop.

Which means, the number one key to the success of any trip is not the plan itself, it is not even your own attitude toward the situation, above all else it is…
Who you plan to travel with.
And I’m gonna keep on choosin’ him.

ABL

I warned you.
A flood.
The mushy gushy flood of pictures and stories from our awesome “just us” get-away to Chicago.

THE VIEW FROM “WORK”
Truth be told, if it had been left up to me, I’m not sure I would have picked NOW for us to sneak off without kids.  There is just a lot going on.  But we had an opportunity we couldn’t pass up.  I had an opportunity to attend a meeting for a couple of days mid-week in Chicago.  (no pictures of that view- it really was an awesome staff meeting, but unless you want a personal presentation of my discussion on “overheads” there are more fun things to talk about.)

The work side of me is one a rarely talk about here (well, other than constant reminders of my accountant-crazy-tendencies).  I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned that I’m actually an accountant for a railroad.  Usually this means I sit in the office surrounded by reports and numbers- trying to remember that there are real trains out there somewhere.  But as a bonus to this meeting, I actually got to ride in the cab of a locomotive of a passenger train.

YES!  This commute to work “just walk to the front of the train and climb the stairs” was a little different from my normal commute.  The whole time I was thinking “act like you know what you are doing, don’t look shocked at the height of that ladder. Pretend like you are going to know how to open the door when you get to the top of the ladder”

Despite my ignorance, it really was an awesome way to be reminded about the company I work for and the really amazing work it does each day. AND I kinda liked being on this side of the train-induced-traffic-jam that I experience from my own vehicle nearly every day in my home town.

So, here’s another side of me- the steel-toe-boot, safety glasses, ear-plug wearin’ side.  (ps- it was a REALLY early morning start.)

I’m not gonna lie, there were several comments from “real railroaders” about how clean my boots were.  And one security guy, as I was headed to the front of the train, stopped me thinking I must be in the wrong place.  I may or may not have gotten great satisfaction out of showing him my badge.  I know, guy, I’m a little surprised to see me here, too.  And the early morning view of the city from the front of the train…pretty cool!

So, yeah, that’s why we went.  My job.  And now I have further evidence to convince my children that sometimes being an accountant is really cool (but for now I’m fine just letting them believe I “work” for the railroad)

ABL

Letterman style, here are the top five ways you might know you are the fourth child

Well, folks you are in for a treat.  RRL is making a rare appearance here in DRRF to tell you about a tradition.  Yes, another one.  But this is like a FOR REALS one.  And he is totally the master-mind behind this intentional blessing in the lives of our kiddos.  In the months before they each start Kindergarten, he takes them on an international mission trip.  Here’s the first post in series of efforts to document those trips.
Thanks, Babe, for being intentional about showing our kids the world.
ABL  

 After all that the question that comes to mind is, “So what does he remember?” I have asked him and he mainly talks about a few things. That’s what I want to record. What seemed important to him at the time. Not to try to understand just to record it and let it be.

He would start with seeing his cousins. My sister had 4 kids very close in age to our own. That being the case he felt very comfortable jumping rot into their routine. Starting with the ride to their house. Their little five seater car held all 7 of us even if it did mean the kids all just riding in the seat. This made for an adventure for him because he definitely does not get to do that here in the States. There were many things to see but mostly just lots of conversation about what the week would hold.

Then there was the house. Though things may have seemed the same in some ways the house is different specifically not having air conditioning throughout. As I remember it it wasn’t so hot it was unbearable, but the afternoon siesta and shower before bed were very significant because there was A/C in the bed rooms and that was something to look forward to everyday. 

I am certain he will never forget the trip to the beach. There was plenty of talk on the way there, questions really, about sharks. What if one comes up where we are? How will we see it? How big are they? And of course my answer was pretty much the same. Reassuring him that we wouldn’t see sharks and secretly hoping I was right. The nice thing was the beach had a good break between the shallow water and open water. Once he had tested the water just a bit he had his confidence and enjoyed himself. That did not however, keep him from telling his brother and sister how we got in the ocean and had to watch out for sharks. 

As if that wasn’t enough fun we also got to go to a place called Los Lagos. This is a water park but with out the slides. Only pools all over the place. Unfortunately when we arrived they were working on the pools and none of them had water. My brother in law talked the into filling one of the pools whole we explored and played at the other activities and the day turned out great. We got out on the paddle boats, ate lunch, played on the playground, and finally got to swim. It was such a fun day.

I think two final things will stick with him. On this trip he had his first Coke. It wasn’t so much about the Coke as it was about getting his first one in another country walking to the store carrying it home himself. Maybe a small thing to some but significant to him all the same. The second is similar. It is on this plane ride (to and from actually) that he got to watch Star Wars for the first time. If you have to ask which one, you should talk with your parents about what a real movie is like. Anyway, he is in. He loved it and has even trusted me that the new ones aren’t really that good. The force is strong with this one. 

I have to add that I also hope he remembers just sitting and visiting with his cousins as I will remember doing with my sister. I will remember him trying new foods and not liking some of them but having a good attitude anyway. I’ll remember getting to go to church with our family and see my brother in law and sister minister to some amazing people,

I’ll also remember going to a house of a friend of theirs and feeling blessed by the meal they prepared and the time KJ got to play with cousins and new friends. No doubt I’ll remember the carriage ride, amazing wall and castle, and he will too.

 These are memories that I pray we will hold on to and we will allow them to shape us as we continue to learn and grow into who God is calling us to be. 

I think I might need to start a new blog.
One just for all of my “traditions”.
I’m running out of witty ways to say “every year we…”
But, I just can’t help myself.
If it is fun once, surely it will be fun EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. 
(oh wait, i’ve said that before, too.  shoot.)

Sooooooo, we have a new tradition.
Some might say it was born out of laziness.
I call it survival.
And F-U-N!

We seem to always have this random collection of coupons and giftcards around our house.  Some are random credits left from stores, some random kids meals earned as rewards at school (mostly by KJ), etc.  They never get used by our family.  They are located in any one of approximately 15 locations around our home and vehicles.  I’m sure there is some really creative and organized way I could keep up with them all.  But I’m feeling good to get all of the laundry put away so I’m going to ask you to spare me getting stuck on that part of the story. 

Monday

His favorite ride was the one on which we got soaked. I scored some major mom points for being willing to ride it twice. We were DRENCHED. but this face made it totally worth it.

Turns out it wasn’t the last stop because the last leg of the awaited flight was delayed.  So I drove that direction anway, out of giftcards and out of plans, ready to have my family together.  The kids fell asleep in the van and I parked in a Sbucks parking lot to steal WiFi.  But then I felt badly about stealing WiFi so I drove through the drivethrough to get a drink.  Either the barista was just feeling nice, or I really looked that bad (quite possibly the 2nd).  Either way, I scored a free drink without even telling him about RGCW or about my hubby’s delayed flight.  I did thank him profusely, reparked in the lot, and used the WiFi to post about missing RRL.

And indeed, we did miss those guys.
But we also loved this newly created tradition. 
(maybe at least mostly because I cooked exactly 2 times in the whole 8 days).
Random Gift Card Week 2014. We are ready for you!
ABL