It's a Wonderful Life.: !!!

My body has made a quick recovery and I think by tomorrow I should be feeling much closer to better. I'm thoroughly excited for one last deep NyQuil sleep tonight though. Today I took the kids to this place called Fantasy Kingdom...I know, strange name. It's a medium sized room full of forts and playhouses. If you want to pretend you are a medieval warrior, simply put on a knight costume, find a few friends, and make them dress up like princesses and dragons. If you want to be a firefighter, run over to the child size fire station (equipped with firetrucks, a pole, a hose, and a ladder). They even have a grocery store and a police station with a kid-sized jail. It's the kind of place where the older kids rule and the younger ones are left with the crappy toys. Come to think of it, this place may be somewhat responsible for my weird dream I wrote about, a few posts back.

The kids mostly loved organizing the food on the grocery store shelves, which was hilarious to me because once they left the "store" to go and find more food, a group of high strung boys would come in and knock it all of the shelves or a few toddlers would wobble in and disorganize and slobber on everything. The girls would be upset only for a second or two and then it was like it never even happened. I seriously watched them re-organize those shelves about seven times. They have more patience for annoying kids and bullies than I would have had at their age.

It took them a while to discover the "jail" but once they had they couldn't get enough of it. There's something really funny about seeing a four year old behind bars. She'd wait for me to fall asleep and then sneak the key out of my pocket and snicker out loud....I'm hoping she learned this from Robin Hood or 101 Dalmatians.

On the way home from the park, one of the kids said, "When I grow up and I can drive, I'm going to fill my...you know, the thing in a car...it's like a tank? You know, where the gas goes into? I'm going to fill it with blueberries...like, mashed up blueberries. And water. That way I won't have to pay a lot for gas. Plus I will be helping the environment. Blueberries are pretty cheap...well, at least cheaper than gas." :-)

It's been so windy outside all day. Our windows keep rattling and the cat is freaking out. I'm thinking there might be some pretty amazing thunderstorms either tonight or Saturday. Thunder and lightning storms in Chicago are something else, I've never experienced louder more frightening storms than here. We've literally watched lightning strike the roof of the building right across the street from ours. I have some crazy videos somewhere, if I find them I will try to post them soon.

Today the weather got me thinking about our drive over here almost two years ago (can you believe we've been here that long?) We actually experienced a tornado our first week here.... We had been following it for the last day of our trip. It was crazy seeing so much flooding and lightning.

One of my favorite memories is waiting out the storm in the back of our U-Haul at the flooded campsite. I've never been so scared and so excited at the same time. I can't remember which state we were in, but we pulled up to the camp ground, set up our tent, and got ready for a night under the stars. It was really hot and humid and it felt nice to be out of the truck. We met the people camping next to us, a couple that were motorcycling across the United States, stopping to camp and visit motorcycle shows. As we were all talking, the wind began to pick up a bit and Garrison and I headed out to make sure the tent was okay.

All of a sudden it started pouring, more rain than I had ever seen. We grabbed our things, ripped the tent down, and threw it into the back of the U-Haul. By the time we were in the truck with the huge door pulled down, we were drenched. Within an hour The wind was pushing in every direction, I seriously thought the truck was going to flip over. Every time their was lightning, the fiber roof of our U-Haul lit up for a long time, what scared me the most was that the thunder and lightning were in sync with each other...it was right on top of us.

At one point the rain was so loud G and I were yelling at each other every time we had to say something. Luckily in Washington we had decided to lay our mattress down and put boxes around it. We sat in our bed, in the back of the U-Haul, drinking wine, wide-eyed and scared out of our minds.

I love crazy weather and Chicago is a pretty good place for that. I hope this summer brings some big storms.

The view from our roof!!