Argh, another month and more craziness!  Work has been very busy lately, with my usual responsibilities plus 2014 budgeting and meetings plus we opened a new hotel in Nassau, The Bahamas (yes, the official name includes "The") and somehow I got myself on the task force that is opening the hotel.  Which means I got sent to Nassau...

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Margie and Sam came to visit, because in her words, "it'd been two months!"  It was Sam's first time back in almost two years though.  They came bearing gifts, including clothes and shoes (natch), a little folding chair, and a ramp with toy cars.  They stayed ten days, most of which were rainy.  One of the days...

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Last year I didn't say much about the actual Halloween holiday here in Cancun.  As a general rule, the closer you are to the US border, the more Halloween you get.  The further south you go, the more Dia de Muertos you get.  In Mexico City it was a nice mix of the two holidays.  If anything, Mexican kids took our holiday and...

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Sixteen months old - and into everything!  This guy amazes us all the time with the new skills he's picking up.  A couple of examples: Climbing onto a dining room chair to sit at the table Using a toy to reach something on a table that's out of his reach (reminds me of the tool-making crow) Putting on the shoes of anyone...

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And now the original reason why we came - the Notre Dame-Oklahoma game! On Friday night we arrived in Lockport, a Chicago suburb about an hour south of the city, to spend the night at Theresa's house.  Since she and Brady had been in Peoria with us for the last three days, we decided not to cook and to just order Chinese take-out. ...

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(Photo above is tentatively titled "Three Knuckleheads.") Where were we...oh yes!  We had just checked out of the Hotel Monaco in downtown Chicago, and were waiting for Grandpa Jim to come pick us up and take us back to Peoria, about 170 miles.  As agreed, Grandpa had shown up around 4:30 in his brand new 2014 Ford Fusio...

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Our long-awaited Chicago trip is here!  And it's over!  We took 535 photos, of which I've curated down to only 150, so we'll have to do this blog post in sections.  Part I: Chicago Round 1.  This is the part where we fly direct Cancun to Chicago, go to my sister Beth's house, then stay downtown two nights while I...

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Is it possible for a 15-month-old to hit the "terrible twos" phase?  I was counting on another nine months.  Lately Mommy and Daddy's favorite word has been "no."  Hanging out around our house sounds something like this: "No, Isaac.....no.....I said NO.....ISAAC!"  I remember training our dog, N...

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Back in July when Grandma Kathy and Aunt Becky were in Cancun, we did Isaac's one year photo shoot.  We had done them when he was one month old and six months old, and we think it's important to capture this time of our lives (and not with our point-and-shoot, even though it's really good).  We hired the guy who had done our s...

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Brian came down for a visit over Labor Day and Margie at the last moment decided she couldn't wait for her November visit, so she stocked up on frozen dinners for Sam and booked her ticket south for the same week. On day 3, Adam and Brian packed up their scuba gear and we left the house, with me driving, at 7:15am for the bus station. &...

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