Birthday Trip: Chicago

Chris and I left for Chicago after work today. We ate dinner at Cozy Dog Drive In in Springfield.



We're staying near the concert venue tonight so we can get to Toyota Park early tomorrow to hopefully get good seats for Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival 2010.

Bonus! Our hotel room smells like hamster pee.

The Not-Cheap Seats

Dennis got some infield-box seats for a Cardinals' game from a vendor.





The seats were great, and the Cards won 9 - 3. My giant pretzel was very dry, but good. I'm glad Dennis got the giant lemonade to wash it down with!

What I'm Reading

An American Story Debra Dickerson

Garden update

The garden seems to be doing well this year. I didn't move the beds down the hill, so it is still more shady than I'd really like.













The lillies are in full bloom right now, and my hydrangeas are getting a good start too.

Washington D.C.

Chris is planning to participate in an amazing educational program to Washington, D.C., next Spring with his friends and classmates from St. Charles! They’ll spend a total of five days together in D.C. learning really cool things about our country. Here are some of the awesome activities that are planned for them on their Discover D.C. program:

• The Capitol: seeing the Rotunda and the Senate and House chambers where Congress meets.
• White House: visiting the most famous house in America - home to our president and the executive branch of our government.
• Lincoln Memorial: paying tribute to our 16th president and reading his famous Gettysburg Address.
• Arlington National Cemetery: seeing the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, the Eternal Flame at JFK’s gravesite, and the Challenger Memorial.
• Smithsonian Museums: visiting the many Smithsonian museums located on the Mall in D.C., including the Air and Space Museum and Museum of Natural History.

In order to take part in this totally unique adventure, he needs to raise a total of $1707. Please help him by sponsoring a portion of his trip. Any contribution you could make would bring him that much closer to this once-in-a-lifetime experience. Please contact us for details on how to send in your contribution.

Please call or email me if you have any questions or want to hear more about this really great learning opportunity. WorldStrides is the educational travel company organizing the trip, and you can check out the Student Center on www.worldstrides.org to see tons of videos, photos, and interviews with other kids who have already traveled. Thank you for your consideration.




I'll continually update this post as we get closer to the goal and trip time.

What I'm Reading

I've been hitting the biography reading list hard lately.

Maria Callas: An Intimate Biography Anne Edwards.



For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter and Kris Stoever



An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us James Carroll



An Hour Before Daylight : Memoirs of a Rural Boyhood Jimmy Carter



Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter James S. Hirsch



Colors of the Mountain Da Chen



The Journey of Crazy Horse: A Lakota History Joseph M. Marshall III



Life and Death in Shanghai Nien Cheng

There are plants in my garden!

I finally built the chicken wire and conduit fences from the materials I bought last year. I spread black landscape fabric over my beds to hopefully kill off the crabgrass that got into my garden last year. Now I've got plants in the ground!

I didn't get this done earlier because I knew the fabric would make direct seeding difficult.


Lettuces, petunias, monring glories and pole beans.


Cantaloupe, cukes, nasturtium, marigolds, perennial herbs.


Tomatoes, borage, amaranthus, mairgolds, peppers.