Labor Day, literally

We went to Chicago over the weekend to go to the temple. Attending the temple for us requires so much planning and money that we don't go as often as we would like. It is three hours and two tolls away, too far to leave the kids with a sitter ("See you in 10 hours, girls!") Sometimes we do it in one great big day and other times we overnight it and make it super fun. This time we traded with another family who have 5 girls just younger than ours. We took all 9 girls to the children's museum while they went to the temple and they took all the kids to a nature preserve (on the hottest Labor Day weekend in history - totally not a fair trade for them) while Kelly and I went. None of us got any pictures of all those girls because it took two adults constantly counting heads to keep track of them. My sweet mother-in-law sent a family name for me to do, one of the first I've ever done. We were one of two couples in the session -- it was awesome, except the man kept blowing his nose and they kept asking the woman if she was doing all right. Kelly and I are hoping they weren't contagious...

The next day we took the kids to the Lincoln Park Zoo. I really like knowing enough about Chicago to know where to go and the fun things to do. I think I have New York set up in my mind as the REALLY big city and Chicago is just the little brother, but that may not be true. The Chicago Museum of Art has the best collection of art in the country, I think. The architecture is amazing, and with Lake Michigan right there, it is really quite pretty. Every time I go, I think "I can't believe that all this is only three hours from home."

When we got home at dusk last night, this is what we found in our backyard:

A huge storm had blown through just an hour after we had left on Friday, leaving our neighborhood ravaged and looking like a battlefield.

It was still raining today, so not much cleanup has happened in Appleton yet. Most people have power by now, but some of the trees that came down are enormous and there is a little part of me that wishes I could have been here to see the damage done. Especially since nothing happened to our house.
These are the branches from the tree in front of our house. It's hard to appreciate the magnitude of the damage just from the pictures. It is quite breathtaking and we will be spending most of tomorrow cleaning our yard and the yards of neighbors and ward members.

On a totally unrelated note, I ran a half marathon two weekends ago. It was my first in a few years and I had forgotten how much I hate the last two miles. This was the Cheesehead Half and it was in dairy country. The course kept to country roads and part of it was on a trail (fabulous running). It was very isolated, my favorite kind of running. This was my first race with an iPod and I did all my training runs listening to General Conference and reruns of Car Talk. If the race people had known that, they might have entered me in the 50+ division.

Coming down the home stretch, though, I put on a little Shakira. Waka Waka is my favorite end-of-a-run song, especially the Spanish version. After two hours of devotional messages and NPR, it is the perfect contrast. And it reduced my age back to normal, maybe even a little younger. Seriously, download this song if you don't already know it.
Kelly brought all the girls to watch me finish and they were very impressed with my medal. I didn't tell them that everyone who ran got a medal. Maybe it's good for them to think that their mother is a winner. It's so easy for now...

At the finish line, instead of the usual bagels and fruit, they served sausages, cheese, fried cheese curds, nachos, and beer. There was not a piece of fresh fruit anywhere. I wish I had taken a picture of the post-race "feast" because it truly was a sight to behold. Only in Wisconsin...
This picture pretty much sums up our summer. Hair sort of done, clothes mostly matching, loving each other one minute and being separated the next. It really has been one of the best summers we have had and we're so sad to see it go. Fortunately, we get to prolong it with a trip to Disneyland in a week! Hooray!!