Bovines and Big Cities

These past few weeks have been a whirlwind of adventure! Zayden is the biggest nation traveling baby! In his little life of 7 1/2 months he's been in Montana, Illinois, South Dakota, Iowa, Texas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Idaho, Utah, and Ohio. Even myself growing up a military brat, I don't think I went to that many places in 7 months! We have had an amazing adventure ever since we moved to Illinois. I really do think this is the best place for us to be at this time. There are so many things we get to do while we live here! We are two hours from Chicago, three hours from St. Louis, three hours from Lake Michigan, two hours from Justin's aunt and uncle's house who are the best family ever! And lots of activities on campus and around the university. We all love living here!

The past two weekends, we traveled over to Indiana to visit Justin's aunt and uncle's house and their family for some birthdays to celebrate! We visited Fair Oaks Farms which is the nation's largest dairy. I'll explain more of that later down the post! But one of my biggest heart attacks was driving to Chicago for a day trip! I HATE driving in Chicago traffic! I was honked at, saw a pedestrian give another driver the bird, got stuck in an intersection and couldn't let other traffic pass me! It was a nightmare! Not to mention I was following someone in another car and couldn't keep up with her! I always boasted of being a city girl, but San Antonio is an easy city to navigate! Chicago is NOT! Whew I almost had a heart attack while I was driving. It's a crazy world in that city! But we did see some pretty neat things while we were there! The architecture is beautiful in this city! So many tall and beautiful buildings! I can't wait to visit in the summertime when there are concerts in the parks and leaves everywhere! It's an exciting city for sure! (I'll make Justin drive next time!)

The buildings make wonderful mirrors and have such beautiful reflections of the sun! Chicago can take your breath away! (sometimes literally) We visited the giant Soybean! It's a huge soybean shaped sculpture that is fun to look up to and touch and take pictures of! We spent a majority of our time there, not to mention that it blocked the wind!

I completely understand why Chicago was nicknamed the "Windy City"! It was a decent day weather wise until the wind started blowing and freezing our fingers off! You never become more grateful for museums or bathrooms to walk into and warm up your ears and hands! Zayden decided to be a macho man and stick his legs out of his blankets! I had him completely bundled up bug he wriggled his way out and wanted his leg free! Crazy child!

And so proud of getting his leg free!

Matt and Julie's boys Tim and Porter! Just being silly the entire time and glad to be running and free!

Justin's momma, Jana and Zayden! She, Steve, and Racheal came to visit us and drop off a truck for Justin! She spent the weekend with us at Matt and Julie's! It was such a fun weekend!

Zayden is looking more and more like me! Look at that mega watt smile!

Fair Oaks FarmFair Oaks is the nation's largest dairy and encourages visitors to come tour the farm! There was actually a dirty jobs epsiode at this farm! It is pretty cool to go to! So cool, that we went to it two weekends in a row! There's so much to see and do! And don't forget to sample their award winning cheese and fresh ice cream! Yumm! They have a really neat way of milking the cows. There is a 72-cow rotatary that spins and the cows get on and off themselves and they get hooked up and milked. You can see it in the above picture on the left. You also get to take a tour around the dairy and see all the cows getting ready to have calves and the newborn calves. It is a really neat process! You get to see calves being born, you can test your skills as a milker on a fake cow and see if you can beat the record of the workers who attach the milkers to the cow and see if you can attach the milkers to the udders faster.

At the dairy there is an adventure center that has a lot of fun activities for all ages! This is a magnetic climbing wall that is to show you how important calcium is to your body to not develop osteoporosis. They put these gloves on your hands that have very strong magnets on them. Also they put braces on your legs that have magnets on that inside of your calves. You have to work your way up a large sheet of metal! It was so fun! It was pretty easy for me because I am smaller than a grown man and the magnets could hold my weight easily. However, Justin was a different story. He had to balance his weight differently and use stronger magnets because of his size. But he did it! We have it on video but for some reason Blogger won't let me upload videos! Shame!

Justin made it to the tippy top of the wall! To get down you have to put your toes into the wall where there are no magnets and use your hands to slide down. Justin left two large skid marks where he did that! I also got to the top of the magnetic climbing wall! First one of the adults to do it! Pretty pleased with myself!

Zayden and cousin Amelia both riding in a shopping cart with their dads going grocery shopping! She is almost 3 months older than him! You can tell they are related though! Look at those faces!

He was so pleased with himself for riding the "cowausel" (carousel). Justin was holding him steady so he wouldn't fall off, but he was holding on for dear life!

As you can see, I had to hold his arm down because he kept trying to climb the pole! He loves poles! He tries to grab my bedpost every time I carry him past it! He's going to be a little climber!

One day Zayden decided that he was going to scream and cry for some odd reason. Normally he's very happy but not at this time. I thought maybe he was hungry so I started to feed him some food. Well, he was hungry but was going to scream his way through lunch. I felt bad for him, but also thought he was pretty funny looking. He does not cry well. He gets that from me! his eyebrows turn bright red and he just looks a bit silly. I had to take a picture for a keepsake!
Overall, we have had an amazing spring so far! The weather is starting to warm up and Zayden will be able to go outside on walks with Lexus and I. Get ready for a lot more blog posts with fun adventures from our summer!