15 years!

We went to Chicago to celebrate our 15 year wedding anniversary. We finally got our honeymoon. We went to Roy's restaurant (pictured here) on the second day and the waitress couldn't believe we had been married that long. She said we looked like we were still so in love. You can imagine her reaction when we told her we had six kids. "You look too young to have six kids!" What a nice compliment. She wanted to know our secret. We told her exercise, eating right, not drinking or smoking, and keeping our relationship as our first priority. We gave her a pretty big tip! We went to some really fabulous restaurants while we were there - Roy's was definitely our favorite one, well, besides Giordano's. We went there three times in 5 days for pizza. We couldn't get enough! It's good we jogged almost every day of our trip. We would've come back 10 pounds heavier.

Here was the highlight of our trip. Wicked!! It was so awesome! Even S loved it and he claims he doesn't like theater, especially musicals. After seeing Wicked he started making plans to go to a bunch of different plays. Of course I'm excited about that. He told me before we got married that one of the things he wanted to do in life was travel the world, see things, do things. I never thought much about it because it wasn't possible for so long and I didn't want to get my hopes up. Plus, when he said it we were looking ahead to many years of schooling and little money. When S would talk about going on vacations without the kids I always told him that I would go anywhere with him and for as long as he wanted... just as soon as our youngest child was old enough. Old enough to me was about three. That age when they can tell anyone what they want and can be understood. And old enough that we could explain to them where we were going and when we would be back and they understand. And old enough that I won't worry about them the whole time I'm gone. Well, I have kept my promise. K is our youngest and she's three. We went on vacation for 5 days and I didn't worry about her at all. This was the longest we have ever been away from our kids and I must say, it was great! We've decided to make this a yearly thing. It's about time!!

Here we are relaxing on the beach waiting for the air show to start. Wow, the beach without kids - what a difference. S said he didn't need sunscreen since it was 2:00 in the afternoon. He fell asleep... and got really burned. I had a hard time feeling bad for him since I offered to put sunscreen on him and he wouldn't let me. This is why I usually don't ask. I just put it on him. While he slept I observed people. I watched a large family near us and noticed that the mom was so nice to her children. She was playing in the sand and in the water with them. She wasn't getting mad or irritated about anything they did. She was just so excited to be there. And just as I was starting to feel like a really bad mom, wondering why I can't seem to be quite like that with my kids when we go places, one of the kids called her "Aunt....". I felt much better. No wonder the kids were being so good. Kids always behave better for other people. Anyway, it was funny.

On our last day we were basically killing time before catching our train back home. We roamed the city taking odd pictures of ourselves. This was our third attempt to get in the picture with the Sears Tower. We had the best week ever. I even went to far as to call it the best week of my life so far. I got to be in one of the greatest cities with my best friend.