Beautiful Butterflies, Chicago Trip, Jayda Starts Soccer & Sydney Grows Up!

For Jayda's birthday we ordered Jayda a live caterpillar to butterfly kit. She loves bugs and had seen this kit advertised on the t.v. so we thought we'd get it for her bday. She was SO excited about her butterflies and was beyond thrilled when the 5 little caterpillars finally arrived in the mail! The girls got to watch them over the course of about 3 weeks turn from caterpillars to cocoons to butterflies. It was so neat to watch the whole process. Before they became butterflies Jayda would spray them everyday with a little bit of water, she would call it their bath. Then once they opened up into butterflies she would feed them fresh bananas, oragnes, and sugar water each day. After a few days of flying around in their butterfly habitat we let them out to fly around in our house. They stayed in the house for a few days and the girls both thought that was SO neat!

Jayda with her itty bitty caterpillars. She was SO happy to get them.


The girls with the butterflies after they had come out of their cocoons, yay!


Jayda's pretty little butterflies.


Posing with her butterflies.


She was in love with them and carried this little butterfly house everywhere!


We let them out of their butterfly house into our house and they flew over to the corner and stayed in the blinds. Jayda put some fruit out for them to eat and sugar water to drink and they loved it!


A few random recent pics:

Sisters playing outside in the water while daddy grilled us some fajitas, yum!


Sydney LOVES to fill things up with water. She could do this all day long!


"Whooaaa!"


Sweet girls were so hot the other morning playing outside at the park. We didn't stay for very long!


Jayda put lipstick on herself and Sydney, so pretty!


Last weekend Jacob had a little business to do in Chicago and his boss said he would fly me up there and pay for us to stay for the weekend. Of course we couldn't turn that down. So, he headed up early friday morning and I went up later on friday night. We had a great time sight seeing and hanging out together. Big thanks to Nana and Pawpaw for babysitting the girls while we were gone!!

The first night we got to Chicago Jacob and I went out to a famous restaraunt called Harry Carays for dinner and then went up to the top of the John Hancock tower for drinks. This bar/lounge is on the 96th floor of the building. This building is the 4th tallest building in Chicago and has an amazing view of the city!


On saturday morning we first went out for a run along the lakefront and beach. It was so beautiful along the water and was cool and windy, just perfect! After running for a bit we walked along the beach in the cool water and it was so nice! After coming back to our hotel and getting ready we headed out to see the sights of Chicago. We first headed to Michigan Ave., aka The Magnificent Mile. This street has tons of shops, pretty much any shop you can think of, all along the streeet on both sides. It was basically like a mall, but just separate stores. One of our main stops was the Disney store where we got the girls several little goodies. We walked around most of the day checking everything out, there was so much to see!

We had to stop at the Hershey store, yummy!


Thought this was a cool sign.


Our delicious reese's cupcake and s'more that we got at the Hershey store. This was both of our favorite foods we had in Chicago. :)


While walking along Michigan Ave. we saw some sort of car commercial being filmed.


Chicago Tribune building.


The "corn cob" buildings along the Chicago River.


They are residential buildings and the tenants living there have to back their car into the parking spots so that they don't drive out over the river.


The Chicago Theatre, so cool!


The original Marshall Field & Company building, aka Macy's.


The inside of the original Macy's store, amazing!


It is 9 stories, crazy!


The Chicago Public Library, such a beautiful building!


Millenium Park, so neat that they have lots of beautiful parks right in the middle of all the skyscrapers.


"The Bean" Pretty cool sculpture that is a mirror image of everything around you. Very popular touristy spot in Chicago.


Taking a picture of ourselves in front of the bean.


Awesome view on the Chicago River. Trump tower is the big one on the right.


Marilyn Monroe statue in downtown, another big attraction.


Making a pit stop to get some drinks on the river and take a break from all the walking. Poor Jacob was about to DIE from walking SO much!


We took a Wendella boat tour. The tour took us down the Chicago River to look at all of the amazing buidlings, and then out into Lake Michigan to see the skyline and Navy Pier. I highly recommend this tour if you ever go to Chicago. This was by far my favorite thing we did there!


Trump Tower up close from the river. Amazing skyscraper and very pretty! It's also the 2nd tallest building in Chicago. Another intersting tid bit was that before 9/11Trump planned to make this tower 150 stories tall, but after 9/11 he decided to make it only 96 stories.


We didn't eat here but it looked like a cool place.


View of the Sears Tower from the river down below. The little glass looking cubes at the top are called The Ledge, that we later took some pictures in.


Really neat looking building that curved to imitate the curve in the river, so cool!


Another view while touring down the river.


The building with the gold top was originally the Carbide and Carbon Building, but is now the Hard Rock Hotel. The people that built it couldn't come up with a design, but after looking at a champagne bottle decided that would be the perfect idea for their building, hence the gold top. Pretty funny!


The "Groupon" building. Our tour guide said that just recently they were hiring about 150 people every 2 weeks because their business was growing so fast, pretty crazy!


The building with the wavy edges was the first building ever to be designed by a woman in Chicago. It was just completed about a year ago and now this female architect is very popular in Chicago and is being asked to design lots more buildings. Thought that was pretty neat.


Unfortunately while we were on our tour there was an accident out in the lake. This was the fire department boat heading out of the locks from the river into the lake to rescue the boaters that had crashed.


View of the city while we headed out into the lake, so beautiful!


Neat lighthouse in the lake.


The Navy Pier. This used to be the worlds largest pier. It has undergone a lot of changes over the years, but now has lots of neat restraunts, shops, rides for kids, a childrens musuem and much more. It was a very fun place!


View of some of the buildings while out on the lake. The tallest one in the picture with the antennas is the John Hancock tower where we got drinks at the first night, pretty cool!


Quick pic while touring out on the lake. Chicago really is the windy city. It was windy the whole time we were there and felt amazing in comparison to the extreme heat in TX!


A yacht parked in front of the Navy Pier that takes people out on dinner cruises.


The NBC building where Oprah used to film her show.


The Wrigley building. I thought this was the most beautiful building in Chicago.


Sign out front.


We ate dinner at this little cafe on the pier the last night that we were in Chicago. After dinner we sat out on the pier and watched the fireworks show while enjoying a funnel cake, yum!


"Chi-Town"! About to head up to the top of the Sears Tower.


This sign shows how far you can see from the top of the Sears Tower, now known as the Willis Tower. You can actually see into 4 different states from the top!


View of part of downtown Chicago and the lake from the top of Sears Tower.


Different view of downtown, completely amazing up there!


They just added "The Ledge" at the top of the Sears Tower where you can walk out into a glass cube and stand up above the city and look around everywhere. This was pretty amazing and Jacob thought it was so cool. I was not as big of a fan!


We had to try the "Chicago style pizza" of course while we were there so we went to one of the original restraunts to check out all the buzz.


The yummy pomegranite margarita that we got while we waited for our pizza to cook, which took 45 minutes.


The PIZZA! There it is, a big huge chunk of pizza, or more like pizza pie, or some people call it a tomatoe quiche. It was pretty good, but very different from the regular type of pizza. You have to eat it with a fork, definitely can't pick this up. And, they put all the toppings on first, and then the tomatoes and sauce on top. Definitely would not want to eat this often, but it was neat to try.


Jayda started soccer practice for the first time this past tuesday. She was so excited about starting soccer and had a great time at her first practice, despite having her 4 year old check up the same day and getting 4 shots! She seems to really like soccer so far, can't wait to watch her first game!

Jayda with her little team mates warming up for practice.


Doing some stretches at her first soccer practice.


Time for a water break, it was SO hot out!


Practicing a little kicking around.


Love this picture!


Sydney found the ice pack in our goody bag while at Jayda's practice and kept grabbing it and saying "issh", "issh"!


A few more random pics:

Jayda was being very sweet and helped me make chocolate cupcakes earlier this week.


Eating the chocolate cupcakes that we'd made earlier, YUMMO!


The girls were having lots of fun sliding down the big slide in the hill at a nearby park yesterday morning.


And this is how Sydney eats a smoothie, whoa!


Jayda got to meet her teacher for pre-k this morning and loved her new teachers and classroom. She was having so much fun making ice cream for everyone and did not want to leave. She starts pre-k next week, yay!


Sydney peed and pooped for the first time this morning on the little potty! She was SO excited and proud of herself. She kept saying "chee-chee", "poo-poo" over and over and would not get off the potty for about 20 minutes. This was the first time I'd ever put her on this potty and she loved it. Guess we may start potty training sooner than I planned!


Funny enough, as soon as I took the picture above of Sydney pottying for the first time, this picture of Jayda popped into my mind. So funny, they are both cheesing so big and were both 18 months old. Too cute!


While looking at Jayda's old picture I also found this one of Jayda (18 months) and Riley (14 months) playing together, so cute!


And here the big girls are now, with little miss Sydney at 18 months. Riley was fixing their hair in the "beauty shop". It's crazy how fast time flies!