Chicago Bound...Day ONE!!

Okay...so I am behind on the blog again....surprise....surprise....

Two weeks ago we headed to Chicago to visit my sister, brother-n-law, 2 nieces (Kahla and Lindsey), and my 2 nephews (Trent and Brendan)!! However, they had a HUGE storm come through a few days before we left and had some severe damage and NO POWER!! Ugh!! No power means no water for my sis because they have well water. So....we decided to head up to St. Louis and camp out there until power came back on or we could get a hotel close to their house.

We left Tuesday morning (July 3rd)! The kids were ready to get there about 1 hr into the car ride....sigh...tried to keep them busy...Emery liked dressing up and Max liked reading, ipad, and movies!

Just had to stop at LAMBERTS on the way up!! I have many childhood memories of stopping here when we went up to visit family!! 

Max and Emery got a roll thrown first thing!! Max LOVED it!! Emery wasn't so sure about it ;)

My little sweetheart!! Sometimes....LOL

Acting CRAZY for daddy!!!

My two handsome boys!! They were saying Memphis and Cowboys are #1

We had to stop on the way out a play a little basketball in the arcade!! Fun times!!

And of course you have to play on the wood trains out front...I think those have been there for YEARS!!

Back in the car...Miss Emery was NOT HAPPY!! She was so fussy and cranky the rest of the way :(

Thankfully we made it to our destination for the night!!!

Kids went CRAZY!! Bouncing around and having fun being out of the carseats!!

A little snack while Mommy and Daddy were figuring out what we were going to do for the night!

Most of the "cool" things everyone told us to do were closing for the evening so we found a little game place called Hammer's (very similar to Incredible Pizza) to let the kids burn off some of their energy!!

The food was HORRIBLE but at least we had fun playing!!

Mini golf...mini bowling...

Max was having a BLAST bowling!!

Emery even enjoyed us helping her!! SHOCK...she let us help her ;)

A little b-ball

and racing....

GO-KARTS!!! Max and Daddy's first time doing this together!! SO EXCITING!! Max was grinning ear to ear!!!

A little skee-ball and football.....a ton of other games....some bouncing....some riding....and then we called it a night!!

Back at the hotel we went for a little swim and on the way back to the room we grabbed us some MILK AND COOKIES!! Yes!! Thank you Hampton Inn!!!

Sweet moment of the night...Max and Emery sharing!!

We actually ended up all cuddling up on the bed and watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates on my iPhone to finish out the night!! So loved snuggling with my little family!!

We had a great first day of our family vacation despite the crazy car ride ;) Feeling so BLESSED!!