Soul and Glow have graduated to big girl beds, and I took these last few shots of them with their little beds in their room. I went back and forth on the decision to move them to a big girl bed for sentimental reasons; this growing up stuff is going way too fast. But when Glow told me, “Mommy, I’m a little squished,” I knew it was time to move on to bigger. Here’s a peek at their big girl beds (we’re still waiting for Soul’s mattress to come in). We’ve switched this rug out for a a simpler one, and we still haven’t decided what to put on the walls. I’m hoping once Soul’s mattress comes in, and the beds feel put together, I’ll get inspired on how to decorate the rest of the room.

This week’s learned, links, and thankfulness…

We’re loving the Olympics, so I’m thankful for when the girls and I all pile in my bed and watch together. I love serenading them with the national anthem when USA gets gold.

Thankful my mom celebrated another year in her life! And she never ages.

Love these pastel colored macrame.

Caramel churro chex mix sounds good. I’d happily be snacking on that.

School is coming up soon and I’m finalizing my curriculum choices for the year.

We are enjoying the last bits of summer with lots of swimming.

The whole house got sick with some sort of bug a week ago, and we all took turns with it. Praise the Lord we are all back to enjoying our temporary good health again.

I want to paint the rest of the downstairs and give it a fresh coat of white, but I’m intimidated. I know I did all of upstairs, but starting again downstairs makes me nervous. Gotta find that motivation again.

We’ve got lots of garden projects up the wazoo, so that’s what we will be working on this weekend. Happy weekending friends!

For lunch, we walked to Avec. We didn’t have reservations, but we called the day before, and they said if we where there before they opened, we’d be able to dine at the restaurant. I highly recommend making reservations though. We ordered paella, a couple sandwiches, and their sesame coco bars for dessert. All of it was delicious, but the paella was my favorite. The girls loved the paella too. While we thoroughly enjoyed our lunch, their dinner menu sounds a lot more delicious.

Our kids are used to sitting down during meal time, and staying seated during the whole meal (it’s a lot of practicing at home), but I’m not sure this is the type of restaurant to take children if they are more exploratory during mealtimes. It’s a small space, and you sit close to others, so you really have to do well to keeping to your personal space.

On this ig post, someone mentioned making a stop to Do-Rite Donuts, and so we did. After our lunch, we walked over to the nearest Do-Rite location. There’s always room for dessert, right?! We picked up 3 donuts to share, and while we waited for our river tour, we all ate the donuts together. I thought they were yummy, but donuts aren’t my thing, so I tend to think all donuts taste similarly. They were all happily devoured, so Do-Rite seem to be doing things right.

After our architecture tour (and some freshening up in our hotel room), we headed to the Girl & the Goat for dinner. It’s another must make a reservation place, but we were there before they opened, so we were able to dine in. Oh boy was this place scrumdiddlyumptious!  We ordered raw oysters, roasted beets, hamachi crudo, grilled baby octopus, wild striped bass, duck tongues (the girls chose this!), goat carpaccio, goat empanadas, pinn oaks lamb tartare, and all the leches cake for dessert. We loved it all and wanted more, but our wallet was satisifed, though our tummies weren’t! And I’m still craving the oysters! If I ever find myself back in Chicago, I would definitely eat here again.

After dinner, we took a taxi to Millennium Park to walk around and enjoy some of the art sculptures. Of course, we took a million and one pictures at Cloud Gate (a separate post for that coming soon). Then, we walked over to Buckingham Fountain. The girls had fun running around and chasing each other here, until Glow ate it on the concrete. We ended the evening at the play garden at Maggie Daly Park. This is the coolest playground we have ever seen (a must go when in Chicago) and the girls had so much fun going up and down on all the slides and towers. There were a lot of protests when we said it was time to head back to the hotel.

After our very full day (see more of it here), it was nice our hotel was a 10 minute walk from Maggie Daly Park, and we were all showered and in bed in no time. Ben and I were both so impressed with Chicago. It’s a well thought out city and you can see the pride they take in it. It’s clean, well cared for, and caters well to families. They work hard to preserve the beauty and history, and you can tell that its residents really love their city. The only thing that freaks us out a little about Chicago is the driving, and this is coming from aggressive California drivers. Other than that, we wish it was closer, so we can visit more often.

Chicago, we really, really like you.

read more about our #bratchersixmidwestfix here.

We did a little bit more of the Big Bus Tour to start off the day, and then we got off at the Willis Tower. The short film about the creation of the tower was so interesting. You see these big buildings and rarely think about all it took to create these grandiose structures. I got a little nervous when they showed the guys at the very top during construction. It’s just insane to think that workers were scaling the tops of these things to make sure all the beams and whatever else is in place. I’m thankful for their work and that we can enjoy their creations from inside it’s walls and not the open elements. Whew!

Of course, we all were very excited to get on The Ledge. When I say we, I mean all the girls, but Ben. We slowly inched onto the glass, looked down, quickly got in position to take our pictures, and then speedily got off. My hands were so shaky trying to keep all girls safe. I know it’s not likely to break, but it’s that mind game with seeing the ground clear below you. Scary, so scary! We got in line a few more times to get some different snaps. For the last one, we finally convinced Ben to join us. I think you can tell what he’s thinking based on his face.

After lunch, we took a nice stroll through the city before our Chicago Architecture Foundation River Cruise. The guides for this are legit and ours was an excellent wealth of our information. It is a 90 minute tour and we learned all about contextualism, mid century, art deco, modernism, and whole bunch of other fancy architecture terms. It was such a relaxing tour and the weather was so nice (compared the super cold days before). The girls are young, but I love exposing them to stuff like this because you never know when something is going to leave an impression on them and inspire them later. Ben and I definitely had a deeper appreciation for the art of creating buildings.

Click #bratchersixmidwestfix to see other recaps of our Chicago days.

Beaded Bow Headband

Supplies:
Wooden beads
22 gauge wire
Plastic headband
Fabric strip/ribbon
Glue gun and glue stick
Scissors
Wire cutter

Directions:
1. Cut a 20″ strand of wire. String beads on the wire, but leave 3″ of each end unfilled.

2. Twist the wire where the beads end together (leave a little slack for the beads) to create a closed circle. Twist the wires at the center to create the bow shape.

3. Identify placement of the bow on your headband, then twist the wire ends around the headband to secure on.

4. Add a dab of glue to one end of the headband to attach the fabric/ribbon. Wrap entire length of the headband with your fabric strip/ribbon, continue to glue as needed until the entire headband is wrapped. Lastly, adjust the beaded bows in place.

Soul wears her beaded heart headband all the time, so I thought it was time to make a bow one.  Maybe we should have made a cat ears to match her dress. If you want a bigger bow, use a longer wire, and smaller bow, smaller wire. We made two different sizes and Soul claimed both as her own (I had to remind her to share).

on soul: cat dress (similar here) and cat shoes, c/o childrensalon.

To celebrate Brave’s last single digit birthday, we did something on the 9th minute of every hour for nine hours. We would all count down the last 10 seconds right before time changed to :09. Our Brave was so giggly and excited to see what the next surprise would be.

8:09– She got her breakfast in bed, as well as a new pack on instax mini film. Ben made her a little grape ant to go with her French toast.

9:09– On her birthday list was a “new watch” because her Timex one had broken. I checked it out, and the battery was just dead, so we replaced her battery, and her watch was working like new again!

10:09– Of course, every birthday has a birthday dress! I made her a denim one (inspired by this dress) and sewed on fun patches in random places, with an 09 to commemorate the occasion.

11:09– She requested a sushi lunch, so that’s what the birthday girl gets. We had some special visitors over for lunch, and we were all so busy chatting, I forgot to take a picture of the kids, who were not as chatty due to the language barrier. The kids created their own California hand rolls and the adults made ahi tuna hand rolls. It was a wonderful afternoon celebrating and chatting away with them.

12:09– A simple request of mechanical pencils was easy to grant.

1:09– With all the swimming they do, a new bathing suit was needed. It was supposed to be for our weekend away, and while we didn’t get out of town for the weekend, she still was able to get some swimming in at what we like to call the Garza Resort (Ben’s cousin’s home).

2:09– This wasn’t on her birthday list, but I knew a reading light would come in handy for her late-night for reading. She had liked this light at IKEA a few months back, so I picked it up for her birthday.

3:09– She wanted a photo album for all the mini instax pictures she takes, so we got her this one.

4:09– The celebration ended with 9 sprinkle donuts and a couple jolly rounds of “Happy Birthday” for our new 9 year old.

Since, we had some friends over for lunch, we all got carried with playing and talking, so we continued the 1:09 and on countdown the very next day. Brave didn’t mind that little adjustment because that meant another day to celebrate her birthday. True (and Ben) started not feeling well the next day, so we had to change our plans from leaving out of town to staying home. We spent all of Saturday in our master bedroom, which we dubbed room 8416 (her birthday is August 4), and Ben made her a hotel key that said, “The Bratcher Comfort Inn,” and we did all the things we normally do at a hotel. Lots of snacking, movie watching, napping whenever, and the only thing we missed out on was the swimming, which we did the very next day at the Garza Resort.

We are so thankful for our Bravey’s sweet heart and her ability to roll with it when he had to change some plans due to some unforeseeable circumstances. I definitely was not as gracious as a child (I was more bratty). When we would ask her what she wanted, her reply was, “I just want to cuddle.” She said cuddling was her favorite thing. Thus, as we watched movies all day long on Saturday, we made sure to do lots of cuddling with her.

Dear Bravey, we love the kind-hearted girl God is growing you into. We are so thankful for your selflessness and how you strive to love others above yourself. We are praying that God continues to open your eyes to understand who Jesus is and what He has done for you.