Weekend Getaway to the Windy City!

This past weekend we took a three day trip to Chicago! We stayed downtown, and were able to do quite a few things, including the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Michigan Ave., Watertower Place, Navy Pier, and lots of walking around the city in general! We also ate at several great restaurants! I highly recommend E.leaven for breakfast! :-)

Summer Days

It's been an unbelievable busy summer! I've been working at Ann Taylor, teaching summer school, tutoring four children, completing the final class in my master's degree, keeping up the running schedule (most weeks), and continuing to stay active at church. I actually think the start of the school year might be a break for me!

Summer school and my class will be complete at the end of next week, so I'll look forward to a break then. We are hoping to maybe take a short trip somewhere in August, but we'll see how things go. Work has been very busy for Aaron too!

Wish I had some fun pictures to post, but not today. We've been too busy to do anything worth taking pictures of I'm afraid!

Toledo Botanical Gardens

I recently visited the Toledo Botanical Gardens with my second grade class. It went along with our plant unit, and was an inexpensive trip to do. I had never been there before, so I was delighted to see how great it was! The kids enjoyed themselves as well. Here are some photos of the gardens. I look forward to visiting again!

Updates

Wow! It's been far too long! There really isn't much to update, but here's the latest from the Wiens family:

Aaron has continued to be busy working in commercial real estate. He's really enjoying what he's doing. He has also, of course, gotten back into golf now that the warm weather is here, and is playing pretty well already! Unfortunately it doesn't really work for us to join the league we have played on the last two years (our church league) due to our schedules, but he is finding time to play nonetheless. We purchased tennis rackets this past weekend, and are looking forward to doing that together this summer. I think I will enjoy it more than golf. My attention span seems to run out after about seven holes of golf.

I've been back to running on a fairly regular basis! My friend Melissa and I are working on speeding up our 5k time. We've talked about working towards a mini-triathlon too, but we'll see how that turns out! It's been ages since I have done much of any swimming, so it would take me quite a while to be able to do it, I'm sure!

I have about four weeks left of school before I have a short break, and then start five weeks of summer school. I'm also continuing to work a day or two a week at Ann Taylor, and I'll pick up more hours there in the summer, along with tutoring a few students. Even though it sounds busy, it will be MUCH less busy than I've been all year, so I'm really looking forward to some down time!

Can you believe that our five year anniversary is in just a couple of weeks? I can't! It's hard to believe it's already been that long, and I couldn't be more thankful for every year!

West Palm Beach and Flat Stanley

We just returned from a short but fabulous trip to West Palm Beach! We flew down to look at a car Aaron was interested, decided to buy it, and drove it home! :-) It was such a great deal that it more than payed for our trip, and it's in wonderful shape having been in Florida without the snow and salt!

We stayed at the PGA National Resort and Spa. It was excellent, and I would highly recommend it to anyone! The rooms were slightly outdated, but extremely clean and you can get rooms in a wide variety of price ranges, so many are very reasonable. The food and services were defintely priced a little high, but the service was AMAZING! Best service I have had anywhere. The staff is top notch. I look forward to returning again in the future for a longer stay! The area is gorgeous, and we were able to enjoy 80 degree weather in January.

One of my students asked me to take his Flat Stanley along for a project we have been doing, so I happily took him with us and took some photos of him along the way.