Greetings from the Midwest!

Day two of our midwestern adventure is now over. We are having a great time. It's pretty much gone better than we could have even hoped for, thus far. The whole airport and flight experience was awesome. Our gate was at the very end of the terminal, so Joshua was able to look at the airplanes taking off, and could even look through a telescope.

That kept him sufficiently entertained while we waited until time to board the plane. Both of the boys handled the 3 1/2 hour flight like pros.

Ben even fell asleep during takeoff, and napped for about the first hour of the flight. Once we were in the air, Joshua was easily entertained by the DVD player we borrowed from our friends (thanks Daniels!).

After we landed in Midway airport, we got our rental car and headed to our hotel in Willowbrook, a nice little suberb of Chicago. Josh's take on the rental car: "I like this car... I want to give it a hug!" (And he did). After getting settled in our hotel, we went to dinner at a local fried chicen restaurant, Del Rhea's Chicken Basket.

It as SO good, and such awesome atmosphere. Definitely a midwestern style. The boys handled their first night staying in a hotel like champs. We decided against brining our portacrib with us after seeing how much luggage we would have to lug through the airport, so the first night we each slept with a kid. Josh was a little distracted having Daddy in bed with him, but he fell asleep fairly quickly. Ben fell right asleep in the bed and slept all night long.

Andrew and I didn't really get much sleep, as the boys are pretty animated sleepers, but we were at least thankful that they boys were sleeping well.

This morning we got up early (really early for us, since our body clocks are running 2 hours earlier than local time), and got ready to head to Peoria for day two of our tour of Illinois. The drive from Chicago to Peoria is probably pretty boring for people who live here and are used to it, but to us it was beautiful. Josh got a big kick out of all the big red barns we passed along the way, and loved going over the bridges. Everything here is so green and beautiful. It's so different than our home in the desert. We spent the day at Aunt Connie's house among tons of family who we don't get the pleasure of seeing often enough. We all had a great time, eating good food and enjoying great company. Here are some photos of our day.

Now we're back at the hotel, enjoying our one bedroom suite, so the boys are sleeping in a separate room, giving Andrew and I some quiet time before going to sleep ourselves. Tomorrow is mother's day, and we plan to hang out together, probably hit a local zoo and possibly take a dip in the in door pool, and definitely catch either lunch or dinner at Steak n Shake, a local fast food joint. We are having so much fun on our vacation so far. Here's hoping it continues to go was well as it has so far!