Great weekend in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood

This past Sunday was a wonderful, inexpensive and fun family day. To start the morning off we attended services at UVC-Andersonville as normal. We had a great discussion of grace and salvation. Madeline studied about communion in her class.
Since the weather was lovely after church we headed over a few blocks to check out Green Genes, a local Eco-minded shop that reminded me of my beloved KD's Treehouse back in Columbia,SC. It was great! Lots of Eco clothing and toys, local artisans, and some great adult items too! Adam loved the men's organic socks with unique designs. It happened to be there five year anniversary celebration that day too! A local vendor, Stolen Moments was there featuring some of the cutest block printed tees and onesies plus a local organic/natural cloth diapering service, Lil' Green Bums. I really enjoyed chatting about diapering with them! Sure my kiddos are potty trained but one day :-) lol. I did learn a lot about wool and discovered how soft it is! The shop owner told us about a children's acoustic concert they were having at 3:30p with Laura Doherty and invited us back for that. It was funny to me since the day before I had discover her thru Chicago Botanical Gardens kids site and the kids loved her music we listened to on YouTube. So we asked for lunch recommendations and made plans to return...I mean free entertainment? Heck yeah!
For lunch we went to the eccentric Hamburger Mary's and it WAS DELICIOUS! Plus, great prices. We then wandered down to GreenSky and browsed the selection of awesome recycled/reclaimed art and home wears. Connected to the shop is a cute shop called First Slice Pie Cafe; I think a future Sunday lunch will totally happen there with the great fresh homemade menu we saw. After popping in a few more antique and thrift shops we went back for the concert. The kids had a total blast! They loved the intimate setting, especially since that made the show interactive for all the kids there. Anyone with kids or friends with kids should totally check out both Green Genes and Laura Doherty either online or in store; you won't be disappointed. We did get Laura's two Cd's and they have been playing ever since...and she's up there with Burkner Band that I am not sick of it because it's good music. Favorite songs are: popcorn song, jake the snake, the hot dog song, and uncle ukulele. Here's some pics:

Shhh...it's a surprise!

Okay, I've been waiting to share the super cute project I did since its a birthday gift for Madeline's BFF but I just can't wait any longer! Thanks to lots of Pinterest ideas I have been hooked on making felt food! Below are the pics of the build your own pizza, complete with shaker cheese. There's also a menu to mark choices as a learning tool but I forgot to take a picture of it.

What a fun weekend

Last weekend the kids and I spent the day together while Adam went to a game with some friends. And wow! The kids behaved wonderfully! I even grocery shopped with no issues or meltdowns! (Thank you Whole Foods for strategically placed samples) at lunch what I consider the highest compliment happened, a total stranger commented on how well behaved, cute and healthy eating habits the two have. I was in proud mom heaven:-) when we got home and put the groceries away we headed to the park for a bit. After playing catch and swinging the kiddos drove into he sand ox with their tools and got to work "gardening". I got to go over SFG squares with Madeline and then she played "how many?" With the SFG she drew in the sand. (I.e. how many radishes in a square? A:16)
Come Sunday, on of Benjamin's classmates turned three and had his party at Monkey Joes. We decided to take Madeline too and one of us go with her and the other go with Ben to the party. The kids & Adam had a blast and I wish I hadn't forgotten socks so I could have joined in the fun. One things for sure, they slept well that night!

A peek at Easter

Easter baskets, lovely dressy kiddos and yummy southern dinner:-)

Our FREE weekend fun!

Saturday we went to the North Park Maple Fest. It was pretty awesome to talk the guided walk to the "sugar bush" (grouping of maple trees) with the kids. Madeline learned what nocturnal means, we saw a tree that the native Americans in the area used the sharp thorns for sewing needles, and was how trees are tapped. The kids now know tree=sap=syrup (when heated). The guide has a great analogy of bark is to skin as sap is to blood. Meaning that like we can give blood the tree can give sap without killing it. We sampled syrup right off the fire too! Yum! They also had wood circles for the kids to make a simple toy.
Once we left we headed to Whole Foods for an inexpensive lunch and ended up having another adventure. They had a scavenger hunt and other activities going on in the store. They kids got to make spring chicks out of eggs, paint Easter eggs and we went around the store finding facts about eggs on Easter eggs for which they each got an awesome goodie bag! Organic jelly beans, a windup toy, organic fruit strip and stickers! Plus, educationally they learned about egg facts from the hunt...for example I thought the ostrich laid the largest egg but its actually the whale shark! We ended the day with some seminary friends birthday celebration and getting to make delicious homemade tamales...which are so easy to make! I am so trying my hand at this soon especially since my hubby liked them:-)

Enjoy the pics!