June concerts

The outdoor summer concerts at the BCPA kicked off mid-June and, like last year, I'm spending more time than I would like being an amateur meteorologist.

One storm barely missed us (picture below) as we set up for our first concert on June 18, but we were walloped by another just 45 minutes after the concert ended. Amy and Owen came down for the show, while Maya hung out with Grampy and Grammie Ives, who were visiting for the weekend.


A week later was our Family Fest concert. This show, too, was challenged by the weather. A heavy morning thunderstorm and a 90-100% chance of more storms in the afternoon guaranteed the move indoors. Of course, after it stopped raining at 9:30, it was nothing but sunny the rest of the day ...

Oh, well.

The show was great fun anyway. The headliner was Justin Roberts, a terrific singer out of Chicago, who writes family-friendly rock music. It was great!

Owen and Maya came down and had a great time, and were joined by several of Owen's friends from school, who we'd given tickets to as party favors at his 5th birthday party.

Maya did well with all of the kids and the face painting, which was a scary challenge for her the last time she was at one of our family events. On the other hand, the scream she let out when she saw the new minor league baseball team's mascot, Corny, might just replace the Wilhelm, and sent her retreating for cover behind her mom's back.

I can't say as I blame her.

The biggest coup of the day, though, might just be this balloon animal I brought home for Owen. We had an absolutely terrific balloon artist on site ... and this Horton the Elephant really is a masterpiece.

Pure Joy at the Park

The nearby spray park was the perfect balm for our third day in a row of withering humidity and high temperatures.

The kids had a great time, running through the fountains and getting dumped on with gushing buckets of water.

Maya had been to this park before, but she was mighty little when we were here last year. Our first trip to the spray park of the season was full of discoveries for her as she has so much more confidence and mobility than she did a year ago.

We started the day exploring the play area: the slides, swings, and climbing gym.


Clearly, Maya thought it was all quite wonderful. She was working her million dollar smile the whole morning ... even when she escaped from me and ran out of the restroom buck naked when we were trying to get changed out of our wet things before going home.

Owen is also particularly charmed by this park's 1937 John Deere Model A.

There was also some snack time at the park, then time to go home for some well deserved naps.

... Maya and Owen rested, too.

A long overdue story

A few weeks ago I was out front doing some chalk drawing on the driveway with Owen and Maya. We were busy playing and talking when all of a sudden it became very quiet from Owen's direction. He was focused, looking intently at the driveway and making an irregular line with the chalk.

Owen had found an ant and was now pushing his chalk behind it as it went on its way. It's safe to say the ant, meanwhile, had noticed what I'm sure looked to it like an enormous piece of pink chalk blocking out the sun wherever it went and had accelerated into a fast twisting pattern hoping to shake it ...

This kept on for a while until I saw Owen look up at me with a worried, slightly shocked expression. Indeed, the game was over.

The chalk finally managed to beat the ant to its destination.

Without missing a beat, Owen made an "X" over the ant at the point of intersection, just like the ones that gets drawn over the eyes of a cartoon character, like those "Spy vs. Spy" crows in Mad Magazine. The ant was gone and attention had been paid.

A couple of minutes later, the game began again and the second ant suffered the same fate.

Too bad. He had all the warning he needed.

If only he read Mad Magazine.

It got better from here ...

Or did it?


It was a marathon weekend (literally) as the Aalberts family traveled to Iowa over Memorial Day.

Clearly, Maya was not interested in being in the car. We'd thought we'd leave for Iowa after the kids had their naps at school, but decided to try to get some miles in over nap time hoping that would make the trip faster and more enjoyable for everyone. But the timing was off. Maya was almost too tired by the time we hit the road and let us know it for the next three hours.

That said, she was energetic, smiley and fun at the three rest stop breaks we took along the way.

It was not a day to be strapped into a car seat.

On Saturday we hit the Iowa City Farmer's Market early, then went to our favorite playground in the ped mall, where the kids got out some energy and the parents found theirs with some coffees from the Java House.

A couple of hours later, Joel left for Madison, WI, to run what was overall his 37th marathon and third there.

I signed up for the race hoping for better conditions than I'd found in Champaign earlier in May. The Illinois Marathon was hot and humid, and my previous experiences in Madison had me optimistic I would find more temperate conditions that would give me a better race day.

While I may be wearing long sleeves in this picture, I ran the race shirtless to help me keep my temps down. It was 85 degrees by race end and it felt it. I finished in 3:45, well off my normal pace, but I still finished 187th overall, a good indicator everyone had a bad day. Indeed, I learned yesterday that they closed the course off 15 minutes after I finished for the health of the runners.

The good news is that I finished ... and that there was a family outing to Whitey's waiting for me when I returned to Iowa.

It was a great way to come home. The kids loved their scoops of Bubble Gum flavored ice cream, although Maya was skeptical of the gum drops themselves, waggling them out of her mouth with her tongue after each bite. It was a mess, but incredibly cute.

And, yes, the trip home went better. I wedged myself between the kids' car seats and acted as cruise director. Owen and Maya each took a nap and we had very little fuss.

It was good to be home.