We are back from our fall break trip. We aimed a bit lower than the epic Niagara trip from last year; this time I took Friday off and we just overnighted in Chicago. We dropped the van off at a mechanic on the way out of town because it had been making a loud roaring/rattling noise from the back end for a while. Then we got breakfast at the new Crazy Egg Cafe on the way out of town, and headed to Chicago and went straight to the Museum of Science & Industry. We'd wanted to go see the "Robot Revolution" traveling exhibit for some time now, and that was the primary reason for the entire trip. The exhibit was really cool, but not as cool as we'd all thought/hoped. We also caught an Omnimax movie (about whales) while we were there, and stayed overnight in a nice motel out in Schaumberg, which had a pool, of course. Early the next morning (so early we had to wait a few minutes for it to open) we hit the IKEA and spent almost $350. But we did get the desk attachment that goes under the loft bed we got for Missy a while back, and a storage unit for Alex's room that should make things a lot better there too. On the way back we stopped in Merrillville at the Albanese Candy Store, which was...busy...and at the Valpo Fazoli's, which is fast becoming the kids favorite restaurant. And I even had a win with the van just before break; the big rattle it turned out to be a loose exhaust pipe heat shield that according to the mechanic wasn't really needed, so they just removed it and it only cost $20. So I had a tire repaired and an oil change while we were at it and still got out for only $86, sweet.

This week brought the last Race for Education my kids will participate in. Which is not that big a deal. Missy helped raise money and Beth helped with the racing part at work.
Yesterday the kids had a cookout/party at the Letsch's for children's church. Alex went too, even though as a 7th grader he is no longer in children's church but youth group. Anyway, they had the whole shebang going on there, with games and snacks and hot dogs and tractor rides and trampolines and Frisbees and catapults and everything.
And I gotta say that probably the highlight of my week, maybe even year, was watching the highlight over and over again of the Spartans beating U-M by converting a botched UM punt into an MSU touchdown on the last play of the game. Hee hee hee!

Iris, although she remains constantly agitated by the presence of the kitten, continues to be a provider for us. This week, she brought Beth 2 snakes! What a good girl!
Yesterday morning I ran the Run for Life 5k, coming in at 26:14 which isn't great but considering how pneumonia wrecked my training plan I'm pretty good with it. I did win my age group too. Ran into Trey from work there, he was helping with registration (he had a recent bike accident and can't run on his foot). I feel like I'm starting to get back to where I was before, running-wise. Anyway, later on since it was such a nice fall day we went for a geocaching drive. Since we've pretty much got all the local caches, we headed for Wabash. We hit several schoolhouse and ISQ caches in the area before punching out (not least because the country air was pungent). The schoolhouses were really cool; apparently there are a bunch of old one-room schoolhouses from the 1800s still standing out in the country, which now are on the property of whoever owns the farmland, and many are now used as garages for tractors and such.

This morning I took a load of junk to Lewis Salvage, most notably the old water heater, the old desktop computer, and a box of scrap metal from the garage. And got a whopping $15.17 for the whole load. Beats a poke in the eye, I guess. Iris had to go to the vet just afterwards, always an adventure, especially now that she's constantly enraged by the presence of the kitten at home. She was pretty wigged out but took her shots well enough.