T - 3 days til Vacation

The past week and a half I've been busy getting ready for our upcoming vacation.  In between prepping, errands and cleaning house, I've also taken the kids on a couple of excursions so we all don't go completely nuts.

We took the train downtown to check out the Ledge on the Sears Tower (I refuse to use the new name) which the kids really enjoyed.  I didn't think being out on the Ledge would affect me but I have to admit I got back on regular floor as quickly as I could.  

I also took them to the Spring Valley Nature Center in Schaumburg for a picnic in between errands one day.  It's a nature center and a farm set to look til the 1880s when Schaumburg was a German farming community.  They have people in period clothing who will show you around.  When we were there there was a new calf - Schmidt - who was very cute, and we also saw horses, pigs, chickens and roosters.  They kids thought it was fun (but smelly :)  There are a few picnic tables and we brought our lunch.  There are two parking areas - one close to the farm and one closer to the nature center.  We parked by the nature center so had to walk about a half mile to the farm area.  It's mostly paved but not really well marked so we took a couple of wrong turns but since it's not a big place never got truly lost.  

The only rough part about this past week though is that with all three kids home I haven't been able to run, and as much as I never would have thought it, I miss it.  I saw this on my new favorite Facebook group - Favorite Run - and it made me miss it even more.  

I got up a couple of times to go before he left for work but lately he's been leaving too early.  I am not getting up to run before 6am.  Sorry not that dedicated, especially when staying up late to watch multi-OT hockey games.  He's taking the day off on Friday so I plan to do one last long run that morning and have already mapped some routes around my parents house so I can go while we're there.  I signed up for a 10k 3 days after we get back to make sure I don't slack off completely.