Pictures from our Chicago/Naperville trip

Finally, I am posting our July 4th weekend pictures. It was such a beautiful weekend in the Chicago area. The weather was pretty disgusting in New York, so we were glad we got away. We visited our friends Sunhee and Laird and their kids, Julian and Claire, in Chicago and saw the entire Wang family in Naperville.

We arrived on Friday morning and went to the park by their house in the afternoon. Claire wanted to hold Lia and push Lia's stroller:


Afterwards, we went to a Fourth of July party the brand new home of some other friends, Damon and Jennifer, who have two adorable kids, Isabella (who just "graduated" from kindergarten) and Finn. Too bad Lia couldn't eat any of the fantastic spread the put out! (Ummm, let's see, fried chicken, bratwurst, hot dogs, burgers, all sorts of bean salads, fruit salads, potato salads and dips, tons of desserts... a perfect Fourth of July!

We drove to Naperville on Saturday morning and spent the day at Vincent and Janie's house. (Thanks again for letting us all descend upon you!) Samantha told me that her name was "Saman-far". But she could speak quite clearly, so I was very puzzled... until Alan and Xiao-Wei said they saw a program where there was a Chinese girl named Samanfar and were talking about it the night before!

Samantha enjoyed playing with Lia, too:

From 2008-07-04 Ju...

Lia seemed to know instinctively who the most experienced baby snuggler was:



Although I think Janie came in a very close second:


We headed back to Chicago in the afternoon so that the adults could all go out to dinner and left the kids with two very capable babysitters. Then on Sunday morning, we had a lovely breakfast of freshly baked popovers (thanks again, Sunhee!). Claire bestowed one of her favorite dresses on Lia before we left. Both Julian and Claire shed tears. Claire, through sobs, asked her mom, "Can't we swap Julian for Lia?"




Poor Claire! We were sad to go, too! Hopefully, we'll go back to Chicago soon!