Tall Ships at Navy Pier

Last week the Hills were so kind to take me with them to Navy Pier to see the Tall Ships! The ships come only every 5 years and it was supposed to be the largest number of ships this year. It was so neat - the ships look so old (in a good way). Wendy and I were wishing we had dressed up in our historical outfits - it would have been such a great photo op.

I took over 500 pictures, so you'll have to bear with me as I tried to pick the best of the bunch to post, which, I will warn you ahead of time, amounted to 42 pictures (and I could have posted more, believe me). If you get bored, please don't comment and say so; you will burst my happy bubble (I was so proud of myself for choosing 42 out of 518). :-)

Here is Justin sitting on a real anchor - I forget what ship it was that they rescued it from

(it was sunk I think)

There was a huge line for this ship, mainly because it was used in Pirates of the Caribbean.

Rope! Wendy and I were rather enamored with the rope. Mrs. Hill was laughing at us. :-)

Me & my sister for the day... or daughter :-)

(inside joke - ask if you absolutely must know)

The color of the water was beeeeautiful.

What can I say? Rope is cool!

Justin looking down at us from the deck

Here's where you would eat your meals

Olivia playing with the canons (don't try this at home).

She made it in the paper online! Click here.

Front view of the Bounty.

Awwww.

A neat angle of the rigging.

After we looked at some of the ships, we took a break for lunch and then we saw the Chinese Acrobat show - Cirque Shanghai Cloud 9. It was quite amazing and we had front row seats!

Olivia waits for the show (and looks cute)

I don't think those 4 guys are holding enough people, do you?

I do this with my coffee table all the time. NOT!

How many people does it take to ride a bicycle?

You can't tell, but the bicycle is up on a shaky, 10 foot tall platform.

Yeah.

This guy better have some very big, very strong feet...

This is a collage of 3 pictures showing the progression of the act.

Who comes up with this stuff?

"Let's stack 20 chairs on top of each other, put the top one on an angle, and have a girl balance on one arm on top!"

"Yeah, that sounds like a great idea!"

:-)

After that, we saw some more ships. :-) Having fun yet?

Good Dutch ship...

This one was cool because the sails were partly unfurled

A piece of wood in rope! YAAAY!

Cap'n Wendy

Oh boy!! More rope! I'm thrilled!

Unfortunately we couldn't board this ship, but they had a neat display of weapons, etc. Click on the picture to enlarge it and have a better look.

We finally got our fill of ships and Wendy, Justin and I rode the ferris wheel and took (more) pictures.

It was a little windy. :-)

Here's Mr. Hill with two giant bags of his favorite popcorn! They got his order wrong so they gave him the wrong bag for free. Yummm...

A ship coming in at sunset.

All in all I had a great day! I would definitely recommend you go see the ships... but you will have to wait 5 years. :-) Thanks, Hills!!!!

2010 Christ's Church Softball Game

Tara's gear all ready to go... :-)

This past Saturday was the annual church softball game! For the first time since I can remember, our whole church was on one team. :-) This year, our church played the guys from Justin Kelly's church. Guess who won???

Us, of course. *wink*

And I have been informed that I must put the score up or people will be mad, which may also be translated that Josh and Ethan will be mad. :-) Therefore, the score is here announced: The Purple Team (Christ's Church) won with 16 points, and the Gray Team lost with 9 points. (Sorry, Gray Team; facts is facts). Also, Jeremy Erber was awarded Most Valuable Player for the second year in a row, with 3 home runs and 5 RBI's (Tara is dictating this to me - I have no idea what on earth an RBI is!), and he made a touching speech thanking his parents, wife and children, and teammates for all their support. :-)

Ok, there... I've got all those details off my mind.

I took basically no pictures during the game, as I was otherwise occupied taking care of an adorable little man, but Tara confiscated my camera and proceeded to fill up the whole card (actually, she left me 9 pictures to take - wasn't that sweet of her?). There's a slideshow of her pictures at the bottom of this post for those of you who don't tire of baseball pictures. Our team was purple and their team was gray (if anyone from the gray team is reading this, we apologize that there are no names in the captions on photos of you... we don't know your names. :-).

First off are selected pictures out of my 9 that were left me... *winks*

 

Maggie with her little friends, neither of whom seem too thrilled about getting their picture taken.

"G'acie-Boo"

 

Picnic food...

Bella - she's such a doll!

And her brother is way too cute for his own good...

Mr. Strand and Stuart cooking mountains of hot dogs and burgers - thanks, guys!

Look at this angel's eyes

(though she's only an angel when her mom is holding her!)

 I saved the best for last. I DARE you not to smile!

And here is a slideshow of Tara's photos - enjoy! (If you hover over the slideshow you will see buttons to pause and skip to the next/previous photo).