More Vacation Pics

Chicago/Detroit Baseball Trip

We left last Wed. morning (6/21), headed for Chicago to see the Cardinals play the White Sox that evening. We arrived at our hotel about 2, only to discover our reservation had been changed to another hotel without us knowing. We had planned on staying at the Palmer House Hilton which is over by the Sears Tower and more affordable than Michigan Ave. I was not very happy about this game of musical hotels, but it was out of my control. So we headed over to our new hotel which was right in the middle of the magnificent mile-- YIPPEE! I also told the guy at check in about our ordeal, so he ended up giving us a corner suite on Michigan Ave.-- it was great! Unfortunately, the Cardinals lost the game that evening 13-5 and the White Sox's ballpark was nothing to brag about.
The next day we went to the Field Museum and saw the King Tut exhibit as well as an exhibit on evolution and the history of the Earth, which was quite fascinating. Then we headed down to Navy Pier to shop and take a ride on the Ferris Wheel.
Friday, we were driving from Chicago to Detroit, a drive Yahoo said was suppose to take 4.5 hours, but Brian drives pretty fast, so we typically arrive sooner. We sat in so much construction traffic it took over 7 hours to get to our hotel, which was actually in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, which is right across the Detroit River from downtown Detroit. Our hotel was right on the river, we had a beautiful view of the skyline, the river, and a beautiful park that stretched the entire river bank (see pics).
That night we went out for a fancy steak and lobster dinner on the riverfront and then stayed out clubbing until after 3 am, it was a very late night, but definitely worth it.
The next day we went out to lunch, watched a tug boat race which was really cool and then went to a casino which was a few hotels down. I lost all my money in about 10 minutes, but Brian won about $100 playing video poker, so we left the Casino with our winnings and headed across the street to that park, which was having a Summerfest with a Carnival and entertainment. We rode three pretty intense rides and then boarded a bus, to take us across the border to downtown Detroit for the game. (I will blog about the uselessness of Customs on a different day.) The Cardinals lost again 7-6 in 11 innings, and the people of Detroit kinda lived up to their negative reputations, but their ballpark is beautiful. Their team is the Tigers, and there are Tiger statues and claw marks all over, there's a merry-go-round inside the stadium with tigers instead of horses and they even had a Ferris wheel with baseballs as the gondolas. We had great seats 18 rows behind our dugout and the food was excellent for a ballpark. Wish the people had been nicer, I think we were spoiled in Canada since everyone there was so friendly (which is also a blog for another day). After the game, we returned to Canada to drowned our sorrows and then headed home the next morning. We had a great time and have now gone to 10 out-of-town ballparks, we are already 1/3 of the way done!

Back from Vacation!

Just wanted to let everyone know that we got home safely on Sunday from our 5 day vacation to Chicago, Detroit, and Canada. We had a great time except the Cardinals got swept both series :( but we still managed to have lots of fun! The children also had a great time partying at the Lake of the Ozarks all weekend while we were gone. I will blog more about our trip once I get the pictures downloaded and edited. Talk to everyone again soon!

Prison Visit

Last Thursday, Bill and I went down to the Potosi Correctional Center to visit my uncle Richie for a food visit. Once per quarter, if an inmate is violation free during that time, his family can bring in outside food for the visit. We were bringing him steak, shrimp, fresh veggies, chicken wings, lasagne, and chocolate pie; I had taken the day off work and was very excited about the trip. So we arrive at the prison, the staff searches the food, we go through metal detectors and three different checkpoints before we got to the final checkpoint to get into the visiting area. At this final check they found a pill that had unknowingly ended up in Bill's pocket that morning as he was sorting his medications for the week. They made us go back out in the hallway, they had to call down the supervisors, luckily the pill was just an acid reflux pill and not a pain killer or something. We had joked on the way in that we were scared they were going to keep us there, but now all we wanted was for them not to throw us out! Thankfully, after quite the ordeal they did allow us to go ahead with our visit. Richie enjoyed the meal and we all enjoyed the visit, but next time we will definitely double check all our pockets before we go!

2nd Annual Bonfire

So the 2nd annual Bonfire started off well, the kids were playing, guests were arriving, the sun was shining, it was a beautiful Saturday evening. All week long the weather forecast had predicted mild temperatures with a chance of a quick, spot thunderstorm at night. I was all for a quick storm to cool things off and keep the fire under control (which always ends up bigger than it should be). Anyway about 7 it started getting pretty dark and we could tell the storm was coming, they quickly lit the fire which was easily 30 ft tall and blowing in the now gusty prestorm winds (it was a little scary, but I'm paranoid of fire--thanks Missy!). Anyway, I put Bill in charge of grilling the burgers and dogs. We have a pretty small grill and were expecting about 40 people, so he had not yet finished by the time the storm came. Poor Bill was out grilling with an umbrella in a torrential downpour for half the evening-- THANKS BILL! Oh and that quick, spot storm lasted all evening and dumped about 4 inches of rain on all of us. Everyone still had a good time and at least now we know the party can still go on, even in the rain. Thanks to everyone who braved the storm and joined the fun. It was great to see everybody, hopefully next year we will have better weather!

It's Party Time!

As most of you know the 2nd annual Lenk Family Bonfire/Picnic is this Saturday. Since we didn't have a blog last year at this time, I thought I post a few pics from last summer's party. Everyone seemed to have a great time, the kids played, many rode the four wheeler (which Brian just fixed so it should be ready to go), others went frog gigging in the pond. Mainly we just ate, drank, and socialized. It's always great to get together with friends and family, especially the ones we don't get to see as often as we would like. Hope to see everyone Saturday night!