Yes, indeed, we had corn. Got a lot of it from one of those roadside stands in Iowa. Nothing like sweet, Iowa corn. Well, except the corn we had at a potluck. 18 cups of bi-color corn, baked in a pound of butter and a pint of half-and-half, frozen, and then slow cooked for hours. Yeah, probably enough cholesterol to last me until Christmas, but DANG was it good.

Iowa was busy, overwhelming, and fun. Aidan had a blast, and meeting little Lola was amazing (and did nothing to alleviate this ever growing ticking of my biological clock that has restarted for some reason). Lola is a total adorable squishy little sweetheart. I love her.

Precious little Lola

Here we are, with little Lola

Aidan was so good with Lola. He loved holding her, and every time she’d cry, he’d hold her cheek and rub her ear and calm her down. I forgot how magical babies are to kids, and I don’t know HOW I forgot, because babies are magical to me, too.

One of my favorite parts of the trip was visiting a century farm. That means it’s been around at least 100 years, original farm house and everything. Interesting that I was able to get a decent cell phone signal at a century farm, but there you go. While we were there, we got up close with some turkeys, saw some peacocks and chickens, and Aidan gathered some eggs that we had for breakfast the next morning. Just so you know? I will never eat a “regular” egg again if I can help it. Organic, cage-free, grain fed eggs from now on. They are SO much better for you and they taste way better. And I always buy brown ones because they’re cool.

The ones we ate from the farm came from Easter Egg Hens (Araucanas), and the eggs were different colors, like light blue or light green or yellow. Very neat and pretty, too.

Anyway, here are some photos from the farm, including one of the eggs from the Easter Egg Hens:

We visited with lots of family and took lots of pictures. I’ll try to refrain from posting too many here, but I must post some, of course!! 🙂

…and the obligatory Selzer silly photo:

When we got back from Iowa we immediately jumped into finishing our summer with Aidan.

Aidan is definitely a city kid!

We tried to make the most of Aidan’s last week here. Monday, we went out to dinner with Adam’s agent and some other cool writing folks at the Atwood Cafe. It was very yummy. I had the pork duo which included pork belly. It was my first time having pork belly. IT WILL NOT BE MY LAST, FOLKS. Wow, it was good. I had pineapple upside down cake for dessert, also good.

Crookshanks got really, really sick. Adam was afraid that it was the end for Crookshanks. Fortunately, we put two and two together and realized that the poor cat was just constipated. The vet prescribed him some Metamucil, and Crookshanks has been MORE than fine. He’s jumping and wailing in the morning for attention and chasing Helena and climbing to the high shelf like normal. (Oh wait, he puked today, but that’s because he ate some carrot leaves. Silly cat.)

We took a trip to this huge shopping center Oak Brook, where the sales tax was only 7% or so, and I got 15% off of my American Eagle purchase (a pretty yellow shirt and some earrings) just for checking in on Foursquare. Aidan loved all the fountains out there.

I loved that it was like Easton, but WAY bigger. I was overwhelmed! (I am looking forward to Christmas shopping out there!) Aidan was pretty patient, considering, so he earned himself a Build-A-Bear that he named David.

David, hanging out at Molly’s Cupcakes

We ate dinner at Home Run Inn Pizzeria, and that pizza really was delicious. Something about the sauce… and the cheese. It reminded me of this pizza place I used to go to when I was little called Scotto’s Pizza. Anyone who shopped at Randall Park Mall in Cleveland in the early 80s would know what I’m talking about. Mmm. We definitely want to go back. After dinner, we all shopped some more. I *finally* used my Michael’s giftcard that I’d gotten for my 30th birthday back in 2004! It was still good! I was tickled pink. I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten that card before or after they passed all those laws preventing stores from screwing over gift card holders. At any rate, I picked up some scrapbooking stuff because guess what? I plan to do some serious scrapbooking this fall and winter. I am very, very, very behind on my scrapbooking. I want to make an Aidan book, a Ronni + Adam wedding book/honeymoon book, a Disney World 2009 book, and a family book. Seeing as I am not all that ambitious with the fancy embellishments and stuff, it’s gonna be a lot of paper and stickers. 🙂 I am going to post some of my old layouts on Facebook. If we’re not friends there yet, why not?

Oh, and I went to Whole Foods for the first time. But not any Whole Foods. Folks, this was the most epic Whole Foods ever. Oh my God. This place is HUGE. It has all these food bars, free WiFi, a cheese counter, a fish counter, fruit forever, breads, tarts, cupcakes, cookies, salad bars, soup bars. Holy cow. I can’t even. And samples everywhere. Oh yes. I even tried an anchovy (and it wasn’t bad). Aidan was pretty bored (he wanted to get home to play with a toy or something), but I was fascinated. I hope I didn’t act like an idiot. We prefer going to Trader Joe’s (it’s way cheaper) but Whole Foods is fun, too! Nice people work at both. Nice people behind counters can be a rare thing to find in Chicago.

Summer is now winding down. 🙁 I didn’t care much for the steamy nearly 100 degree days, but I’d rather have that than dead of winter any day! Now, it’s cooling down and I like where the weather’s been lately–low 80s or high 70s. Aidan went back to Ohio yesterday. He got to walk onto the plane with the Captain again, which thrills him to pieces. In the meantime, I was trying to hold back tears. I wasn’t fooling anyone, though, and a sympathetic mom hugged me. Adam and I went and drowned our sorrows in a trip to Burlington Coat Factory, which really didn’t help much. I got a cheap yoga tank and a cute short-sleeved hoodie (orange!), but there were some people in there who I wanted to shake!

Now it’s quiet in the apartment. So very quiet. At dinner, Adam said “Focus on eating,” because it didn’t feel like a meal without him needing to say it at least once. But there was no Aidan to say “I am.” 🙁 It’s weird without him here.

But there is a lot to keep me busy in the meantime. I’m picking up more proofreading gigs (most of them are from home, which is great), I’ve been listening to kirtan like crazy, we’re gearing up for a trip to visit my family (especially AIDAN) and friends in Ohio, we’re going out on the lake in a boat next week, MOCKINGJAY comes out Tuesday, I’m going to meet Suzanne Collins in October (I’m #221 in line!), OVFF and Windy Con will be happening in a few months, a new America’s Next Top Model starts soon, Doctor Who Series 5 will be out on DVD, Beauty and the Beast will be out on Blu-ray™, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 1 will be in theatres, and I’m trying to talk Adam into a Disney World trip in January, when it’s cheap enough with the free dining that we’d get to stay in a moderate resort rather than Pop Century (although I LOVE me some Pop Century).

For now, I’ll continue my yoga, enjoy listening to kirtan, work on my writing, reading, and just enjoying life as much as I can. ‘Til next time.