Late April Sun

Last weekend Nicolas arrived from London. I drove down to Chicago O'Hare to pick him up, which took almost 3 hours as there were roadworks along the way. Much to the delight of a little person in the back of the car who was already much enamoured of the endless farms along the way "wow Mummy tractor" and then thought we had hit the jackpot when we had in fact hit the roadworks: "wow Mummy, Bobby!". I'm so glad Mums are wired to think their kids are cute even after an hour of repeating the same phrase. O'Hare was a doddle, and we started our return journey only about half an hour after we had arrived. We stopped off on the way home at the 'Belvidere (sic) Oasis' which is one of your typical McRoadStops with 4 different-scale maps, none of which told me where we were. (not that we were lost but I just wanted to get a sense of the larger surroundings.) Lucas spent ages trying to prise a cuddly SpongeBobSquarePants out of a machine but gave up when bribed with a little bouncy ball. (He thought it was a sweet.) The only really annoying part of the journey were the 4 toll stops, they make you stop and pay 80 cents which seems such a paltry sum to almost not be worth it. As I expect to be doing the airport run a few more times in the future I have ordered an i-pass, a gadget that goes on the windscreen and miraculously pays the toll for me while I speed past the booth.
Although spring is definitely coming the weather is far from reliably warm. On Sunday it was a bit gloomy and rainy so we decided lunch somewhere would be the best option. Keen to show off my knowledge of all the shortcuts and good places in Madison we got hopelessly lost and found ourselves on the way back to Chicago. We ended up finally having lunch in a burger bar downtown at around 3.
Monday was World Languages Day (you didn't know?). I was scheduled to present a talk on Hindi songs to a bunch of potential students but realised at the last minute that I was in fact going to face an audience of 45 high school kids who were likely to start throwing things at me if they thought I was boring. (The email confirming registration had helpful tips on "how to deal with unruly behaviour". This really put the fear of God, or rather, the 16-year old, into me. I can barely discipline a 2-year old!) So I decided to change course and asked one of my student-assistants who I know dances a mean Bollywood groove to come along with me, and we spent most of my 'talk' teaching these kids to dance bhangra. It was great fun and they all laughed when I asked if they had ever had that much fun learning German (und jetzt - die Waltz!).
Keen to take full advantage of having free childcare in the house (visitors - beware!) I had arranged to see a movie on Wednesday, and dinner with colleagues on Thursday, so it was quite the social week. Going to the cinema was GREAT, the movie (The Great Buck Howard) good but not spectacular, but of course anything without trains with faces or speaking steamrollers gets my vote. Friday we all took a day off and drove down to Dubuque, Iowa, the nearest place to see the Mississippi river. I visited there last year as well and really enjoyed it, especially the Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium which had been a hit with Lucas as well. This year too we had a fab time, Lucas was a little scared of the big fish (I think he doesn't get that they're behind glass but of course the poor mite's not used to clean windows) but he liked looking at the smaller ones, and then we went outside on the massive steamboat and he loved racing round, particularly the bit where he would dive under a chain (with a "do not enter" sign) and Mummy had to chase after him. (She's good, Mummy. Always up for a game of chase. You should have seen her when I made a dash for the open water.) We drove back on small country roads and saw Southern Wisconsin at its best, rolling hills and lots of farms and Lutheran churches with their very pointy white steeples. One minor mishap in that I killed a cute furry creature that ran straight under my tyres - that made me cry. Nicolas' suggestion that we go back and turn it into a handbag went some way towards cheering me up again.
Pics above and movie below are from a walk Lucas and Nicolas took along the lake opposite my house.