Our Summer in a Nutshell

It has been a long, long time since I last posted, so I'm going to do one big post to try and catch up. We have been all over the place this summer and Benson was such a good traveler. Our first trip was to Utah. We visited our Aunt Debbie, Uncle Brent and my brother Andrew in Las Vegas, my Mom, Dad, and sister in Cedar and my brothers in Cottonwood Hts. We were all over the place, but we had lots of fun. (I forgot my camera so these are some pics. my brother Andrew took. He is so good at this stuff.)

A few weeks after we got home we took a trip to Pennsylvania for the annual "Albrecht Family Summer Vacation." This year we went to Allentown and stayed in a beautiful historic home close to Dutch Wonderland, which is an amusement park for kids 12 and under. Benson had a blast! He got to go on almost all the rides. We also went to the Crayola Factory, an amazing Farm Park that was just like an amusement park, Amish Country, and the Hershey Factory. Of course, I forgot my camera:(

Our next stop was to Oregon for the Smith Family Reunion. We stayed at my Uncle Aaron and Aunt Syd's house. They have lots of land, where they built a fourwheeler/dirtbike course. They had chickens, cows, dogs and cats on the land too. Benson loved the cows and learned to say, "moo" whenever he'd see them. My favorite thing to do was pick the wild blackberries they had growing all over their property. Yum! It was so good to see family that we hadn't seen in a while. We had a great time!

Our last trip for the summer was to Chicago. Just Lundon, Benson and me. There was so much to do there. We stayed in a really nice hotel that was by a huge mall called the Woodfield Mall. The hotel was 30 minutes outside of Chicago, so we took the train in everyday and rode with the locals, there are some crazies in Chicago, but Benson loved it and learned to say, "choo-choo" by the end of the trip. We stayed for five days which gave us just enough time to do all the things we wanted to do. We took a double decked tour bus to get everywhere, and had some pretty funny tour guides. Some of the trip's highlights were the Shedd Aquarium, a river boat ride on the river and Lake Michigan, the Navy Pier, the Children's Museum, Italian beef sandwiches, Chicago style hotdogs, Gino's East Pizza, and the Garrett Popcorn Co. I actually brought my camera this time. Here are some pics.