Saturday evening, we were treated to the "musical" stylings of The Jewish Elvis...NEIL DIAMOND at the United Center. Plans for dinner at The Billy Goat were scrapped due to absurd traffic on I-290. So, the night started off with a gourmet dinner of hot dogs and French fries, with a Hot Pretzel for dessert, chased down by a BIG pink lemonade. Once settled in the section 303, where the air was quite thin...we were in for a great show, and not let down.

View from our seats...before the show!

Everything from Beautiful Noise to You Don't Bring Me Flowers to Forever In Blue Jeans to Brother Love's Travelin' Salvation Show lit up the stage. Danielle and I have a new found love for Sweet Caroline...SO GOOD, SO GOOD, SO GOOD. Click the link below to experience it like we did.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvXTXS-cBlc

More stage action...

This weekend was very busy preparing for our roadtrip to Cleveland and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with a day long stop at Cedar Point. We are working out the details to blog and video our road trip as it happens. Stay tuned!

Moving the LAND ain't FREE...but worth it when you have someone to BRAVE the heat and do manual labor. The week before our vacation sees the front yard being "reshaped" into the home front we were hoping. Gone is the HUGE evergreen tree, which was sad to see such a full tree get cut up, but it is affecting the sewer pipe to the street, so it had to go. Now the front yard has grown in size, and will be re-seeded for a fuller, green look...next year!

Now we need to make sure we don't kill the grass!

We are free...enjoying freedom from work for a three day weekend, of fireworks, BBQ, ESPN's coverage of the Hot Dog Eating Contest, and family time, in no particular order.

We started the holiday weekend by taking 1st Place in our "Who's the most patriotic" office contest. As you can see from the pics below...there is no doubt as to who won the $50 gas card.

Friday night(7/4/08)...we enjoyed the company of Dan & Susan(& Avery& Romey), and Paul & Anita at the Taste Of Lombard, with a fireworks simulcast on AM 560 WIND, being run by the stylish "Freedom Elvis" pictured above. Thousands tuned in to hear the celebration starting at 9:30p on AM 560 WIND. They will let anybody with a laptop run the music for a fireworks show. It was a cool experience to run the soundtrack from a tiny tin trailer in the middle of 100,000 people in a field.

The rest of the weekend was filled with house projects(painting the gas meter and front porch railing and installing new gutter extensions to move rain water away from the house), BBQ, hot tub, family and fun, and awaiting the insurance adjuster as our neighborhood has fallen victim to severe hail damage from Wednesday night's storms...we had some damage, but were very lucky with only a handful of holes in the vinyl siding, and some roof damage.

The pictures show how lucky we were compared to some of our neightbors. It was the worst storm in recent history for McHenry county, and no one was hurt.

And of course...4th Of July weekend is not complete without a home fireworks display of the lamest festive smoking balls available!

Hope you had a great weekend!

We are terribly sorry for not blogging as much as we should for those that keep track of our blog daily. However, it has been a busy time in the Zapchenk house. The middle of the month brought many blooms to our backyard much like a HGTV renovation (aka Lynn and Rick Derks). Being green thumb inept Rick and Lynn came to attack the backyard with a vengeance. So much so that Rick had a little incident with the table saw and had to be whisked away to the emergency room. However, after finding out it was just the piece of wood that hurt his finger, he was bandaged up and back at work wondering why his bandaging was coming undone. Hmm...maybe because the nurse didn't realize he would go straight back to yardwork. The weekend ended with a great transformation, and we're so appreciative of the new yard, and promise to not kill anything. Check out the BEFORE & AFTER pics for yourself.

Eric celebrated his 35th birthday on June 17th and we were able to get together with some family for a quick lunch, and then a celebratory birthday meal at home consisting of pork chops, applesauce and macaroni and cheese. He received a new grill tool set and a USB Turntable that converts the songs on vinyl records into mp3's on the computer. Very retro!

Also, we traveled to Lake Geneva and stayed at the Abbey Resort. We definitely recomend it to others for some good getaway time. It is on the other side of Lake Geneva and tucked away from the hustle and bustle. However, the food is a bit overpriced, especially the Sunday Brunch! We were able to relax after a long week of work and side projects that had gone horribly wrong. Eric's favorite part was watching the boats being put in and out of the water.

Check out our new friend we met while exploring the area.

Also, Eric's grandfather Tom is still at the nursing home because of cancer and is not doing too well, please pray that he has rest and isn't in a lot of pain. Good news is he should be coming home this week to be closer to the family and in familiar surroundings. We love you all and have a great week!

So Eric and I finally had our Garage Sale that we have been waiting to have since before we were married. And we had enough stuff in this Garage sale to seem like we have been married for 10 + years. I have come to the conclusion that not only is Eric attached to many things, but he has kept every article of clothing and comforter he has ever had.

There were plenty of great stories that came out of this weekend. One being the insanely heavy ping pong table. Eric bought it for his snowy village set years ago and it has stowed itself in the basement fo quite some time. The time came for it to be sold at the Garage sale but first it had to be brought up from the basement. Now anyone who has ever carried pressed board you know how heavy that can be. Getting that thing out of the basement, was the angriest I have ever seen Eric in all the time I have known him. However, the ping pong table was defeated and we mustered up every ounce of strength to get it out into the garage.

We didn't make as much money as we thought with all the treasures we were selling. But, I feel we did make a difference in many families lives. No Joke my mom called it the Jesus Rummage Sale. After 1:00pm the crowd died down and we started packing up the items for the Charity coming next Friday. One family came back to pick up the couch and washing machine and they left with a vaccuum, end tables, a toy train, pictures, two TVs and whatever else they could pack in the trailer. Plus, the neighbor down the street knew of a foster care family that needed house hold items and they stopped by later on to take the curio cabinet, dryer, Entertainment center, clothes, light fixtures and toys.

All in all the stuff is all out of the house and with people who we felt needed it and we were able to have some fun memories. However, if anyone ever needs help with one we are the ones to call.

Thanks to my parents we were able to get everything into the garage by 8:30 pm on Friday and have time to treat ourselves to a little Coldstone.