2018 Home Videos

The much unawaited... 2018 Williams Family Review!

Chicago with the Brendsel's

Zach and I tagged along to Adam and Jenni's 10th Anniversary trip to Chicago. It was nice to go somewhere close but do things we wouldn't have done if we had all the kids with us. We ate really good food, biked along the shoreline, did an escape room, went to Wrigleyville during the Cubs Cards game, and my hands down favorite... saw Hamilton.

Zach and I are 30!

Steve's Birthday // Father's Day

Papa Steve (golf club and ball)

Papa Chris (fishing pole)

Dad (best dad ever shirt and no onions sign)

Getaway

He would deny it but I really believe one of Zach's love languages is "gift giving". But I guess it could also be "physical touch" or definitely "words of affirmation." (If you never read 'The Five Love Languages' for your pre-marital counseling than you sorely missed out.)

He's basically everything but "acts of service" which is definitely mine, or at least how I show it. The point I'm working my way to is that he gets a lot of excitement out of surprising me (and the kids) and he did a mighty fine job this last time.

Every 18 shifts for firefighting you get a "kelley day" which means a paid day off on a normal shift day. Well if you normally work 1 day and then have 2 days off, essentially with a kelley day you have 5 days off in a row. Now that I've lived through our first one I can say (EMPHATICALLY) they are magical and everything that is amazing.

Zach took Reagan to school a couple of weeks ago and came back home to tell me to pack my bags, his parents would be over in about 15 minutes to watch the boys and we were going to be headed on a little "parents-only" getaway. I had a million questions. One being what to pack in which he kept saying just something comfortable like tights. Using my mom-to-toddler deciphering brain I figured out he meant leggings/workout pants. I also had a few things I needed to do the rest of that week and to my (further) surprise he had already taken care of them! The longest I had been away from Shepherd was when I gave birth to Levi and I think I've only been away from Levi one night, I wasn't nervous to leave the boys but it definitely was a new experience.

We drove down to southern Illinois where his parents have a cabin but took a detour to Springfield to go through Frank Lloyd Wright's Dana Thomas house (which was closed despite what their website said- bummer) and the Lincoln Presidential Library. Zach held his tongue as I thoroughly read each and every plaque in the museum, which I did because I knew we would be taking the kids back at some point and they would have no patience with such learning. I can't recommend the Lincoln museum enough, I will say it was much more somber than we expected (which makes sense since his life had so much tragedy in it) and we were left with a sort of melancholy feeling. I still loved it and can't wait to take Reagan.

Over the course of the next few days we went on a 3 hour zip lining excursion (suspended bridges and hiking trails included) and golfed at Kokopeli. All of this outdoors-y activity to counteract the mucho mucho eating we did.

What is a post without pictures? Here they be.

Our afternoon of education with just us and 200 eighth grade students.

 The next morning we joined our group of 2 guides and 6 strangers to fly through the tops of trees in what felt like diapers. Beforehand my biggest fear was safety but the guides are so thorough and the harnesses have multiple safeties that I quickly lost most of my hesitations. The views were gorgeous, I'm so glad we did it.

 In reference to my earlier fears, Zach said he felt the greatest hazard was where they clipped his water bottle to his harness... eek.

 man we are HIGH-larious.

The very last zip they put a radar gun on you and you can se how fast you are going. I went 40 and Zach went 43 mph.

HUGE HUGE HUGE thank you to Grandma Darlene who stayed at our house, got Reagan to and from school and watched the boys most of the time. She is awesome in so many ways and this is just a small example of all she does and is. 

IFSI Graduation Ceremony

 (Zach is in front of the American flag)

Zach's chief and a couple captains are wonderful and came over for the ceremony. One of them sweetly gave Shep an open cup of red punch and it was so thoughtful we couldn't bare take it away from him even though it was basically a countdown to an inevitable disaster (as seen above.)

Friday April 17th, Zach graduated from the fire academy. It was at the Illinois Fire Service Institute at the University of Illinois. His department would set him and his partner up in a hotel in Champaign during the week and then he would come home on the weekends. Even though Champaign isn't technically that far from our house, he needed to report to academy at 6 am every day, not finishing until 6pm in the evenings. Then half way through the school they added on night drills which meant after a full day they would break for dinner and then continue to fight fire until late into the night. It would not have been physically possible for him to travel back and forth. We both can agree that this was the longest 6 weeks of our life. I'll briefly describe how the first day went and how the last day went and that should give you a good picture of our lives the last 8 weeks.

Day 1
A family member was hospitalized and all of my childcare options were either out of state and/or country or asleep because it was the middle of the night (thankfully my mom literally came straight from the airport to stay at my house.) I ran to prompt care in-between appointments because I was all-over-achy and clammy with a throat that wouldn't swallow, of course it was strep (and of course the rest of the kids would eventually get it, but I'm just supposed to stick with describing day one.) Somewhere in this mix the door to the van closed on Shepherd's finger. Like the door closed completely and latched and his chubby little finger was still inside, I don't know how it didn't break. I'm sure the 300 kisses I gave it had some magical powers. Zach left something at home that he really needed but didn't realize until I was laying the kids down for bed so I packed them in the car, pajamas and all, only to have Levi grab my keys and open the back hatch of my van as Reagan was opening the garage door causing them to wedge together in a way that can only be seen and not described. It took a solid 15 minutes to figure out how to untangle that mess and then we were off to meet Zach at a McDonalds and for me to sip away my sorrows via a large chocolate milkshake.

Day 40
Basically Shep wakes up all night long complaining of his "eyeball" and come morning it is a glaringly obvious case of pink eye. Around 4:30am I texted my mom that I felt horrible but I was going to have to cancel on taking her to a medical procedure she was being put under for. By 7:30am we were out the door, our pediatrician has walk-in hours before their office opens so we ran there to be the first in line, got his Rx and then headed to drop Reagan off (late) at school. I was going to be picking up Reagan early from school to head to the graduation ceremony but didn't have any paper to write a note for his teacher so I wrote it on a napkin. We made it to the ceremony that afternoon just fine and dandy. (Luckily I got the eye drops early enough in the day that Shep's pink eye really isn't that noticeable in the pictures.)

The days in between are filled with a million other stories like this. Literally we would have a fantastic weekend with Zach home and within hours of him leaving, someone would wake up vomiting. I am not over-exagerating when I say this but my kids were sick and went to the doctor more in the last 8 weeks they we have in their entire lives. Oh well, that's how life is. We made it through and now we get the benefits of what we were working towards (24 on/48 off.)

That night we stayed in Champaign as a little celebration for making it through the last two months. The boys got to swim and watch cable on demand so their life is complete. I was excited to meet some of the hotel staff that Zach has gotten to know (he really doesn't know a stranger) and who have taken such good care of him and his partner, especially one older woman who gave them each much needed hugs when they would get back to the hotel and would set aside dinner for them too.