Cotton Eyed Joe

Take a little trip over to Chelsea's blog and you will not be disappointed. :)

Happy almost Thanksgiving everyone.

Here are a few more videos from our Minute to Win It Championship.  Mom's and Pappy's were too funny to leave out.  Listen for someone to yell "Turn it up!" in mom's video.  And Pappy...all he does is move his eyebrows.  Hilarious.  Enjoy!  

Marty Shake Belt from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Pappy Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Minute to Win it!

While we were camping at Defeated Creek in October, Aunt Becky had a great idea. Why don't we make our own Minute to Win It Championships?? Well, we did just that. Kristin, Maggie, Aunt Becky and I sat down and thought of as many games as we could think of. We gathered everyone together and began the competition.

We flicked paper footballs into a hole...

We tied a tissue box to our back, filled it with ping pong balls and tried to shake them out...

William Shake Belt from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Maggie Shake Belt from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

We blew ping pong balls into a hole...

We tried to move an oreo from our forehead to our mouth with no hands...

David Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Darryl Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

William Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Maggie Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Kristin Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

Chelsea Oreo from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

We stacked jacks...

We bounced ping pong balls into a hole...

We bounced a paper wad off of each others notebook into a trash can...

Maggie and Kristin Paper Basket from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

(they did it in 1 minute and 3 seconds! man!)

And all with in a minute!  Whoever does it the most/best/fastest wins........some of Aunt Becky's cookies!  We never actually decided who the winner was, but I think it was me. :)

 Why is she so happy?  Because Defeated Creek camping picture and our awesome Minute to Win It videos are coming soon, that's why.

St. Louis/Chicago Part 3

I have gotten off track the vacation photos.  Here is part 3 and it is definitely a picture overload but they are all worth it.  This was our third day in Chicago and we are heading to the Planetarium and the Willis Tower (used to be called Sears Tower btw).  We woke up as early as the Bates girls can wake up and got ready for the day.

Ollie was up bright and early.

Here we are at the front of the planetarium.

1

We are about to go on a Journey to the Stars!

Maggie looking at her birth month in the old book.

This is how the monks dressed while studying the stars, so we thought we'd try it too.

I guess this is what monks do...

And then we went to a class room setting to learn about space.

We saw a 3d movie about stars and space, it was awesome!

View of the city from the planetarium.

This was a ride you could get inside of, we did not get to do it but it sure looked fun!

Maggie as Neil Armstrong, as Jess would say, 
"Neil Armstrong is a quarterback, a football player!"

Shoot for the moon!!

This was supposed simulate how it feels to walk on the moon.  Directly above was a video of yourself with a picture on the green screen...

....that looked like this!

And we touched the moon!

Here you wrote, "I want to be the first __________ on the moon."

This progression of pictures makes me laugh so I put them all on here.

Mom is climbing the stairs to the space shuttle :)

I want to do that to her sometimes, too. JK!

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Next, we rode the bus to the Willis Tower.  It brought back many memories of the MTA bus we rode to school.  Those were "fun" times, right?

Yes, this is what we are about to go up in!

Looking up from the bottom of the Willis Tower

City Girl

I love pictures of buildings, without the ground you lose the sense of direction and what they are even supposed to be.  It's awesome.

Here we go!

This was the only picture of us going in all the doors (the turny kind?) together.  But I like it.

So, I told Maggie to go by this wall and BLOW.  She did this...

...but what I meant was THIS.  Leave it to Maggie ;)

And this is the breathtaking view from the top.

And that sticking out into the water is the Planetarium.

These were the boxes hanging over the city.  It was awesome!  Yes, those are cars under there.

All of these are inside those boxes hanging more than 100 stories above the city.

This is from one looking into another.

We weren't going to let Mom get off the hook that easy.  She was going to conquer her fear!

And those were the best pictures we got of her in the box :)

Elevator picture is a must!

And this is the street we waited on for Nikki to pick us up.

After the tower, Nikki took us out for an early birthday dinner for me because she had a meeting the next day.  We went out for awesome sushi.

After, they took us to a great cupcake place.  Randomly, Eric (Nikki's fiance) told us that this is the same street where they filmed Public Enemies.  That was all Maggie needed to go and investigate.  Very fittingly, there was a restaurant named in "honor" of John Dillinger.  I guess it's in honor of when they were a gangster? Anyway, it was very neat.

This is the actual theatre where the real John Dillinger was shot and where JOHNNY DEPP ACTUALLY WALKED AND FILMED THE MOVIE!  Maggie was thrilled.

This was the play he saw before he was shot.  This was the only memorabilia they could leave up for him and for the movie because the governor, or whoever, does not want to promote the gangsters, but thats history!! And they have a gangster tour but we can't promote Public Enemies? Oh well.

And now, for the debut of Maggie's acting career.  Maggie as John Dillinger...

Maggie at the Biograph from Chelsea Bates on Vimeo.

It was a blast!