Such a Sunday

What a wonderful sermon at church this morning; the whole series has been so good so far.  

We all really needed it.

Pastor Lisa had candy conversation hearts handed out to each person in a baggy.  Then we could go forward and smash our hard heart with a hammer and leave it there and pick up a soft [gummy] heart to leave with.  It was pretty therapeutic and really meaningful.

After church, Kamoni came with us, and we stopped for lunch at Culver's. The kids were singing the national anthem with Midnight Blues in Peoria at the Rivermen hockey game, and we got there quite early.  It was nice outside, so we walked around Peoria for an hour.

We went down to the riverfront, but didn't have enough time to go into the museum and check it out.  Caeden and Kamoni found this lookout point and decided to "emulate" the scene from the Titanic movie.  

They don't look much like Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslett, but they are funny.

We came upon the giant American Gothic sculpture and they decided to do "heart hands."  Oh boys.

They need their own suitcase and pitchfork, I think.

We came upon the Holocaust Memorial and were stunned.

We had noticed this sculpture on our way past the Civic Center at the beginning of our walk, and the boys stopped to read about it on our way back in.  It is called "Knockin' on Freedom's Door" by artist Preston Jackson, and it honors Peoria's role in the Underground Railroad.

We went into the Civic Center to wait for the rest of the Midnight Blues crew, and the boys just had to ride the escalator up and down.  I love that they enjoy the little things in life.

I enjoy watching the zamboni!

The Rivermen were playing the Evansville Thunderbolts today.

Midnight Blues and some Rivermen folks "backstage" before singing the anthem...

They did an excellent job singing!

Fun in the stands...

It was a really good game!

There were at least 6 intense fights, and the last one was pretty gruesome...One Peoria player had his head repeatedly bashed into the ice until it started bleeding profusely.  The Evansville player who did this was ejected from the game, and it took about 10 minutes to try to get the blood off/out of the ice. It was intense, and we hope the guy is ok--definitely concussed at minimum!  Yikes!

Peoria won the game, and we went back to Bloomington-Normal.  We were going to have supper at Avanti's but it was super busy, so we hit up Monical's instead--no disappointment to me!  Yum!

Kamoni was a little tired of having his picture taken, but he should be proud to have survived a whole day with us!  We loved having him around!