More Pictures

I am posting these back to back so if you missed the post with pictures from our Granville trip - scroll on down to see those.

So our second trip was up to Chicago for a family reunion with my mom's family.  I was thrilled when this opportunity came along.  If you don't know me - let me explain.  My mother passed away in June of 1995. She grew up outside of Chicago. My mom's brother and his wife live in Des Monies, Iowa.  Both of my grandparents have passed away.   The extended family isn't huge but they are fun and alot of them are still in the Chicago area.   We didn't keep up with the family much after a few years of living in Texas and after my mom passed way and then her parents - we pretty much lost all contact.  I hated losing contact with them.  My dad doesn't talk much about my mom and the only way my girls are going to learn about her is through stories and I want them to hear as many different stories from as many different people as possible.

So when Labor Day weekend came we loaded up the car and headed to Chicago.

It was wonderful. We stayed with my mom's cousin and her husband - to me they always been Aunt Carol and Uncle Dick.   It was absolutely awesome to hang our with the family and catch up.  And there were kids everywhere and my kids were thrilled to have so many new cousins to play with. Let's see if I can tally up how many kids were there .... Mark and his wife have 4, Julie has 2, Heather has 3 but only 2 were there (her oldest was sick) and then we had our 3. Soooooo 4+2+2=8 .... then add my 3 and that makes 11.  Now one of those 11 'kids" was 16 years old - I think - but the rest were maybe 11 years old? and under?  The youngest was 10 months old.  I won't bore you with the family pictures but if you are curious you can look through the whole Chicago Trip Album.

Sunday we took the girls in to the city and it turned out to be pretty much a perfect family outing. 

We started out at Millennium Park:

Then we headed to the American Girl Store where my little con-artists ...err, I mean daughters ... batted their eyes at Daddy and each walked out with a NEW DOLL

After that we knew we needed to restore David to his senses so we headed down to Giordano's for some deep dish for everyone and two tall beers for David:

After a great day in the city we headed back to Aunt Carol and Uncle Dick's.  We sat around and chatted with them until bedtime and then tucked three very sleepy girls into bed.  Monday morning we ate a nice, slow breakfast and chatted some more before we hit the road back to Ohio.

It was a wonderful trip, a great visit with family AND it was made even more perfect when my Aunt Carol sent me the following email:

" ... Just want to tell you we both enjoyed your stay very much. We really like David and the girls and I'm sure your Mom would be thrilled with them and also very proud of you as a wife and mother.

Please, let's do keep in touch!
Love, Aunt Carol"

A perfect ending to a perfect trip!