A weekend with the folks...

This past weekend was the Sweet Corn Festival in Mendota IL.  I was able to head down to my parents' house on Friday night, and Jeff & Rhy followed on Saturday after football practice.  It was nice to visit again since I hadn't been there since Easter and had only had brief visits with them.

I picked up Nate (my eldest nephew) on Saturday from football practice.

He's the first to ride in the new car that Jeff and I got the end of last month!  More on that in another post...

Tina & I took 4 kids to the Sweet Corn Festival.

Trekker (youngest nephew) had a corn dog (or a Lion Dog, since it was from the Lion's Club) and a lemon-aid.

We like to look around at the crafts & vendors.  There was some nice stuff there.  I bought a couple of towels from Mary Horn (neighbor when we were kids, makes baby & Barbie clothes, used to give us orange push 'ems, really nice person) and we had walking tacos made with Doritos at the Heiss's food stand.  I really wanted to stay longer, but my back had been giving me problems for a few days and it got to the point that it hurt too bad and I had to leave early.

Saturday night we had a cookout at Mom & Dad's.  Well, can it be called a "cookout" if we didn't actually cook anything outside?  Mom crock-potted a couple of different meats, made cooler sweet corn*, and we had various other side dishes and chocolate covered cherry cake (Thank You Tina!).

*Apparently People Who Camp know that you can put your shucked corn into a cooler, pour boiling/hot water on it, close the cooler for about an hour or 90 minutes, and your corn will be cooked.  Thank you, People Who Camp, for keeping this information to yourselves all these years!!!  What the heck!  Share the info sooner next time, would you?  This was awesome!*

Emily & Adam came by bringing their adorable little girl Brianna with them.  She's just too cute!  She doesn't so much like being held by others, but she sure did play with us.  By the end of the night she was teasing us! Pretending she would go to someone and then laughing when she turned away.  So much personality!

So. Much. Cute!

It was a really nice night for hanging out outside.

South from the house

West from the driveway - you know this place is for sale if you want to buy it...

The kids played on the property (3 girls and 1 boy - all teens and-preteens, plus the going-on-7-year-old Trekker), and Oreo enjoyed the extra attention.

It was really great to get to spend some time with family away from the regular chores waiting at home, like dishes, laundry, etc.  I just wish I had felt better and could have gone to the festival on Sunday too!