We traveled to visit family in Ottawa, Ill. where I grew up from 1969 until I left for college in 1978 (though I did a stint there after college from 1982 to 1984, too).
My parents had flown in from Florida to visit their great-grandson Kaleb Nimke, the five-month-old son of my niece Angela and her husband Fred. So, my brother Eric and his friend, Jen, came up from Normal, Ill. and Mary and I gave the Kia Sportage a 900-mile workout to join the family.
It was quite the whirl-wind trip: We departed at about 6 p.m. Friday and arrived at our hotel about seven hours later. Saturday we got to meet Kaleb in person and Saturday night my sister Karen and my brother-in-law Bud fed us a delicious ham dinner.
Like all families, we have a lot of fun whenever we get together and we laughed a lot. My sister, who demanded I take down the picture of her in cat-glasses that adorned this site a couple of weeks ago, is such a sweet person, and she always makes me laugh (usually, quite by accident).
It turns out, she still owned those cat-glasses! Though, because of the many, many years that have gone by since her youth, they were crumbling. That made us all laugh even harder.
Kaleb is pure joy. He is a happy little guy and full of smiles and hugs. And we finally got to see Angela and Fred's house that they are refurbishing. It is an amazing project and just as impressive as the sweat equity are the many wonderful pictures of both Kaleb and his older brother, Hunter throughout their home.
We got up early Sunday morning and shot back across Illinois, Indiana and Ohio to arrive at Jillian's in just five hours and 50 minutes. We missed just a bit of the first quarter of the Bears-Packers game, although it would have been fine if we had missed the whole thing, as it turned out.
Anyway, here are some pictures from our great weekend:
HERE ARE ANGELA, FRED AND KALEB.
THE ENTIRE GANG, SANS MARY THE PHOTOGRAPHER, GET READY TO DEVOUR HAM.
ANGELA AND KAELB...
...GREAT UNCLE MARK AND KALEB...
...GREAT-GRANDMA AND KALEB...
...GREAT GRANDPA AND KAELB...
...GREAT UNCLE ERIC AND KALEB...
...KAREN AND KALEB...
...MARK, MARY AND KALEB.
As it turned out, we took a lot of photos of Kaleb... It was a fun-but-exhausting weekend!
More later,
Mark
1 comment:
Hi Mark!
AS always, it was wonderful to see Mary & you; you both are welcome to come anytime!
The photos are darling...the one of you, Mary, & Kaleb is especially fine...that must be one excellent photographer! :)
Thanks again for making the trip back!!
Karen
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