Labor Day Weekend 2011

My Dad, Mom, and sister Cori came for a long weekend over Labor Day.  Credit for the majority of these pictures goes to my sister Cori.  She and Mom took a lot of pictures and so I let my camera rest – theirs are probably better than mine would be anyway.

They arrived Saturday evening and we ate supper and must have just relaxed because I can’t recall what we did.  Sunday afternoon we made home made tortillas to go with our steak fajitas.

Grandma and Jolene cutting up meat for the fajitas.

Making balls of dough for the tortilla press.

Pressing the dough into tortillas.

Cooking the tortillas.

Chad was slicing and sauteing onions and peppers for the fajitas.

We probably had some fresh salsa to go with it but I don’t remember for sure.

Meanwhile, Jubilee and Jonas kept Grandpa company! 

 

After supper we took them around to see our new animals and give Aunt Cori a tour – she’s never been here.  Following are some photos from our walk.

The boys fort.

Best Friends – well, most of the time!

Sweet!

Farmer Jared

Taking a walk to the back pasture.

Jolene

Jesse

Monday we tried to get some good portraits of the children but we didn’t get out early enough before the sun was too high.  Lighting was very difficult to work with.

Johanna

Jonas

Jubilee

Jolene

Jared

Javan

Jesse

After that we went to the Wheels of Time Museum in Peoria

The little ones were captivated by the carnival display.

Pump Organ

I was going to say “Old Fashioned Pump Organ” but I realized any pump organ is going to be considered “Old Fashioned!”

Aunt Cori at the Xylophone

 

 

 

From here we were planning to go to an Italian Restaurant across the street but it was closed so we got sandwiches at Subway instead and then went Putt Putt golfing at Mt Hawley Bowl and Castle Golf.

Our team didn’t follow the rules strictly, we don’t do this often and we let things slide or give second chances, etc.  This was a big No No we found out because another golfer couldn’t compare his scores accurately to ours – we’ll call him Mr. Competitive! 

Team 1 – Grandpa, Grandma, Javan, and Jared

Team 2 – Chad, Jubilee, Jonas, and Johanna

Team 3 – Aunt Cori, Me, Jesse, and Jolene

Mt Hawley Bowl and Castle Golf is a very challenging course for Putt Putt.

Last stop was the Peoria River Front

It was a lot colder than we anticipated so in desperation I grabbed a blanket out of Grandma’s car to snuggle in.

This is Cori’s picture.

Tuesday we met Grandma Plattner at Tanner’s Orchard for a few hours.   We enjoyed their samples and ate lunch including cider and a cider donut for dessert.  All the children enjoyed the petting zoo and the playground.  Cori and I took the older children (I think just the boys) and went through one side of the corn maze; we didn’t have time to do both sides.  From here Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt Cori left to visit more family in Northern Illinois.  They probably have loads of pictures from Tanners but I didn’t have my computer along to load them onto my computer before they left.

We enjoyed our visit with Grandpa, Grandma, and Aunt Cori and only regret that we don’t live close enough to do it more often!