On to Illinois!

On our drive from WI to IL we got to see a few friends. 

This family are old friends of my family and I don't think I've seen them since high school.  It was such a treat to catch up!

Then we got to stop off and hang out with a college friend and meet her beautiful daughter.  It was so wonderful to get to catch up!

We thought this shot was pretty good since all of the girls are looking in the right direction!  Not easy to get!

Wheaton!

We got to spend a few days with the Davis Family who were with us our first two years overseas.  The girls LOVED playing with Gabbie!  Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the whole family...  Gabbie's the cutest one!  :-)

Jonathan's uncle came to visit us fom Michigan.  We hadn't seen him in several years so it was a real treat for him to drive so far just for the day. 

Check out all this snow!  It was COLD in Illinois!

Stop #2

Our second stop on our mid-West adventure was to visit our wonderful friends and former teammates in Wisconsin!  We were so excited to get to see these dear friends! 

I didn't get a picture of it but Carly LOVED their dog - a pug.  She would sit next to him and try to pet him (hit him was more like it) and she'd lean in for him to lick her right on the lips!  Yuck!  But it was pretty cute!

One of our favorite outings was to visit a cheese factory!  Yep, Wisconsin LOVES it's cheese!  And it's good too!  Did you know that fresh cheese curds should always squeak?  They do!  It's the funniest thing to be chewing and have it squeaking in your mouth! 

Here's the kids enjoying some ice cream at the cheese factory.

Carly liked the cheese curds too!

It was great to get to see the church where our friends are serving now.  They've got terrific facilities and really creative kids classrooms.

We got to get out and play in the snow!!!  It was Katie's first time in snow and she loved it, though she mostly just wanted to eat it.  By the time we went inside she said, "My mittens are cold!"

Even Figo the dog got out and played in the snow!  Only Carly missed it because she slept the whole time!

We happened to be there on Super Bowl Sunday!  Wow, in Wisconsin the day the Packers won the Super Bowl - it was fun!  And we quickly became Packers fans - at least for that day!  We ate cheese and sausage and watched the game.  It was a lot of fun!

Ready to watch the game!

It was so much fun to get to spend time with these great friends.  We miss them and look forward to when we'll get to see them again!

A Winter Wonderland!

We just got back from a trip to the mid-West.  We had to go for a set of meetings in Minneappolis so we added on some time to visit friends and a few churches in the area.  It was great!  If you heard me talk about this trip before we left I'm SURE you heard me mention that I was afraid that we were going to FREEZE!  I can honestly say that it was not that bad.  Most of the time we didn't notice the cold at all. 

On our first stop in Minneapolis we stayed with some new friends who have 3 little ones of their own.  The kids had a ball playing together and didn't even miss us while we were at our meetings (Ok, most of the time...).

Here's some pictures of how much snow was there when we arrived.  Wow!  I don't remember when I've seen so much snow!  For this girl from Southern California this was a lot of snow!  There had been major storms just a day or two before we arrived so it was beautiful!

Brilliant idea!  When you don't want to take the kids outside to play in the snow, bring the snow inside!