Being impulsive can be fun!

I'm not quite sure what got into me; but, last Monday I just decided to call my brother-in-law and his wife and see if they were up for a visit! An impromptu visit to family... not usually a big deal, right? Well it is when they live 4 states away and you decide to pack up 6 people and a dog on the spur of the moment! When I called on Monday evening, Dave and Kari happened to be driving home from a long weekend vacation themselves. Still, Kari answered the phone with "Hello, so are you planning a trip out?" My reply, "Well, actually, the reason I called was... what if we showed up at your house on Wednesday?" All she said was, "start packing!!!" I even had to ask if she wanted to run it by David first. "oh, I'll just let him know you're coming, just get packing and start driving!" So, pack we did! We had a few things scheduled for Tuesday morning so I knew we wouldn't be able to leave MN until mid-afternoon. I planned to drive to the Chicago area and find a place to sleep for the night and finish the drive on Wed. This worked out perfectly.

We arrived Wednesday, a couple of hours before Dave and Kari arrived home from work. This gave us a chance to rest up a little before the fun began. We had a nice visit Wednesday evening, the kids all got reacquainted, and we settled in for a few days!

Thursday we headed for the park. The playground was built to resemble a castle with plenty of towers to climb and tunnels to crawl through.

James and Madison struck quite a pose. Can you guess which playwright's story they have thoroughly enjoyed this past school year?

Myriah has always been the first one to start climbing, so it didn't take her long to find the highest stop and climb on up. It provided a great place for a group photo.
Here is Magdalene with my sweet little nephew Will.



Lawrence had a lot of fun climbing and crawling.



It was a very hot day and it wasn't long before we all gravitated to a near by creek to cool down.






The creek proved to be a great spot to take some nice photos. We were able to get a great family picture.





I was also able to capture quite a bit of Will's personality as he splashed in the water. You can see more over at Will Wonders.

To be continued......