Vacation recap

 We had a wonderful trip to Illinois, this past week.

The traffic was well behaved in both directions, and there were only a couple of scary moments with big trucks at high speed.

I trust Dave's driving, but I don't trust anyone else who is on the road.  We see people passing us with their heads down, looking at their phones.  

Anyway, we got to see just about everyone we had hoped to see.  

There were three family gatherings, one at the baseball park in Milwaukee, with my brother in law's entire family, save one.

One of my brother in law's nephews threw out a ceremonial first pitch, on Memorial day, and then proposed to his girlfriend on the Jumbo Tron, but apparently not on live TV.  

My family gathered at the house on our first night in town (with EVERYONE on my side), and our last night, in town (with a few missing, sadly). 

It was easy going and fun both times, and everyone pitched in to try to ease the burden on my sister.

I managed to see TEN friends in THREE DAYS.  

It wasn't necessarily non stop, though.... as I scheduled things to allow for time to relax in between meet ups, MOST of the time.

We took a day and went south, to a forest preserve, where we hoped to find the double brood of cicadas.

We THINK we succeeded, as there were two different sizes of cicada, and they appeared to have slightly different markings.

We got to eat all of the Chicagoland-specific things that we wanted, though the pizza was not the greatest.  We tried a new place for pizza night, that no one had tried before, and it was a little disappointing, but that's how we learn!

In other, sadder news, we learned that my Aunt, the last surviving elder from the Greatest Generation of our family, has had a stroke, and is in hospice care.

We all signed a card to send to her, and gathered to make a toast to her on her 96th birthday, on the 31st.

I am so grateful that we got to go visit her a couple of years ago, and that I got to place her mother's journals in her hands.

Also, I received word that my best friend from high school died suddenly last Sunday.  Her son tried to call me that evening, but it was during our first family dinner, and I didn't answer.  I called him back the next morning.

She had a massive heart attack.  Her funeral was Thursday.  Given that she lived way down in southern Illinois, I was unable to attend.

Also, while traveling, I learned that a dear friend's mother was just placed in hospice care.  She passed away this past week, as well.  

We used to hang out together: me, my ex, my friend, and her mom.....watching Cubs games, and playing Trivial Pursuit, back in the day.  

So there was a lot of devastatingly sad news during this trip.  I tried to let myself have time to cry when I was alone in the guest room, but it was hard.

Once we were back, and settled, yesterday, I was finally able to really let the tears flow.  Frank was concerned, and came to check on me.

Today, there are a couple of errands to run, but nothing pressing. Dave will get the new dishwasher ordered...hopefully this one will fit!

My office day is not until Wednesday, so I don't have to worry about jumping right back into that first thing tomorrow.

We hope to see our house sitter some time today, to give her our thanks, and the gifts we brought back for her.

I ordered groceries, and did the laundry yesterday, and today, will mop floors and vacuum rugs.... 

There appears to have been a big mess on the wood floor in our absence, and there are streaks from clean up attempts, HAHA... ew....  Kind of looking forward to finding out what happened there!

Have a good week!