Saturday

After several false starts last weekend, I finally made it to Chicago today! 

Stand back, cheepers, cats, hurry down for breakfast, Ed, I need to get on the road!

Here we are nearing the middle of February and I can just now celebrate my daughter's January birthday! Not to mention the grand girls! I haven't seem them at all in 2023. Our last encounter? On New Year's Eve day, in Door County. That seems like a mountain of years ago!

Oh how they grow!

I didn't make it here on time for Primrose's ballet class (where are those high speed trains when you need them??), but I did arrive in time for lunch. Afterwards? We do a passport picture session! Here are two photos that are obvious rejects, but ones I love!

An afternoon of play, of books, of music...

Ending with a neighborhood walk. 

(In her Wisconsin Piggly Wiggly cap!)

(Some of the buildings in the Wicker Park neighborhood of Chicago are really intriguing...)

(... and the murals -- beautiful!)

And in the evening, the young couple go out for a date, and I stay with the kids. The three of us eat supper... which obviously includes marinara sauce!

... and an amused older sister!

And then, soon after the parents return, I actually have to retreat to their neighborhood hotel. The corner of their home where I usually camp out is having some structural issues at the moment and it's easier for me to just sleep down the street rather than disrupt their household even more. Tomorrow I'll be back with the whole lot of them for a morning together. Not a long visit, to be sure, but a rich one nonetheless!