Southern Illinois, October '09

We spent last week back home in Southern Illinois. We especially wanted to go because all of the cousins would get to be together, but it is always wonderful to be down south in October. Here's a quick photo tour of our week:

All of the "trifecta of terror" love to play with Grandma's rock and fossil collection. And yet not one boy got his fingers or toes smashed!

Aunt Betsy brought over cookies to decorate. Unfortunately they tasted a little like chocolate cardboard, but the kids loved putting candy and icing on them.

Not that you can tell Beatrice's level of enjoyment by her expression. (I love this picture. Beatrice gives me this look waaay too often!)

Wiley took his candies off several times to reposition them. Or just as an excuse to eat them.

I told Evelyn where to put her candies to make the best Jack-O-Lantern face. She put them in her mouth, though, mostly.

Here's a picture of Stanley. He's always excited to see a camera out! He also really liked his Uncle Rob - I think it was the beard. And Rob likes to make funny faces and funny noises.

We saw this miraculous rainbow one evening as the sun was setting after a rainy, rainy day. This picture doesn't do it any justice, though; it was truly the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. We could see it go all the way across the sky from one side to the other. On the left side it was a double rainbow and on the right we could see several colors beyond the "roy g. biv". The extra bands of colors were narrower than the first set. It was amazing!

On Saturday we stopped by the Hope Church Fall Festival. The girls got their cheeks painted. We didn't get to stay much longer after that, though, because that red cup of water there in the picture was blown over by the wind... right into my lap, all over me and Obie. What a mess! I would have loved to spend the afternoon there with all our friends, but I just couldn't do it with wet pants!

Here are the girls with their faces painted back at Grandma's house. Maggie found a wooley caterpillar crawling around in the kitchen.

He was much coveted!

We had a great time in So Ill. The week was very restful, but it also blew by. In fact, it went so fast that I was already planning my next trip before this one was over! We'll see you back there in January!