Passing through St. Henry!!!

Pictures from St. Henry:

1. Our trailer as it approaches the bridge that is too short for us to pass under

2. Matt, Jamie and I having fun at Northside

3. Matt, Jamie and I on the train

4. Jamie with the guy who sang "You're So Vain" with us on the train

5. Matt, Jamie and I "playing" Bingo...who's it gonna be???

6. And the winner is....

7. Matt, Jamie and I in the food tent at the SH picnic

8. Lori and Chloe...Chloe's now one year old!

9. Linds, Julie, Peg, Mom and Kim singing proudly with the little squirts as background dancers

10. Doug and Dan singing "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy"

11. Our crowd...aka my family:-)

12. Brooke and Rachel singing their hearts out with Daddy-O

After leaving Bridgeport, West Virginia, the three of us stopped in St. Henry on our way back to Illinois for our next event. As we passed through, it just so happened to be the Sunday of the St. Henry picnic, so there were lots of people in town. When we got into St. Henry, our first stop was my parent's house. As we pulled the big bad trailer down the long driveway, my ENTIRE family lined up outside to watch me pull the trailer into the parking lot. Lucky for my so-called "big rig" driving skills, I made it into the driveway with no collisions.

It was so great to be able to see my entire immediate family (as well as some aunts, uncles and cousins) and introduce them to Jamie and Matt as well. The whole fam cooked a fabulous meal for us and we got to hang out and chit chat with everyone. After dinner, we partially opened up the stage and had a mini stage show with some karaoke. My family seemed to really enjoy our entertaining abilities...but maybe they were just being nice;-) They also participated in some hard-core karaokeing and performed well. All of my nieces and nephews seemed to be having a ball and definitely aren't stage shy. It was also little Miss Chloe's first birthday so we got celebrate her birthday too!

After entertaining the family, Jamie, Matt and I headed up to the St. Henry picnic to meet up with some of my friends. I was so happy to see some friends from SH and spend a little bit of time with them. I put a little money down at the grocery stand while Jamie and Matt tried their luck at Bingo. We also had to have a "picnic burger".... of course!

I hope small town St. Henry was fun for Jamie and Matt, because it was wonderful for me to be able to see so many SH friends for a night.

Monday, we decided that we would spend one more night in St. Henry. It was nice to be in a home for awhile and have home-cooked meals. During the day, we went over to my aunt and uncle's house to bother them and chat and then I gave Jamie and Matt the "grand" tour (or ten minute tour) of our small town. At the end of the "tour" we of course had to stop at the Dairy Dream for some ice cream...mmmmmm!

Tuesday morning we woke up to a mini interview with the Daily Standard (our local newspaper) and took a quick snapshot, which hit the newspaper the next day. We grabbed a quick lunch and then began our journey back to Chicago, which was a slight fiasco in itself.

As we neared Chicago from the south side of the city, it began to down pour. So not only is it raining, but we also entered into a somewhat shady part of the city (or as others would call it, the ghetto). As we drove further and further into the ghetto and edged into a heavy flow of traffic, we were headed straight under a bridge that had a clearance of 11 feet 8 inches...well, no problem if your truck doesn't need a clearance of at least 12 feet 6 inches. Needless to say, we had to stop in the middle of heavy traffic. Now we are somewhat of a blockade in traffic with no way to get out of our sticky situation other then backing our haus of a trailer up into an intersection with 6 streets of merging traffic. While figuring out how we would execute our plan, we managed to flag down a cop car and they directed traffic so we could back up our trailer and turn ourselves around. Those cops must have thought we were idiots, but we thanked them quickly and jumped in the truck so we could get our big trailer out of there.

Eventually, we made it to our hotel which was out by Midway Airport in Chicago. We dumped our stuff off and headed into downtown Chicago for dinner. After dinner, the three of us went over to a cool little bar called Northside for some drinks. It was a really fun evening and we were happy to be off the road after our little escapade of the day! Our train ride home also proved to be somewhat interesting as we sparked random conversation with others riding the train with us. At one point we were actually singing "You're so vain" with one guy on the train! I guess we just make friends everywhere we go:-)