Visitors from Kansas!

Let's start this now by saying my mom and dad are absolutely the most beautiful, romantic, loving, kind, generous, fantastic people and parents on this planet earth. I am completely in love with them and their oozing goodness. I feel so very blessed to be their daughter and lucky enough to have them come visit us for a couple wonderful days.

My sweet mother.

The first day we showed them around our neck of the woods. We visited the windy, cold beach. Notice how brown the water is. Thank Ms. Sandy storm for getting Lake Michigan all hot and bothered.

There were plenty of fun rocks to be discovered and many geology conversations to be had.

(Do you love my sweet mama's hard working hands?)

They insisted Lucy sit for this picture with them. I loved it:) 

 After the beach, we grabbed popcorn at a factory near us and went to explore this beauty. Dave and I had driven by a few times and admired it but never really had the guts to get out and check it out. It's quite overgrown and doesn't look lived in, although there is the occasional car in the drive. It's the most magnificent mansion, really just out of the movies and I can't imagine not living in it. (It's not even for sale.)

The garage.

A very large greenhouse. Notice the trees growing out of the roof. 

The side of the house. The protruding section is the library.

The back. Notice the lawn furniture. The house is still furnished. 

The beautiful  pool.

I missed taking a picture of the sprawling lawn. Seriously, it is just beautiful. I was really was just snapping and running for dreaded fear of getting caught. I have my good share of authority figure fears. My dad? They are non existent which is the only reason I had the guts to explore in the first place.

We then went to the dog park. A whole post is coming on that fun place later :) It has lots of trails and woods to explore. My adventurous papa led us on a trail of his own out and around the dog park. We couldn't make our way back in so... we just hopped the fence. He just hoisted my mom over his shoulder, her laughing all the way. Do I not have the most fun, wonderful parents ever?

The next day we took the train in to Chicago. It's so much fun and much less stress.

Beautiful Macy's all decorated for Christmas. Yes, already. This was Nov. 3

A most popular Chicago tourist past time is the river and lake architectural boat tours you can take. I do recommend them. A fun story about the above building - Merchandise Mart. This 4 million square foot building opened in 1930 was owned by the Marshall Field family and later purchased by the Kennedy's for $13 million and sold for almost $550 million. Until 2008, it had its own zipcode and was the largest building in the world until the pentagon was built.

We also visited iconic Chicago sites including "The Bean" in Millenium Park.

It was the most wonderful couple of days to have them visit. We absolutely loved having them. The days were busy, the sites were breathtaking and company was fantastic, but mostly it was amazing to see my beautiful parents in love and loving life and realize how very lucky I really am.