The place I spent the last couple days. Ogden, IL. Just a little east of Champaign. A small little farming community. Pretty much just corn fields as far as you could see. I went there with two friends, Randy & Daniel. Randy’s parents live there and we drove over there on Thanksgiving day. We had a blast or at least I did. Thanksgiving dinner was delicious, even the eggplant parmesan. We took a walk in the woods that they own, I got another lesson in driving a manual truck, we watched “A Series of Unfortunate Events”, read books, looked at pictures and just enjoyed everyone’s company.
On our way home yesterday, Randy gave us a tour of the University of Illinois where he went to school. Wow, that place is huge! I can’t even imagine what it must have been like to attend a school that large. We ate at Chipotle and then headed back to Peoria. When we got back, Daniel & I headed down to the courthouse park in downtown Peoria where there was going to be a tree lighting ceremony, ice sculpting and Christmas caroling. It was beautiful to see all the trees light up with their white lights. Then we headed over to Riverside church where they had free hors d’oeuvres and hot drinks. One Randy joined us again, we walked around downtown a bit. There were 30 open house locations where business had drinks, Christmas decorations and other things going on. We stopped at a building that was dedicated to the history of the Civil War. They had dancing going on from that period of time. Then we went to see some Irish dancing. We ran out of time to get to the photography exhibits so we headed back toward the cars, stopping briefly to see the finished ice sculpture – a sleigh with presents and pulled by reindeer.
All in all, I had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was great to feel like I had a home to go to. And it was nice to get off camp for a couple days. Today I’m being rather lazy. I slept til I woke up and then laid in bed for awhile. It was very nice to just relax. I’m doing laundry and I need to go pick up the director’s computer from Peoria. It’s going to be a slow day and I’m glad for that.
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