the last of the birthday celebrations...

A couple of weekends ago, my parents came in to celebrate Clara's birthday.  Clara didn't have school that Friday, so we went shopping and to lunch at the American Girl store (6th year in a row... yikes!).  
My parents were staying out in the 'burbs, so we decided to explore out there on Saturday.  It was a warm, fall day, so we thought we would check out the Morton Arboretum. 

First off, we decided to check out the maze...

The view from the observation platform...

Oh look!  There's Alex!  Strange being on this side of the lens!  :-)

The previous weekend we had unearthed my first digital SLR camera and Alex had become intrigued.  We charged up the battery, found a compact flash card and a lens and sent him on his way.  He's really enjoying playing with the camera.  They're studying photography in his Sports for the Mind class and this was just a way to take it a step (or five) further.

Clara was my guide through the maze...

A few fall leaves were still hanging on...

We ended up back up on the observation platform to try to find Jeff.

My parents and the kids...

Then, as you can tell from this photo... the sky got dark and threatening as a storm rolled in....

We ended up trapped inside here....

... for a while.  We had a nice lunch and shopped the gift shop.

When the rain lessened, we went out to the car to go on the scenic drives through the arboretum...

It never really completely stopped raining while we were there, but we had a great time together anyway.  Things got a little silly at times as we drove through.

After the arboretum, we decided to check out the local shopping center.  They were getting set up for their tree lighting that night...

Mom, Clara and I shopped the clothing stores and the boys hit Bass Pro (and came out with a bag of bacon jerky!).

Finally, our last stop of the day, was mom and dad's hotel so the kids could swim.  They (Alex and Clara) made it a couple of hours before they had had too much together time and needed to go. 

It was a really nice visit!  We got to do a lot of cool stuff together and we're all anxious to check out the arboretum again on a better weather day!