second day in Illinois

Our Illinois vacation is going GREAT! We've gotten to see several friends and family and spend some time smiling and chuckling together over Seth's cuteness :-) Today, we started off by meeting the people that my mom works with. Seth was pretty shy, but he charmed everyone anyway. Then we went to visit one of my great aunts. She thought Seth was just precious, of course. Our next stop was a longer visit with the aunt that came with Mom to pick us up at the airport -- Aunt Ruby. This picture was at the end of a little walk we took. Seth was lovey with both Grammy and Aunt Ruby right away, even holding their hands to walk and giving hugs.
The weather is BEAUTIFUL down here right now -- about 70 degrees, I think. So for lunch, my Uncle Carlos grilled some DELICIOUS pork steaks.

Two of Seth's favorite playthings today were a kleenex (which he played with for hours) and then a dandelion that my mom picked for him on our little walk. He played and played with that "flower."

We also got to see one of my cousins today. He has some horses down the street from my aunt's house, so we went down to see them. Seth was NOT thrilled with this. He loves animals in books and on tv, but is deathly afraid of them in person.

The only way I could get Seth to get anywhere near petting the horse was to tell him to let the horse smell his flower.

When we left my aunt's house, we went to visit my "adopted" grandparents -- friends of the family that I've always called grandparents. They were babysitting one of their great-grandchildren, and she and Seth played together VERY nicely. They created a little sharing/trading game. Adley found two bottles of bubbles, so she gave one bottle to Seth. Then they traded. And then they traded again and again and again. It was SO cute and nice that they were both willing to share! While we were talking to my grandparents, their son drove up. He was in high school and college when I was a little kid, so we have lots of funny stories about his teaching me funny tricks :-)

We stopped by the grocery store on the way back to Mom's house and met another friend that Mom worked with. Seth immediately started flirting with her, putting his hands over his eyes and smiling really big and cute.

I'm thinking that Seth and I should probably go to bed a little bit earlier tonight than we did last night. We're both pretty tired from flying, not getting much sleep Monday night, and running around yesterday and today. We'll have more pictures and vacation news tomorrow :-)