Since the one in Congerville was wholly unsatisfying, Dad, Parker and I decided to check out the one in Peoria on Saturday morning on Parker's way out of town. This one was much more like what we had in mind.
I must admit that this particular bucket list item seemed a bit ironic to me. How could it possibly be accomplished? If you have a party for no particular reason so that you can cross the item off of your bucket list, then you really are having a party for a particular reason and thus can never really and truly accomplish the item that is actually on the list. (I just wanted to see how long I could make that sentence.) Anyway, after our geocaching adventure, Dad, Parker, Fleece and I decided to try to make this party for no particular reason happen. It seemed good to combine this bucket list item with another. Specifically:
MAKE HOMEMADE ICE CREAM
Parker shared with us how to make ice cream in a Ziploc bag. Put in necessary ingredients and shake, shake, shake. It's great because you get to burn your calories before you even consume them! (Or something like that) We got a little party music going (Use your imagination.) and shook, shook, shook (our ice cream bags) all the while wearing our painstakingly constructed party hats. It was great!
Here sit the Party Pooper and the Party Animal
Homemade ice cream ingredients
Dad mixes up his bag
Parker (the Party Pooper) shows us his party face as he prepares to shake, shake, shake.
Oh, what fun we are all having!
(for no particular reason)
The ice cream
Doctored up a little
Fleece wishes she wasn't lactose intolerant.
Parker's excited!
And then...
What better thing to do at a party for no particular reason than to...
LEARN A NEW CARD GAME???
Parker examines the rules document.
And explains it to the rest of us
Oops! Better try that again and see if we can keep Fleece's hat on.
Take 2:
No luck with the hat but at least we got all the way through the explanation
Thanks, Parker! The dramatic reading and animation helps us understand so much more clearly.
Fleece is ready to go.
Perhaps she got a little too noisy?
If you are ever wondering what to do, I highly recommend having a party for no particular reason. We really enjoyed it. :-)
I had heard of geocaching but didn't know what it was exactly. It sounded complicated. Hence, I had figured it was one of those things I just wouldn't get to do. However, after looking into it a little bit, I decided that it would be just the activity to enjoy with Dad and Parker on Friday. With a bit of persuasion (It didn't take too much), the fellas were game to set off on a geocaching adventure. We didn't have a GPS, so we entered a couple of coordinates into my cell phone to see if it was smart enough to help us out. Our first geocache site was a no-go. My phone just wasn't up to the challenge. It kept directing us into someone's yard, and we didn't think that was quite where we wanted to be. The second coordinates we plugged in seemed to be in the middle of a section of woods that seemed quite impassable. We decided to abandon the park and head for another site on the Eureka College campus. Using the general location and the clues given (rather than depending on my wholly inadequate cell phone), we split up to scout out the area where we thought the geocache "box" would be. It didn't take too long before I spotted a small item under the seat of a park bench that looked like it might not exactly belong there. Sure enough, our first (and only) geocaching find. It was fun enough to do again sometime!
The four of us set off with our list of coordinates and clues on a handy dandy post-it.
Sweet success!
Parker attempts to open the container so that we can add our names to the list of people who have found this particular geocache.
Got it!
Unrolling the scroll
We feel like real geocachers now!
Studying the list of names
Do we know any of these people?
Using Dad's very solid bicep as a surface for adding our names to the list
"Hey, Parker! We're glad you're here. Did you have a good trip? Would you like to join us for a picnic at Eureka Lake?" That was essentially Parker's welcome to 914 S. Main St. when he arrived on the evening of July 11. We didn't want to waste any time in our pursuit of completing as many bucket list activities as possible while we were together! Parker was game as we figured he would be, so we proceeded to set out to accomplish bucket list item #26.
GO ON A PICNIC
All packed up and ready to go
Cheese!
Now that we've gotten Fleece turned around and facing the camera, we'll try again.
And we got to watch the sunset again.
GO TO A BASEBALL GAME
It was our supremely good fortune that there was a baseball game going on down at the lower lake park that evening, so after our picnic, we drove down and sat in the car a while and watched. Ah, the crack of the bat...
Dad and I had to leave the thrill-a-minute Congerville farmer's market a little early (Catch the sarcasm?) because we had a very special guest arriving at our house the evening of July 11. My cousin, Parker, stopped by on his way to detassling in northwest Iowa. He stayed until Saturday morning, so we had parts of three days in which to complete a goodly number of bucket list items together as well as make a whole lot of memories!
On our way to Wednesday night Bible study, Dad and I (Mom was in Ohio with her mother and sisters) saw a sign in Congerville, just down the road from Eureka, announcing a farmer's market the following evening. Perfect! I imagined a quaint small town farmer's market, maybe seeing a couple of people I knew from way back when, AND a chance to cross something else off the bucket list. How fortuitous! We purposed (or at least I did) that we would make the trip back on Thursday. I was pretty sure I could talk Dad into it as well. He was working on his bucket list too after all!
Soooo... On Thursday evening, Dad and I made the short jaunt to Congerville to check out this advertised market. We drove to where we thought it was and saw...ummm...nothing. Maybe it's somewhere else? There's not much to the town, so we drove to the other edge of it and saw nothing. I was pretty sure it was supposed to be where we had first looked, so we headed back downtown. Sure enough. The farmer's market was getting into full swing. There was a table where a family was selling repackaged spices from an Amish store. That was the farmer's market. Needless to say, we didn't stay long.
However, Dad did make one small purchase.
Not the most productive experience ever, but it did make a kind of funny story.
These are two items that I didn't expect to be able to accomplish. However, my cousin, Krista, made the plans, and I followed along. (Is that how it was, KB?) There are no pictures of these activities for reasons that will become apparent once I list them, which I will now do.
GO TO A WATER PARK
Water park visited: Splashdown in East Peoria, IL
SLIDE DOWN A WATER SLIDE
We did this at the beginning of our time at the water park. This was a fortunate decision as a while later all the water in the park went off. They eventually made everyone get out of the water until the problem was solved. KB and I took that as our cue to leave.
