DeL's Visit!

After 3 years of not seeing each other since they moved, Hannah & Esther came up for a visit! I can't even begin to tell you how fun it was to see them. I wasn't really sure how it would go - you know how if you don't see someone in a long time, it can be hard to know what to talk about and awkward.

Let's just say, we didn't have that problem. In the least. :-) In fact, they arrived Thursday afternoon, and by Friday afternoon, Hannah lost her voice from talking too much!

I think between the four of us we got around 300 photos. Here are some of the highlights:

We played "Would You Rather" the first night... wow. Talk about making memories...

Here we're all stirring the baked oatmeal Friday morning (actually we were just posing)

Friday morning was a bit of a rush because somewhat last minute we decided to go downtown and tour the Lyon & Healy harp factory. Another WOW. I'm so glad we went!

Hannah is playing a harp designed by Carlos Salzedo, a famous harpist. She played several pieces for us. Below is a video of a Salzedo piece. It's a modern piece using lots of pedal work.

(photo credit: Esther)

Would you LOOK at all those harps! I could spend a week there. Heavenly! :-)

I played the Salzedo harp too (both harps I played were concert grand pedal harps - HUGE, especially compared to my harp!)

(photo credit: Esther)

Anyone have a spare $20,000 laying around that you don't need? *hopeful look*

Two happy girls! The lady who checked us out said, "These are better than Tiffany bags, don't you think?"
We agreed. :-)

We stopped for a very late lunch at Sweet Tomatoes and introduced the girls to beets and jicama...

And then took them to Ikea. And at Ikea, they don't give expectant mothers priority parking like some places. Noooo... hybrid cars get the prime spots. We were thinking about suing them for discrimination. Ironically, apparently nobody in Shaumburg owns a hybrid car because the parking spaces were empty...

After that adventure, we were all pretty tired out and one of us had no voice left, so we curled up with popcorn, tea and chocolate and watched the new Emma.

Saturday we took pictures outside, and I got a harp lesson (thanks Hannah!) while Dad, Esther and Tara had a jam session (classical jam you know).

Hannah enjoying the snow! They don't get much of that down south!

Boots!

The girls were supposed to be posing for a snowball throwing shot, but as you can see, they did more than pose. :-) Thanks to Hannah's good aim, Esther got a nice handful of snow down her shirt.

This is a delicious cheesecake dessert we made. Except, it's not really cheesecake. You'd never believe it was made from nuts!

There are so many more photos I could post but I will leave it at that. We all can't wait for the next time we will see them!