So, as most of you who read this blog already know, my Grandma Jean (mom's mom) passed away on St. Patrick's Day. This, of course, prompted a flurry of activity on our part in order to get up here for the memorial service on Friday.

Since trying to find airfare last minute is a financial nightmare, I decided to go with a "last minute" deal that you can find on certain websites. Unfortunately, this last minute fare had us leaving from Austin at 6 AM Friday.

That wasn't the bad part, though. The weather had a little winter in store for us, and flying into Chicago turned out to be a bit more tricky than planned.

Luckily, we did make it, just 30 minutes late, which gave us plenty of time to get our car and drive to Geneseo. The memorial service was wonderful, and Mom made it through her speech about Grandma without too much trouble. Afterward, we had cookies and lemonade in the church basement, then went over to Grandma's house to say goodbye.

(Thanks to Aunt Linda for the pictures from Grandma's house)

Friday night, we hung out with the rest of the Laleman clan at Grandma Betty and Grandpa Al's house. Since they're in Florida, we had a house party and Rachel got totally trashed.

We'll be in Illinois until Monday...enjoying this lovely weather.