Week in Review - Fair Oaks, IN

(Still catching up, we were in Fair Oaks, IN from August 11-19, 2015.)

As I mentioned before, we decided to go off script to be able to attend a Fulltime Families rally in Branson, MO. A great part of this is that it made it OK to break our original plans and start to do some more spur of the moment things. One of these was getting to visit with my Aunt Suzette and her family. Our original plan had us missing her by this (holds fingers apart) much between her zany work schedule and us being on the far side of Chicago from her. But, the "no plan" plan meant that we could spend a week in Indiana fairly close to her place.

Dinner out - holy yummy margarita!

We stayed at Oak Lake Family Campground. This was a nice campground. The staff was super friendly. I wasn't crazy about the extra activity fees and felt they were a little high (though, our nightly rate without the fees was about $36, so that's not as bad as I recall). Otherwise, I did like the campground and would go back. Its proximity to my aunt's house was very nice. We hung out a lot- at her place and at the campground.

Huge pull-through site

The cones in the mid-left of that picture are of the fire pit. These were sunk down in the ground and were a hassle. I was terrified that the kids were going to get playing and break a leg. And building a fire down in it was annoying in that you had to be on the ground to reach. And then there was no way of getting airflow down in there. I'm not sure who thought these were a good idea.

We had a view of the lake

Inflatables on the lake (to be on these, you had to pay extra)

The kids enjoyed the jumping pillow (the extra fee applied for this)

And really, that was our week in review: we hung out with Aunt Suzette, Jake, and Michael more days than not. We drove into Chicago (Blue Island) for dried beef to ship back to my sister and to get gyros from T&G Gyros. One really high point was getting a tour of the neighborhoods and seeing houses where my mom and dad lived. We also happened to drive through the area where I was born (Hinsdale). We ate so much yummy food. We hung out and laughed. And just had a great time in general. We even had a (rare for us) fire a couple of nights.

Our wood "pile"

The Albanese Candy factory was right near my aunt's house - great gummy bears!

Like I said, being able to visit family and friends really make this trip special. I'm glad that I didn't let the plan define our experience and that, instead, we went off script and got to spend some quality in time with our loved ones.

Next up, we actually back track to Elkhart for some camper work before we started southwest and were rally bound.

As usually, many more pictures of our week on Flickr.