Sunday, July 27 continued

We came up to the Schaumburg airport from the east. The runway is in the middle of an urban area surrounded by tall trees and buildings.  At the east end of the runway is a water tower you have to make sure you miss as you come in to land!

Berck put the plane on the ground, and we got ourselves and our stuff out of the plane while listening to the dustup blaring from the hanger.  Berck expressed misgivings about how short the runway was in terms of taking off in the morning.

We all went to the bathroom and went outside to wait for cousin Danny, who drove up in a minivan right after we came outside.  Danny is one of Great Aunt Marilyn’s three sons. Marilyn is Gramma Diane’s sister (Uncle Stacy’s mother).  He drove us back to his house, and we dropped off our stuff, put a load in the wash, since Berck and I were out of clean  clothes, and had a glass of ice tea.

Danny drove us and his daughter Amy (Berck’s second cousin) over to Great Aunt Marylin’s house, a block away, where his brother Larry was picking her up.  This was the first time Berck had met his Great Aunt, although she had sent him birthday cards for years when he was a kid.

Cousin Larry

We all went to Lou’s for deep dish pizza and had some great pizza, an amazing salad, and some Goose Island beer, an entire pint of which I embarrassedly knocked over toward Cousin Larry.  “Welcome to the family!” exclaimed Aunt Marilyn.

Amy and Great Aunt Marilyn

We sat around with Cousin Danny back at his house for a while after supper before heading to bed fairly early.  The temperature had been dropping, so we slept with the window open in Danny’s other daughter’s room (who was busy with her wedding preparations).