Midsummer Night's Dream

Jessica and Bethany made a request for us to post our Renaissance Faire and our Midsummer Night's Dream pictures. I'll have a nice long post soon about the Ren Faire (previewed by the family pic above showing us in our Reniassance costumes) But here's at least half the request filled, with pictures from Shakespeare in the Park.

Our kids really love drama, and this summer the older two appeared as fairies in the Joliet Drama Guild's "Shakespeare in the Park" production of Midsummer Night's Dream. Every fairy made his/her own costume, so the results were creative and eclectic. It was really a lot of fun, sitting on the grassy hillside in Joliet's outdoor theater, on a summer twilight, watching Shakespeare's fairies flit around us. (All the fairies danced out into the audience at regular intervals.)

I was really impressed with how focused all the kids stayed (including Nate, who was in the audience for two performances) through three hours of Shakespeare. And don't they look great!


Here's some of the fairies on stage in the middle of a scene.

Annie whispers some stage instructions to her brother.

A close-up of our fairies.


A group shot after the play.
They had someone doing facepainting during the intermission. Nate got a beard and mustache painted on him. He looks kind of like Will Shakespeare, doesn't he?

More Summer Travel Pics

We had a shortened trip to see the McDonnell clan this summer, since I inadvertently caught half the family out of town on vacation! (Note to self--plan better next summer) But here are some pictures from our visit east. We went to Mystic Seaport with Dad and Gail, which was a lot of fun. And since Brennan and Nate are currently on a Revolutionary War kick, the Pierces took us to Valley Forge and the "Paoli Massacre" site (which wasn't really a massacre, and wasn't really in Paoli, but oh well.) We visited the Anthonys but somehow didn't take pictures. (Oops!) But we did drive down from York to DC for a day's touristing.

Can you see Dad, Gail, Nate, and Annie?


Here we are pretending to attack Fred at the Paoli Massacre site.

Aww, we didn't mean it, Fred!

We spent some fun evenings hanging out with the Pierce family.

Here our Brennan (ever the ham) acts out something in a Charade type game. (Lorrie, John, or Greg, can you remind me of the name of that game? It was fun!)


Here's Nate with Abe.
In front of the actual Apollo 11 lunar module. Very cool

Saluting our Illinois heroes at the WWII memorial.
Waving hello to the Obamas, our fellow Illinoisans.


Finally, back at home. What's a summer without some sparklers?