Sunday, September 27, 2009

Marching Madness

An unexpected call on Friday night from Joyce and Julie was the beginning of another fun-filled weekend! My mom and I met up with them at a local bar/restaurant downtown Belleville called Castletown Goeghegan. My mom had never been there, and loved their homemade fish and chips! As we were eating we were entertained with some great Irish music. After we left Goeghegan's my mom and had some last minute prep to do for a trip the next day to EIU to watch the marching band competition.

Our trip to EIU for the marching band competition was a lot of fun! We packed up the car around 10 a.m. and off we went! We decided to stop in Effingham on the way up to go to Walmart to see if we could find some stadium fold up seats (they were out of them in Belleville). They had a ton of them in Effingham, so we bought 2 of them and some other snacks and we were on our way to EIU. As we were approching the Charleston exit, we saw the sign for the Tuscola outlet mall and I remembered the awesome Amishland bakery, furniture store, etc that was next to the outlet mall. So we decided to drive a little more north so we could get the awesome cinnamon rolls that are as big as your head from the Amish place. We get to the Amishland shop and to our dismay the bakery has closed down!!! It was a fun trip up to the shops even though there were no cinnamon rolls.

On our way back down to Charleston it starts to pour down! My mom and I decided to just park on the street and use this time to eat lunch, while the band competition was on a "rain break." They decided to move the competition indoors to the field house, then it stopped raining and decided to move it back over to the stadium outside! After an 1 1/2 hour rain delay, the competition was back on! We saw over 20 bands perform including Granite City and Belleville West. Both did an outstanding job!

After the competition was over around 10:30 p.m., we went to a restaurant called Boxa on the recommendation of Tracie, my student teacher. She was right, their grinders are awesome! My mom and I both had the Southwestern Chicken grinders on the recommendation of the manager, who said it was their #1 seller for 10 years!! The hot sandwich was great, since we had been sitting out in the cold and damp air all afternoon and night! After the hot meal, we were back on the road to go home!! We arrived home around 2:00 a.m. and it was time for bed! Also, a big thank you to Cassie who watched Gabby and Roxie for the evening.

After sleeping in this morning, Cassie dropped over to give back the keys and told me the dogs were well behaved for her. After Cassie left, I went to JoAnn's and got some fabric for the back of my Neptune quilt and eyed up some more Christmas fabric, but I refrained! I also was inspired for some more quilt patterns from some of the flag designs from the color guard teams. Those might be my next quilts! After JoAnn's it was time for dinner and The Amazing Race and Brothers & Sisters!!! Hope the week is as much fun as the weekend was!

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