Peoria: my second home

Peoria, IL has always held a special place in my heart- for that is where my mom's side of the family lives!! I LOVE the Ricca family... my mom was the third of 9 children.. yes I said 9 lol & now we have multiplied to a family of 50+ people. its kind of insane at times when we are all together but we NEVER have a dull moment. As a family we go to Peoria A LOT!! one year I counted how many times we went and it turned out to be at least 20 times.. meaning that year I spent 5 days straight in the car driving to Peoria- craziness I tell ya.

Anyways yesterday we drove our oh so familiar drive of 2 1/2 hrs down to Peoria. We went down to celebrate my Grandma's 79th birthday!! It was a lot of fun. We all met at a restaurant called Fairview Farms and the food was quite delicious!! I sat at a table with my cousins & we called it the "older" kids table lol not to be confused with the kids table of course... it was so fun being able to sit and talked to my cousins- they make me laugh. My cousin Jon, who was sitting next to me, has for years now called me "hey you" or just "you" because he used to always confuse me with my sister Sarah and call me her name instead of mine and figured just "hey you" would be easier.. lol anyways he was giving me a hard time because I wasn't eating a corn fritter so I finally tried one & OH man was it GOOD!!! I am so glad I tried it!! We also had fried chicken, rolls, mashed potatoes, green beans, & then some more corn fritters... yum yum!!

After we were all done with our food we left the restaurant and went to my Aunt Sue's house for cake & ice cream!! I am not usually much of a cake person but this time they had my all time FAVORITE cake: Angel Food cake with homemade frosting!! it was really good & it made me happy :) We stayed at my aunts for a few hours while all the uncles were outside or in the family room, the aunts were all sitting at the kitchen tabling talking and planning the next wedding shower and the cousins & I were in the living room talking and laughing and occasionally listening to everyone else's conversations :)

Sadly, the time came when we had to return home... the ride home was long and fun and needless to say I was pretty tired when we got home... but now I cant wait to go back.