Celebrating 30 Years at Ravinia

My absolute favorite thing to do for a night out in Chicago is to spend an evening at Ravinia. I discovered Ravinia during the summer after my junior year in college. My friends Suzy and Steve were also in Wheaton for the summer, and we felt so sophisticated enjoying our strawberries and wine while listening to music at such a classy place!

I've been to Ravinia several other times since then and this most recent one to celebrate Walter's 30th birthday was probably the most adventuresome.

Our evening started off well, we had all the essentials to make a high class night at the festival. Special bakery croissants? Check. Knife to cut the gourmet cheese? Check. Citronella candle to keep up us from falling victim to the bugs repelled from the other citronella-touting picnickers? Check. Check. We enjoyed the items I carefully had picked from several Bloomington specialty food stores and then the dark cloud in the sky moved closer and closer...Until we found ourselves hanging out by the bathrooms. Not exactly on the list for a romantic evening!
The good news was that the rain didn't last long but gave me just the perfect amount of time to check in with our boy and hear all about his fun times with Grandma, Becky, and Sam. Then we returned to our once dry grassy picnic location to rescue our chairs from the newly formed pond.
Walter decided to prove that even though he turned 30, he was still young at heart. Although he was soaking wet for the rest of the evening, he put on quite the show!
Giving us hope that Walter's next 30 years of life won't be all drab and gloomy, God gave us a rainbow and the concert went on.

Although we listened to John Hiatt under a rain-soaked blanket rather than lounging on the soft lawn, this evening at Ravinia is one to remember.

(And no, although he does crazy things when he's around people he doesn't know that really was not Walter jumping into the water puddle!)