Mokena: Friend of Children or Foe?

Happy Memorial Day! As I've tried to do the last few years, I headed down to Mokena to celebrate Memorial Day with my friends Terry and Sandie. They put on a great soiree every year. This year was no different! If you live in the Chicagoland area though, you might have heard about the child that was stabbed on Friday night by their 18 year-old half brother. Well, the GF had heard about this and mentioned it to me when I told her about the party. It turns out the stabbing occurred right across the street from my friends' house!!! The people rented the house though and had only been there six months, so don't hold it against Mokenians.

As an example of how much they like kids in Mokena, I offer the following:




This is just a sampling of the baby carriers at the party this year. There were about 20 kids there!! I couldn't count an exact number as they kept running around and were hiding all over. So I think it was about 20. After a few hours, a table was set up for the kids to make personalized visors and some other fun things.















Turns out I parked right in front of the house where the stabbing took place. Ugh.















As usual, the food was awesome and plentiful. When the GF and I arrived, here was the table set up. Not sure if I can describe ALL of the food, but it was pretty damn good. And this spread was just round one.















Here's host Terry working the grill containing the bulk of the second round of eating.

















Look at this!! This is the second round of food. After the first batch of food and a bunch of beer, I came inside to go to the bathroom and that's when I noticed the second round of food was out. Holy smokes. Fortunately I forgot to take picture of the desserts which came out later. That would be unfair to you.














Here's my second (or third) plate. Pork loin, NY Strip Steak, chicken and veggies shish kabob, bratwurst and sauerkraut along with a nice green salad with dried cranberries among other things. Yum!!














Here's the crowd outside before it turned a bit cold.

















Man down!!! These two potato(?) dishes caught fire in the kitchen while being warmed up!! Yep, actually caught fire and shot flames out of the oven. Fortunately the fire was quickly contained, though apparently Terry and Sandie, like most of us, have an old fire extinguisher in the kitchen. Give yours a check and see how old it is. It might be providing a false sense of security. No children were hurt in the fire, which is somewhat surprising with the number of kids running around.






























When it got cold, we had a fire out back and the GF and I sat there for several hours. Very nice.




Prior to going to the party, we headed out to look at carpeting for the basement. Luna was the place of choice as they had a buy one room, get a second room free sale going on. Well, it's not much of a sale as their carpet seems as pricey as Home Depot's for what seems to be comparable carpet. Here are the two choices: the first is Fieldstone, a relatively neutral berber carpet.












This sample is sagebrush, a slightly darker color, but is one solid color and apparently almost stain impervious. Unfortunately, it's also about 50% more than the berber carpet above. While feeling softer, I'm not sure I can bite off the extra cost. Any thoughts on which way to go?