Charlie's Trips to the Midwest - weekend of August 11th

The last few weeks I (Charlie) have made the trip to the Midwest a couple of times.  Both times I had reason to head to Chicago for work (more on that in the future).  But the big thing was - since we've had both of our parents up here to help with the baby, I was able to go back both weekends for special occasions for two friends.

The first was a weekend in early August, when Katie's parents were home.  After flying into Chicago, I drove down with another friend to Fishers, Indiana for a buddy's bachelor party.  The event was for Ryan, who is a friend from Chicago.  This wasn't anything too crazy - maybe we're getting older with kids and all, so the bachelor parties are quite different than they were a decade ago.  We did play a new game I'd never heard of called "flong", which is basically beer pong and flip cup combined.

I played my first round of golf this year - which was not pretty on my part.  Most fun, though, was the lake games.  We stayed at Ryan's mom's house because she lives on a beautiful lake up there.  They had a Saturn ball, which is fun to try to get up on from the water - it takes a little teamwork and some serious balancing.  I didn't get any pictures because I was too busy being in the water, but I found a picture from a website to give an idea below.

We did some kayaking - and of course found a way to create a drinking game out of kayak races (it's still a bachelor party - even if it's Fishers, IN!!!).  We also did a little bit of fishing.  I didn't catch anything - but at least the bachelor did.

I also got to see my good friend's new baby (1 month-plus older than Brayden) for the first time.  It was fun to get back to the Midwest for a few days and see a lot of my college friends.