Whirlwind weekend...

I just arrived home from a crazy, fun, and all-around great weekend visiting some of my favorite peeps in Chicago! To truly appreciate the crazy parts of my little adventure we must start at the very beginning!

First of all, my good friend (cousin to Meagan and Lexie/nephew to Ryan) Alex joined me on this trip. We thought we'd take advantage of way lower airfares and fly to Milwaukee instead of Chicago. The money part was perfect, the only problem was that the optimal time to depart DFW was 6 AM Friday morning! Yikes! So, the plan was to leave the house at 4, park the car in remote parking, and still have plenty of time to make it to the gate. Here's how it went down...I set my alarm for 3. My alarm went off at 3. I snoozed the alarm one time. It went off again at 3:09. I turned the alarm off and somehow made my way back to the bed. Somehow, by the grace of the good Lord above, I woke up at 4:44!! 4:44?? We were supposed to leave at 4!! I threw on my clothes, woke up Alex, and started packing my last minute items, knowing in my gut that there was no way we were going to make it. By 4:51, we were pulling out of the driveway and headed to the airport. We had to ditch the remote parking option and began to have hope that we might make it when we pulled into a parking spot at 5:23. We ran to the ticketing counter where we had a little trouble with the self check-in option, waited in line at the counter and just as we realized the security line was insanely long we heard the final boarding call for our flight to Milwaukee! I asked the nice security lady if there was anyway we could "cut" in line since we were in serious danger of missing our flight, her response was a stern look as she pointed to the back of the line. Maybe she's not a morning person!! I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that the there were easily a hundred people in front of us in the security line. We did the "Six Flags" style maze of a line for approximately 15 minutes. We finally got the opportunity to undress and lay everything we own on the x-ray machine at 5:49. Two minutes later, with shoes, belt, toiletries in hand we RAN to the gate. The nice airline people saw us running and asked if we were headed to Milwaukee. We said yes and once again, by the grace of the good Lord above, we boarded our plane! The crazy thing was, three more people got on the plane after us!! When we made it to our seats Alex and I gave each other a high five and let out a very big sigh of relief!!

By the time we landed, we'd both spent some time sleeping and were ready for the real fun to begin. Getting from the plane to the rental car continued our little comedy of errors and I was starting to wonder if something might really go wrong before too long. We eventually made it out of the airport and stopped at McDonald's down the road for breakfast. We paused and acknowledged that the only reason we were sitting at McDonald's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin at 9:04 was because there was a God above who loved us and took very good care of us! Fortunately, things really calmed down after that! This stop at McDonald's inspired Alex to collect as many Monopoly pieces as he could and we made a total of 9 trips to McDonald's over the next two and half days! Don't worry, despite not winning anything, Alex still believes the Boardwalk piece (and a million dollars) is destined to be his!

After a short drive south to downtown Chicago we were able to park the car and really see a lot of the city. We started at Navy Pier and you couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. We rode the ferris wheel, did the crazy maze, and walked all the way to the end of the pier. We decided to leave the car and walk to Michigan Avenue where all the really cool stores are. We checked out Niketown, Eddie Baurer (my favorite store ever), and Playstation Headquarters. I thought it would be super fun for Alex to have lunch at the ESPN Zone Restaurant, but when we arrived we discovered it was no longer in business. Bummer! No worries though, we were in downtown Chicago, surely we'd find some place cool to eat. And boy did we, we had lunch at Subway! :)

Our plan was to be in Beecher about the time that Meagan and Lexie got home from school so after our amazing lunch and a little more sightseeing we made our way back to the car and headed south once again. About an hour later, we pulled up at the exact same time as everyone else! We had a nice little reunion in the driveway and then made our way inside. Friday night we did what all good Texans did, we watched the Ranger game! It was pretty exciting to watch as the Rangers clinched the American League Championship!!

Saturday morning we got up early to watch Meagan play basketball. I've always thought Meagan has a lot of natural basketball talent and she's a fun player to watch. Her team easily handled their opponents and we all had a great time cheering her on. After basketball and a little lunch we headed to the movies! We saw Secretariat and it was really good. I may or may not have taken a little nap at one point, but it really was a good movie. :)

We spent most of our time on Sunday enjoying the beautiful day in Beecher by Geocaching. If you're unfamiliar, you should google it. Meagan, Alex, and I have some pretty crazy geocaching memories from back in the day so it was fun to revisit that little activity. And, of course, it did not disappoint. We had some success and some trouble but all in all we had tons of fun!

By the time we got back to the house it was time for Alex and I to head north. We stopped back in the city for a couple more stops and then we were on our way back to Milwaukee. We really enjoyed the experience of being at the airport well before our flight and not having to run shoe-less to the plane!

That's the story...I'll write another post with pictures!