OK, at least my son let me take this pic last weekend... I am SOOOOOO proud! Last weekend, my mom and I went up to Chicago to watch my kiddo, Chris, graduate from Navy Boot camp!!! Here is the really serious picture of the two of us in the hotel room we were able to get at Great Lakes...Let's start from the beginning. I took off from Phoenix (a couple of days before the Stupor Bowl) for a nice vacation up in Chicago. I got to the airport a couple of hours before take-off... We were told an hour before take off that we were going to be able to get out of Phoenix, but they were not going to guarantee that we were going to land in Chicago... I called my mom to let her know that we were going to get out but we may be landing in parts unknown....
4 hours later, we were in Chicago... We got there and I figured out why I had moved from Minnesota to parts much warmer... We got in and it was SNOWING... Awww, pretty... I got off of the plane and found my mom... We got to the counter, got the rental car and started our drive one hour north to the hotel about 4 miles from the Navy Base. We passed downtown Chicago and saw the Sears Tower, going about 5 MPH... No problem, this is Thursday Rush Hour traffic and we are supposedly making good time... Well, the snow starts getting a LOT heavier and we have made it about 6 miles in an hour and we decided that this hour long drive up to the hotel may take an hour or two longer... Since I flew Southwest, I had kept the snack-pack that they gave us on the plane. My mom was a bit hungry so I gave her the snack-pack and had her call my DH and Dad to let them know that we had landed but we were driving in some snow...
The trip was fun, we did make it to the hotel about 4 hours after we landed. We found out later that we were some of the last planes to make it into Chicago that evening... Here is my mom with her proud grandson...We made it to Navy Graduation and we were looking for some seats close to where Chris would be marching when we heard "Would you like some help?" Mom replied "No, we know where we are going" and we turned around and saw Chris all decked out in his Dress Blues... Mind you, Dress Blues are actually black but that story is for another time... I was so happy to see him... It is amazing how much he had grown into a full-fledged adult since December...
Well, the weekend was a blast. The day of graduation, I am driving Chris back to his Base...There is this empty parking lot, full of snow, just ripe for some donuts in a rental car.. My "ever-so-responsible son" says "Mom! Don't you DARE start to whip donuts in the Navy Base Parking Lot"... Oh Goddess, since when has my son become RESPONSIBLE??? The kid was reading my mind... I didn't whip donuts in the parking lot and dropped him off in time for his watch... (Come on.... I hadn't driven in this much snow since I left Minnesota about 19 years ago...It was SOOOO tempting...) We all had such a wonderful weekend...
I flew back the night before the Stupor Bowl... The plane was FILLED with NY Giants fans... Did I mention they were a bit intoxicated? And they had tickets for the game the next day? I had 5 offers to be an "official chauffeur" for different parties to drive them to and from the game. I passed, I preferred to watch the game from home and have some fun watching the game... Go whomever!!!
Remember Super Tuesday??? We got our voting notice to go vote in the "Improvement District Office"... We thought this was in a big building but we "google-mapped" this and found the location was in the middle of a field... Where did we vote??? In a barn... Yuppers... We voted in a barn... We were in the minority (voting Democrat) but we had fun voting in a barn...
Here was the view across the street from the voting area...
