Navy Graduation/Chicago Weekend

This weekend we all, and I mean ALL, headed up to Waukegan/Gurnee to see Jon after is Navy boot camp graduation.  I think there were 24 of us there to congratulate him.  Our family drove up late Thursday evening after school in preparation for the ceremony on Friday morning.

Only 4 tickets are given to family members, so the rest of us stayed back at the hotel to watch the graduation ceremony streamed live on the internet.  We decided that watching on laptops and iPads wasn't going to cut it, so Cody and Scott put their heads together and got the big TV in the lobby hooked up to a computer to broadcast it for everyone to see easily.  Everyone on the screen looked the same in their uniforms, which meant we couldn't pick Jonny out in the crowd.

When Ken, Kathy, Sharon, Mom, and Jon finally got back to the hotel, we just hung around in the suite and visited.  The cousins were the most excited to see him I think!  None of us could believe that Jon actually gained 20 pounds in boot camp!  His legs were so much bigger and he actually had a little belly.  He claims that is the only time in his life that he actually ate three square meals a day.

At about 3:00, we all went to a restaurant called The Silo (great salads and Chicago-style pizza!) where they had upstairs room set aside for us.  Poor Jon barely got to relax because we made him take pictures with every member of the family!

Ken and Kathy took Jon back to base around 7:00 pm, then went back bright and early the next day to follow his group to the airport to see him off to Pensacola.  The family all went our separate ways on Saturday morning.  Paul and Lenee Haun came back to meet us and go up to the free Jelly Belly Factory Tour in Wisconsin.  Only it wasn't a factory tour, it was a tour of the distribution center with TVs on the wall showing videos of the factory in California.  Imagine riding a tram around Sams Club and you can get the gist of what we did.  Oh well, at least it was free and we had a blast sampling all of the free jelly beans in the store.

They have a whole line of gross-tasting beans like dirt, rotten egg, stinky skunk, barf, boofer, you get the idea.

Allan eating the barf jelly bean.

A video of me eating the stinky skunk.  Funny!

We took our time at an outlet mall nearby and ate lunch there before heading into downtown Chicago for the rest of the weekend.  I was so excited to take the girls to the city.  The weather was perfect!!  We stayed at the Marriott on Michigan Avenue and Allan scored us a room on the 33rd floor.  You could even see a glimpse of the lake between buildings.  Our room was the only one on the floor that had been completely remodeled.  It was so modern and fresh.  We really felt spoiled and like we were living the "high" life - pun intended.

After getting changed in our room, the first stop on the agenda was to the American Girl Doll store.  It was our girls' first time ever to an AG store.  Thanks to very early birthday gifts from Honey and Grandpa Ed, they had enough money saved to pay for half of a new doll.  I thought that the trip to the store would be miserable, especially for Allan, but we were honestly in and out of the store in about 30 minutes.  Harper new that she wanted Saige, the doll of the year, and Delaney wanted a doll that looked like her.  We went straight upstairs, grabbed the dolls, chose one outfit, one brush, and one packet of hair accessories each, and got the heck out of Dodge.  The girls were thrilled.

All the girls wanted to do was to go back to the hotel to play, but we talked them into stopping for an early dinner at the Grand Lux Cafe (kind of like a Cheesecake Factory).  Harper was such a ham and kept asking me to stop and take pictures of her in front of various fountains and bushes.  She is her mother's child.

They sat us in the round room with a huge wall of windows overlooking the Magnificent Mile, pretty swanky.  On our way to the bathroom, Delaney told me she felt like the Queen because everything was so fancy :)  I'm so happy we could give them this experience and make them feel special.

We stopped back by the hotel to get the dolls out of the packages so they could join us on our walk to Navy Pier.  Again, the weather was just perfect and the lake and skyline were beautiful.  We bought some ice cream on the Pier and rode the giant ferris wheel.  Great memories!

View of Michigan Avenue from our room at night.

On Sunday morning, we took our time waking up, went to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, then walked along the river toward the lake where the Chicago Triathlon was being held.  Very cool to see the athletes, especially the swimmers swimming in the open water. 

Next, we headed to Millennium Park because Allan saw in some calendar that they were having a story time in the Lurie Garden at 11:00 am.  It was a small crowd, but very well done.  The girls loved the woman who sang songs, the man who told them about different plants, and another woman who read them a story.  Part of the park was closed off for the filming of Transformers 4, so we'll have to watch for that when it comes out next year.

We ate lunch at a Bread Co., then started for home by 2:00 pm.  The girls once again proved to be terrific travelers!