Chi-Town

What's up Folks! I'm back from Chicago and I am finally able to make a post! I know some of you have had this experience but going out of town and then returning home is not always the funnest thing to do. Getting back into a schedule is very very difficult, especially when you have an adorable kid that seems to have forgotten who you are!

Well, I guess I can give you a quick recap of the trip. I got into town at 8:00am on Friday. We attempted to check in at the 15 star hotel and the service was excellent! You can see the picture of it up top; it had something like 1200 or 1500 rooms. It's the hotel the Bears stay in the night before home games. I then walked around both Millenium and Grant Park and took a tour of the Art Institute to pass the time in the ac instead of baking out in the 90degree heat! Then we met up with Jed and Sunny for lunch (they're both in the big time with j.o.b.'s in downtown Chi-town!) Then we (my mother-in-law and I) went back to the hotel for a nap much needed nap! I then met up with Jed and Sunny and road the Metra back to their place and hung out with them and Cooper! We ate at an authentic Mexican restaurant near their abode; speaking of their abode, it's fabulous, it sparked a huge amount of coveting my neighbor's house!

We then woke up the next morning and kicked it for a few before we went to the Cubbies game and what a game it was! It was filled with all the drama that you would want from the final Saturday home game of the season and well worth the $180 tickets! Plus, I got to sit next to one of the most inciteful Cubs fan in the world. Everything that was going to happen he called it! He knew everyplayers numbers, their slumps, weaknesses, strengths, and what they were likely to do in the given situation and the always did it! I'm definitely taking Jed to every game that I go to in the future, his company alone made it worth the price of admission!

After the game we got some souveniers, I got the find of the year, a seat back from Wrigley on sale! We then took a pit stop back at Jed and Sunny's and took Cooper for a walk and I had to take a minute to show Cooper who was the boss and he learned! I would post a picture of

Cooper and I but I threw Jed's schedule off so much that he probably is still catching up on his studies, plus attending to his pregnant wife; thus, I am still waiting on him to send me that pic, but you all would be proud of me, I overcame (kinda) my fear of dogs and struck a pose with Cooper!

After all of that fun we went down to the 200star hotel and met Ron Turner (the Offensive Coordinator for the Bears) he's also my step-uncle-in-law. We got educated in the world of the NFL and ask him some inciteful questions. One of which involved Camera-gate/Spy-gate or whatever you want to call it. He stated that, "It's far worse than what the media is reporting." It turns out that for many years the Patriots have been sending people into the opposing teams locker rooms dressed in the opposing teams official clothes, as to blend in with the team, and stealing the script of the offensive teams, searching in trash cans for anything that they could find about the opposing teams game plans. For those of you that have been around college or pro football. The first ten plays by the offense are scripted and basically in those ten plays you can decipher the game plan of the offense i.e. if they are going to pick on a particular corner back, or run at a particular side of the defensive line. If you can recall, the first play by the Chargers the first game after Camera-gate broke, the pass was intercepted by the outside linebacker, Phillip Rivers took a three-step drop and threw an out pattern to the wide receiver and mysteriously within two seconds the linebacker was that far out their so as to intercept the pass! The Patriots had to know that play was coming because the odds of that happening without knowing what's coming is about 1,000,000:1. I couldn't ask Ronny about this because his brother is the Head Coach of the Chargers, Norv Turner, and I know if I was Ronny I would be a bit defensive of my brother and I didn't want to ignite some anger in him because you could tell the Patriots cheating was a touchy subject with him. But Ronny was very nice and pleasant allowing us to probe into his life and it was an overall delight to finally meet him and I'm glad that Jed was there with me to share in the experience! I also got to meet some other relatives that were so kind in bringing some clothes for Brie, it was an overall delightful experience and I must say I have some great in-laws!

The next day I got to attend church with Jed and Sunny by the way here's a pic of Sunny two weeks away from her due date! She is sooo tiny! Owyn is going to have some great parents though, Sunny was a fantastic host and very understanding of her husband being gone so long nearly all weekend. It was a great time at church them, it's a church plant and they meet in a theater downtown. The peeps were very kind to me and extremely welcoming, I'm happy that Jed and Sunny found such a good church!

After church we went back to their place and I was treated to some beef from a Peruvian restuarant, it was extremely good! We then rooted the Cubbies on to victory from the comforts of Jed's couch and then went down to the hotel and got ready for the Bears game. We had some great seats!

We were 17 rows deep and sitting at the goal line, not too shabby for $300, my ticket, mom-in-laws ticket, and Jed's ticket! I was expecting to pay like $700 for seats like those! To top it off, Ron's wife met us at the game and gathered us all up and took us to the Gift shop inside Soldier field for half off everything in the store! She was a very friendly woman, her an Jed got to talk about the city, it turns out she only lives a couple stops up from him on the Metra in Evanston well actually some suburb with Lake in the name but near Evanston. It was a great game for the first half, tied up at 3 to 3 or 10 to 10, I can't remember. But then it became the Tony Romo and T.O. show and Sexy Rexy just collapsed! This turned out to be Sexy's last game. As a side note, Jed pointed out to me that when T.O. was sitting on the bench on the opposite side of the field you could lose your sight from the bling in his ears! With the nake eye you could see when those big chunks glistened in the lights! As it turns out we could have went down to the locker room but since the Bears got their butts kicked again, we didn't want to have any chairs thrown at us or anything plus Jed had to get back to the house and it was already 11:00pm get up at 5:30am to go to work and that night write a paper he should have wrote over the weekend! Thus Jed walked me back to the hotel and we said our good-bye's! It was one of the best weekends one could ever ask for! Well worth all of the expenses and inconveniences of getting back into a routine. The only draw back is that Meg's didn't get to experience it with me, it kind of defeats the whole purpose of being married when you have one of the best weekends of your life and you wife can't be there to experience it with you! For those of you bachelors, you'll know what I'm talking about in a few years! Well, sorry to take up your whole morning, lunch, and afternoon with reading this post, but I just had to get all of this down so that I won't forget in twenty years what all I did that weekend! Talk to you kids later, stay out of trouble, and don't drive slowly in the left lane!

Here's some random pics from the Bears game for your viewing pleasure!