Minnesota or Bust!

Today is Saturday, July 26th.

We got an early start and headed to the Sears Tower. It was walking distance from the hotel. We waited on line in the lobby for about 20 mins which wasn't so bad. Then we got shuffled upstairs and found out it was another 1 hr wait. NO WAY. We left, got a Dunkin coffee and blueberry muffin, and went across the street and marveled at this enormous building.

We checked out of our hotel and we were off and on the road to see our family in MN. It's a 7hr drive. Erick drove us out of the city, took about 1 hr just to get out of Chicago:( Alexia and I sat in the backseat while Erick chauffered us. We ate snacks, watched movies like Transformers and Enchanted.

All along the way we saw so many cornfields it was almost comical. Illinois: corn and trucks. Wisconsin: corn and trucks. We made our usual stop at Mickey D's for lunch...only on the road have we eaten there. I have no desire to eat at another McDonalds for a long, long time. We switched off driving, Erick was doing a great job on the 2 lane highway with plenty of semi trucks to contend with. I have more of a lead foot then he does though, I plowed through at 80 mph in a 65, whereas Erick does 70ish. After about 8 hrs of driving I just wanted to get there.

Finally we arrived at about 8:00 pm to welcoming arms by Jay(my cousin, like a second brother to me) Toni (his wife), Alec (their 6 1/2 yr old son) & Aunt Nancy. What a great feeling that was. There home is like being in our own home, they are awesome hosts. They had just purchased a blow up water slide that day and Alexia and Alec couldn't wait to break it in. We hung outside and watched them go up & down endlessly. They had ice cold beer waiting. Yessss!

Aahhhh a good night sleep at the Chateau Hastings. (Lynn totally hogs the bed, not fun for me)