To America and Back

It’s been quite a 2013!

We made it to America at the end of May for 3 weeks it was amazing! We had quite a few Australians join us it was a great Aussie invasion! There was so much I wanted to do and so many people I wanted to see, we just about had everything covered! I was able to surprise mom and dad, we secretly arrived a day early. It was awesome! Their reactions were priceless…so was Penny’s. Thought the poor girl was going to have a heart attack! She was my little shadow the whole holiday, even slept next to the bed. I miss her everyday, I wish she could’ve came with us. It was hard leaving her again…needless to say I’m a bit emotional about the whole thing.

Anyway. A couple days after we arrived I met his friend Boothy and Boothy’s brother, Steve (STEBHENNN). They spent a few nights in the Chi and barely managed their way back to CL. They were pretty worse for wear when I picked them up from the train station ha ha ha. They had a good time staying at the Hard Rock Hotel and touring Wrigleyville. Once in Crystal Lake we pretty much did townie things, hitting up my favorite bars and restaurants and my home towns. Quite a few nights were spent at Halftimes in Johnsburg visiting Joey, finding ourselves over served more than once.

The first week into the trip we went into Lincolnshire for Tracey and Ryan’s wedding. SO SO much fun!  Overindulged in the awesome food and drinks. It was one of the highlights of our trip! Tracey was beautiful. After we recovered a little from the wedding I met Allie, Steve and Boothy at the Lincoln Park Zoo to do some sight seeing around Millennium Park, Grant Park and North Avenue Beach. We saw the Bean, Buckingham Fountain, Blues Fest and had the best bloody mary’s ever at Castaways.

That next week we went up to the cabin for 6 days.  A couple friends from Perth just so happened to be travelling the country for a few months in a camper van and were able to make a detour up to the cabin for the party…plus a couple hitch hikers they picked up from San Francisco who happened to be from Perth, too! Pig roast, dad and Dr Dehaan’s home brew in kegs, and Soul Tree! Yup, live band at the cabin in the woods!! About 10 minutes into their second set it started raining. It was an epic downpour of flood proportions!

 (waiting for the rain to subside with Soul Tree)

Everyone kept calm and after the rain subsided we were back in full force, soaked to the bone covered in mud. They played an amazing show with some of our special requests and “I come from a land down under” ha ha ha it was a great rendition that everyone went crazy for. We even had our Aussie oi oi chants echoing all the way into town it felt like.

We pretty much just took it “easy” until we took off on the 19th. And by take it easy I mean dragged Uncle Dan and Jess out to Snug for a crazy night after one of the blackhawks playoff games (yeah Hawks!) Everyone’s a hawks fan now it’s awesome. Way to represent Chi, Australia!

Before mom and dad dropped us off to the airport we stopped by Nama and Opah’s for the 3rd or 4th time during our holiday. Nama looks great, as usual, despite her recent heart trouble. It was so great chatting to Opah who, although hasn’t been doing very well, was able to keep up some good, funny conversation. Even commenting at Aunt Mary’s and Uncle Dan’s that his beer was gone way too fast, “are you sure this isn’t soda?” ha ha ha that half a beer was not wasted on him! He was also speaking of taking a trip over to Australia with Nama. While in the service he saw Australia from off-shore but never made it to land…and all the places he flew as an American Airlines pilot, Australia wasn’t one of his stops. Hopefully he continues to have more good days like all the ones I was able to see him.