THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Quick recap of last night. It was a bit of madness. It all started out pretty well. The kids all went to bed at like 7 p.m. All 3 of them went to sleep after only minor fussage.

I forgot when we went to bed but we were both pretty tired – maybe 10? The major problem with putting Amy and Scott in one room and Joel in the other is that then Carolyn and I have to sleep on the fold-out couch bed. Which, stinks. I’m pretty sure that the mattress on most of these beds is made out of metal bars. I mean the whole mattress. So it wasn’t very comfortable.

Then, at about 3 a.m. Scott starts screaming. Apparently he woke up and was all disoriented and freaked out. Carolyn was able to comfort him pretty easily, but the problem was that Amy woke up and kept talking to herself, keeping Scott up. Some things heard from their room this morning:

“Amy no Amy no Amy no” (said all in one breath)
“Scott, no sucking your thumb”

It seems that Scott was sucking his thumb, trying to get to sleep. We’ve been trying to break him of that habit so as not to ruin his teeth, but he’s still doing it and we don’t have any of the medicine that you put on the thumb with us. Anyway Amy probably remembers that we are trying to keep Scott from sucking his thumb, so she was just trying to be helpful

Eventually we moved Scott into the main room with me and Carolyn went with Amy. I had a lot of trouble getting back to sleep. Most of it was that I just in general have trouble getting back to sleep when I am awoken in the night, but part of it was that even though Scott was pretty good, he does have a case of the jimmy legs like you wouldn’t belive.

Joel started fussing about 5, and Carolyn went and fed him, and we all got up about 7:50 a.m.

More about Day 2 in a few hours….

Well, we’re off. I guess technically, as I write this, we were off this morning and are currently there. Quick recap of the day:

We got up at a regular time, and while Carolyn was feeding Joel, I made a quick trip to Kroger to pick up some things for the trip. I felt so bad about paying full price for the stuff, that I had to get some free Tabasco sauce and free Suave to make me feel better . But when I got back home I realized I had forgotten the donuts for the trip. So after we were all packed up, we had to head back. It turned out to be fine, because that put us at the AAA office right at 9:00 when they opened (actually like 9:04). Despite the fact that there were a full *4* employees there, it took me like 10 minutes before someone came to give me my freakin maps. And then another guy that got there after me tried to cut in front of me with the whole “I just have one quick thing” line. After I kicked him in the face told him I just had one quick thing too, I got the maps.

We were officially on the road about 9:15 am. Took the Ronald Reagan to 74 into Indiana. Made our first stop at a Borders on the north side of Indianapolis. I thought we were going to get there right when it opened (we got there at about 10:03 a.m. due to the time change) but they opened at 9. I had some Borders gift cards from a Garnier coupon deal and also a 25% off any CD or DVD coupon that expired today. We got the Seinfeld Season 4 DVD and Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban.

Next step was a park that I had found in the middle of nowhere. Rensselaer, Indiana to be precise. It was actually very good, not even including the fact that was in the middle of nowhere. It had a pool (we didn’t swim, much to Amy and Scott’s dismay) and a very nice playground set (nicer than Sellman). There was also a geocache there, but I didn’t bring my GPS (intentionally). It was one of the types that are easy to get to but kind of hard to find (because it blends in with its scenery in some way). I tried to find it (not very hard) but didn’t.

We rolled into Chicago about 3 pm. I decided to take 90/94 into downtown to avoid the I-294 tollway. I figured that traffic wouldn’t be that bad at 3 o’clock, but, um, I was wrong. I’m not sure if traffic would have been as bad on 294, but there were a few accidents the way we went and it was pretty slow going. The last bit Scott was whining about getting there (“Go faster, Mommy), Joel was screaming his head off, and Carolyn was digging her nails into the steering column. Once we got a bit out of downtown on I-290 West traffic eased a bit and the last stretch was pretty quick. Made me feel good about taking public transportation while we’re here at least! One interesting sight that we saw was someone pulling a horse trailer. That’s not that interesting, but the horse had his head out the back (think like a pet dog does). But since a horse is much bigger, it was really close to getting hit by traffic in the next lane over. An interesting sight to be sure.

So then we got to the hotel. As we were driving there among the aforementioned madness, Carolyn was wanting to know if for sure we had reservations. I told her they better not go all Joseph and Mary on us! If you didn’t get that reference, don’t worry, Carolyn didn’t at first either (though she was under lots of stress) – the joke kind of loses itself if you have to explain it. But when I got there, there was a sign that said “Welcome to our Marriott Rewards members checking in today” and had ‘Dan M’ listed on the sign so I knew I was golden.

I have to say that this hotel has been the bomb. Things that I have liked about it so far:

• Free hospitality hour from 5-7 p.m. This is code for free dinner. Tonight it was Little Caesar’s pizza buffet. Not only that but when we went back for some more at like 6:45, the guy was like hey we have tons – come back at 7. So we did and he gave us 2 whole pizzas!
• The room is nice – 2 bedrooms rock. Right now it’s not 8:00 and the kids are in their rooms. Not quite asleep but hey! Scott and Amy had a blast swimming in the pool too.
• If you give them a shopping list by 8 AM, they will go buy groceries for you and put them in your room the same day, at no extra charge (besides the cost of the food). I thought I’d try to send them out with some coupons and see what they do about that
• Free high-speed Internet, by which I am writing this. Not only that, but when I asked if there was more than one hookup (the only one appears to be in one of the bedrooms which would be no good since Amy and Scott are currently in there), they were like “Oh just go tell them at the front desk and they’ll give you a free wireless hookup.” So boom here I am typing in the main room. (I borrowed a laptop from work)
• Free hot breakfast in the mornings.

Anyway, that’s about it for now, we’re going to go watch some movies now. More tomorrow!

Been awhile since I posted, I know. Lots of stuff going on. Anyways, I thought I’d keep a blog for our pending trip to Chicago. We leave tomorrow. If you’re lucky, I’ll keep updating this every day (or at least somewhat regularly) to fill you in on all the exciting things that we’re doing.

Here are some of the things that we may do while we’re there

• Sears Tower
• Lincoln Park Zoo
• Museum of Science and Industry
• Chicago Children’s Museum
• Navy Pier
• Wrigley Field (Chicago Cubs)
• The Lego Store
• Amazing Funhouse Maze

Obviously that’s a lot of things, and since we’re only going to be there for 4 days not including travel time, we may not be able to pack it in. As Carolyn keeps reminding me, this stuff is not going anywhere. That’s the main reason that we scrapped the trip to Nauvoo, even though that was something that we both wanted to see. Just not enough time to spend a day going somewhere 4 hours to and from somewhere, even if the trip would have allowed me to rack up some more counties . “It’s not going anywhere”

As I believe I have mentioned before (though I can’t find that post at the moment), the budget for this trip was $1000. I think we probably blew that though since hotels are expensive, especially when you are trying to get 2-bedroom suites. I did look into extended stay places and renting someones timeshare, but wasn’t really able to find anything. The one we ended up with cost $150 a night including 11% lodging tax. So there’s $750 right there. The good news is that most of the stuff we’re going to do will be free with our museum pass.

We are planning on using public transportation for most of our transportation needs. There are a few reasons for this:

1. I like roads and maps and things like this. If you know me, you know that this is quite true. Despite reason #2, this is definitely a big factor.
2. I’m a cheapskate frugal.
3. Scott will, I think, be quite excited to ride the trains / buses.
4. Traffic will be madness, especially considering we’ll be driving into the downtown area right around 9-10 a.m.
5. Parking at some of these places is crazy – $12 at the zoo and $12 at the museum of science and industry
6. We’re like 20-25 miles out of downtown at least, so that’s a lot of wear and tear on the van.
7. Many of the interstates are toll roads.
8. Did I mention I’m a cheapskate frugal?

I will try to post more later on in the week.