Tourist Information for Leavenworth, WA

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We spent it traveling to Colorado and to the Chicago area to visit children and grandchildren. It was so much fun. A whirlwind of airline flights, busy holiday traffic, loads of good food and lots and lots of love.

In the early morning hours the day before Thanksgiving we left for the first leg of our trip. We traveled on two round-trip tickets, one from Spokane to Denver and the other, Denver to Chicago. We found it easier and cheaper for us to book this way, rather than a three-legged trip. Sometimes, flying out of Spokane, the layovers can make organizing a trip like this interesting. When planning this trip we couldn’t make the timing of the layovers work in a three-legged trip on Southwest Air, so two round-trips it was.

It did take us all day to fly to Chicago. That’s not fun. Scotte and I reminisced about the good old days when we could fly non-stop to Chicago, leaving Spokane at 7 or 8 am and arriving around noon. Alas, those days are gone. But flying with your sweetie makes the day more than bearable. And it’s still far better than traveling by covered wagon.

Our arrival in Chicago was on-time and early enough in the evening to kiss our 3 1/2 year-old grandson goodnight. Gabe had been put to bed hours before but the excitement of our arrival and my daughter-in-law’s sister and brother-in-law’s arrival from South Bend made going to sleep just too hard for him.

The next morning we got to play with Gabe and meet his little sister, 5 1/2 month old Eliza, for the first time. What a couple of treasures they are. Scotte and I did our best to keep them both busy while Bridget put the finishing touches on our Thanksgiving feast. Gabe’s favorite playmate is his Grandpop and his favorite toy is our iPad, even though it’s only an iPad 1 and his momma has an iPad 2!

Eliza Ann is a charming, smiley baby. She’s happy and healthy and came easily to us. It was such a joy to get to know her.

After a delightful day spent entertaining and being entertained with the little ones, we sat down to a wonderful Thanksgiving feast with all of the yummy expected dishes. Bridget did a wonderful job preparing everything.

The next day, on Black Friday, we ventured out with trepidation to Gurnee Mills Outlet Mall. It wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. It was afternoon before we went, the traffic was pretty typical Chicagoland traffic and we got a parking place near an entrance. The most amazing thing about the day was that there was NO LINE for Santa Claus. And the best part of that experience was Gabe looking up at his daddy in awe to say, “Daddy, Santa is real!”

After Santa, Scotte and I got to take Gabe to Build-a-Bear Workshop. None of us had ever been. It was fun. Gabe built Trixie, who went home with a Buzz Lightyear costume on. If you haven’t built a bear at the workshop, I highly recommend it. It was a fun experience. I wanted to take Gabe there for some time, but waited till he was old enough to pick his own bear and the outfit to go along. (Later on the trip in Denver, we found another Build-a-Bear Workshop and rumor has it that Gabe and Trixie will be finding a little something under the Christmas tree.)

Our trip to Chicago was over too soon. We flew out of Chicago very early on Sunday morning. We kissed the grandchildren goodbye on Saturday night and our son, Mark, drove us to Midway airport before dawn. We watched the sun come up aboard our non-stop flight to Denver.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 12th, 2011 at 7:32 pm and is filed under And . . . etc., family. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.