The Westin Lombard Yorktown Center

... place was a mad house as it seemed like everyone from the town was in here eating dinner. Coming from Texas, it was a bit different for us to see that there were many groups of people eating at the same table with others that weren't with them. We are used to a big group eating at one table, but here it was typical to see four groups of people eating at a round table and not know each ...

I, for some reason woke up at 8:30am. Nick woke up around 10:30. Nick had a remote computer-tech call from Julia today and she discovered the awesomeness that is Google Docs. It's a web-based document creator; word documents and spreadsheets. All are stored online and you can access them anywhere with an internet connection.

Ok. Today we went and bought some ...

Tough trip to plan for ....20F in Beijing and 95F in Jakarta. A lot of business meetings and not sure laundry limits. I'll be outside if trekking to the Great Wall. I'm going to be all over the place. Packed a suitcase in a suitcase in case I see something to buy for the girls/family too good to pass up.

... 4 buildings that this trade show encompasses. The room we were in today was prob the equivalent of 3+ square city blocks-maybe bigger- from 10 to 6 we did not cover it all!! Really enjoyed it though and Charlie is in his glory at this type of thing. Some exhibits were exceptionally huge! The largest one, MAG, spent over 5 million on the site and bringing in and setting up all the huge equipment! As we finally headed back to the motorhome, only getting confused once, we found it was ...

... offered and not much else! Thankfully H had a store of food for B to keep his BSL OK. There must have been over 65 planes all lined up ready to go. Finally we took off and dinner was served about 12 midnight but when we got to Chicago the plane was no longer going to Seattle ...! We were asked to leave and then the fun started ... AA customer service was non existant. H used the mobile to check availability of flights ...

... of colonial architecture and engineering. Former Roman-style aqueduct converted to a trolley bridge. Paço Imperial The Paço Imperial was built in the 18th century to serve as residence for the governors of colonial Brazil and was later used by ...

We started out on a Saturday morning at 8am, meeting at our high school - Good ol' Glenbard East. The entire Symphony and Concert orchestras were assembled, numbering a good 108 or so members. I myself am a flute player, a woodwind addition to the Symphony orchestra. There were many jokes passed around during the year about how the orchestra needed brass and woodwinds badly, but I won't go into too much detail with those. The buses were a little late, so we ...

... the city on a sort of highlights of Chicago tour. First, we went to the Art Institute to take pictures by the giant lion statues outside. Mom has pictures of her grandmother posing in front of the very same lions almost a 100 years ago! So we were very excited to see them and recreate the picture that my great-grandmother took. Next, we drove down the "Magnificent Mile," as Michigan Ave. is called. This street is the shopping mecca of ...

... to turn, buttons to push, cranks to spin, and puzzles to solve. Not only did it provide us with interaction, it also had some of the neatest displays. Such as an underground mine located on the third floor! We followed our miner guide into an elevator that supposedly took us down hundreds of feet into the earth's crust. He then had us climb into a mining train which took us to the front lines where all types of mining equipment demonstrated how the ore was extracted. F ...