Last weekend was a blast. Rob took a half day on Friday and all day off on Monday. When he got home from work on Friday, we packed and got ready and headed down to Chicago. We were heading there for the weekend to see my Dad and his wife Cheryl.

Right after we left the house, Rob stopped off for gas. This was a very good thing because when he was pumping the gas, I noticed that one of Gabriel's Spider Man shoes was broken. That would have been lovely - Gabriel having no functional shoes all weekend. We headed back home, tossed his Spidey shoes, grabbed his new "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" converse and his new Uggs and were back on the road. He has now officially made the transition from size 9 shoes to size 10 shoes.

The ride there was fairly uneventful with the exception of horrible traffic in the Chicago area. It took about an hour to get around three quarters of the way there and then another two hours plus to go the rest of the way. I'm glad we didn't leave at night, it would only have been worse.

We got there in one piece and checked into our hotel - the Westin Michigan Avenue. My Dad and Cheryl were at a charity event that night, so we wouldn't be seeing them until Saturday. We were all tired from the drive and didn't feel like wandering around the city on a Friday night trying to find a place to eat, so we called up room service for dinner and chilled around the hotel for the night.

The room had two double beds instead of a king, and Gabriel would not sleep alone. So, Rob had his own bed to himself and I shared mine with Gabriel.

Saturday we got up around 9am and got ready. We chilled out in the room until 12:30pm which was when Dad and Cheryl wanted to meet up. We met in the hotel lobby and headed over to Navy Pier. Over there we took Gabriel to a children's museum which he seemed to like (he loved the water area, but didn't like getting wet) and had lunch at a place called Harry Carey's (or something like that). We talked during lunch and of course Gabriel didn't eat anything.

From there, we headed into an inside mall type area on Navy Pier. That place has changed a lot since I was last there in high school. We watched a rather odd show called "Pickles and Patches" about an astronaut and a dog with an eye patch and then wandered around a bit. Gabriel got a ride on a kiddie train and some chocolate ice cream from Ben and Jerry's. That, he did eat.

We then took taxi's over to a Lego store which Gabriel loved. My Dad and Cheryl wanted to get him something there, and Gabriel ended up picking out two Lego Ben 10 figured (Big Chill and Chromastone). My Dad mentioned for me to e-mail him the names of the other ones, and they'll get him those for Christmas.

After the Lego store, we parted ways for a little bit to get ready for dinner. It was around 3:30 then and we met back up in the lobby of their building around 5:30 to head to dinner.

Dinner was had at Smith and Wollensky, a steakhouse that I had never been to before. Their cajun ribeye was amazing. Gabriel fell asleep at the beginning of dinner and slept through the entire time. It was nice hanging out with Dad and Cheryl and being able to talk and catch up. I don't see my Dad nearly enough, especially what with him living in Chicago and me in the Milwaukee area now.

After dinner we headed back to our hotel and Gabriel woke right up. It was a struggle to get him to go back to sleep and he didn't do so until around midnight.

Gabriel tossed and turned that night and kept getting up. He even wanted to get up for the day around 6:30am. Oy. None of us got good sleep that night.

We met up with Dad and Cheryl one more time for breakfast around 11am on Sunday morning. They had gotten Gabriel an amazing present (which he absolutely loves) of a new Nintendo DSi XL and two games (one is a Lego game and the other is a Diego dinosaur game). Words cannot describe just how much Gabriel LOVES his new DS. We had breakfast in the restaurant in our hotel and talked some more. It sucked when we parted ways, but we needed to check out and get back home. The hotel would only extend our check out time by one hour, so we had to be out by 1pm.

The drive home was quick and uneventful. When we got home we took my car out for a drive and grabbed take out from Mitchell's for dinner.

Rob took Monday off from work so we could get our errands done. We stopped off at the vet's so I could get a new bag of the k/d dry cat food for Sydney, stopped off at Fresh Market for some groceries, and then stopped off at Babies R Us. We made a trip home and then headed out again to Walgreen's and Pick N Save for our main grocery shop of the week. While at Pick N Save, we ran into one of Gabriel's teachers from his pre-school. Apparently, he's one of her favorites and she's absolutely astounded that he can read. She said she thinks he can read better than her twelve year old can. It was nice to see that Gabriel is well liked there, especially by the teachers.

Later on we grabbed Olive Garden for dinner and came back home. We watched the new House and gamed for a bit.

Today, Gabriel is in pre-school, and I'm working on a backlog of things that built up while we were gone.

I kept waking up last night with pains below my right rib cage. I guess the best way to describe these pains were as painful spasms of something under the rib cage and below my right breast. I've been having these pains on and off all today. I'm wondering if they're gallbladder related. I'll need to mention them to my doctor when I see him in a few weeks.