She's Off...

to Greece. Having fun. Seeing awesome sights. Making new friends. Eating olives. Okay that last one's a bit of a stretch. Pretty sure there's no olive eating going on. Whew! What a relief.

We didn't need to leave too early. Our favorite kind of trip. Jaina needed to print out a few pages of the paper that was due at the airport so the first thing was getting the printer to print...in a color other than green.



We headed off to Chicago. I never get over the traffic and construction. ALWAYS construction. After we were at a place where I didn't have to read the map and shout directions at David, I mentioned that I had been clenching my teeth so long I now had a headache. Jaina says:"You've been clenching your teeth?? I've been clenching my BUTT and I'm not even driving!" I see a new "Buns of Steel" video in this.

So I thought we'd spend some time at the Mall before checking into our hotel. Great plan...if the mall had been open. Blah! It's Easter Sunday. But we did get a nice meal at Cheesecake Factory. Yum!

And as always, the Brandstetters can't plan something big without there being a crisis involved. Sickness. Icky, icky sickness. Poor Jaina was up all night. I REALLY didn't want to put her on the plane with her feeling so badly. But we went to the airport and she got in line for her boarding pass:



and got in line for Euros:



It's hard to believe we got a better deal on Euros when we went to Europe in 2006. Maybe we should head back to Switzerland. At least we'd break even:



And finally she got in line for Security. This part always causes a little tension ever since our "strip search" in Orlando about 9 years ago. David fits "the profile" and he gets stopped ALL the time. It's really funny...until WE get caught in the profile net too. We had to stand arms stretched while we were scanned, unzipped and peeked at. Bad enough until that kid walked by yelling: "But Mommy! Why are they getting arrested??" So we learned to pretend we don't know David and go through a different line. Seems to have worked for her this time too!:



So now she's living 8 hours ahead of me and I bet she hasn't a clue how very much I miss her.

Sleep tight and live loose, my sweet girl!


~Beth