Day One

I've found that having a youngster on vacation with us does not allow for much down time. Therefore, I have not been able to blog this journey as I have been able to do in the past. Anyhow...here are the highlights.

On Thursday, we drove from our house to Chicago. That was a long time to be seated. Keegan now has his own MP3 player, and it is a great help in relieving the boredom factor. The player is actually a bit entertaining for Jeff and I because Keegan half sings along. What I mean is that Keegan sings one to two words out of ten, causing us parents to laugh hysterically.

Upon our arrival in Chicago, we had time to stroll through Navy Pier, eat, and shop a bit. We were glad to walk around in between the lengthy sitting. We decided to leave early to arrive at the airport through rush hour traffic. At the airport, we waited some more and met some of Jeff's current and former students who were traveling on our flight to the conference.

Keegan was absolutely GEEKED about riding in an airplane. His attention to detail was heightened as we boarded, took off, and began our flight. For a long time, he was simply enamored with watching out the window. Since we left at 7:45pm (8:45 in our time zone and past the little boy's bedtime), he didn't stay awake long. He soon fell asleep with his head in my lap and his feet propped upon Jeff's lap. We landed, and the little bugger didn't even wake up. We did awaken him to retrieve our luggage, hop in two taxis with four college students, and head for our hotel.

Our hotel is called the Crockett Hotel because it is located on the ground where Davey Crockett supposedly fell during the battle of the Alamo. The more I learn about the actual subject, the less people seem to really know about where Crockett was killed. There are many conflicting reports, but he was assigned to guard the area where the hotel now stands. The legend is very romantic, like many things in Texas.

We landed at the hotel sometime after 11:30pm Texas time (12:30am our time). We sat at the reception desk for about 20 minutes as the hotel tried to find the students' reservations. When we began walking to our rooms, I asked Jeff if I wanted to know what happened. He told me that I really didn't but proceeded to tell me anyway. Apparently student A told the desk that there was a reservation as "Student A." (Not really student A, but you get the idea.) The hotel clerk said that student A had no reservation. They asked if the rooms were booked under student B. No luck. They continued to ask about student C and student D, ending with Jeff's name. No other reservations were found. Finally, student A asked if she could book a room for the night. The clerk answered, "We already have a reservation under that name." Needless to say, as soon as we entered our rooms, we all went to sleep.