Greetings from Chi-town!

After a long over-night drive, we made it safely to the Chicago area for a late Christmas & New Year's celebration with Heidi's side of the family. The kids haven't met most of their aunts, uncles, and cousins from Mom's family. Seeing that we would be leaving soon for Ukraine and the fact that we didn't travel anywhere for Christmas, we planned this trip a few weeks ago.

We loaded up the brown "Fred" van and headed out at 2 pm on Wednesday. Heidi drove during the daylight hours due to her night vision issues and I pulled the overnight shift. I had purposely slept late that day, too. I must have downed a six-pack of Mountain Dew to ensure that I was fully awake for the task. I'm used to pulling the occasional 12 hour midnight shift at work, so staying up all night is an art I have perfected. We arrived this morning at 5am. We all snoozed until 9 am and I took a 30 minute nap this afternoon to get back into the swing. We will be here until Sunday morning when we will repeat the process, in reverse.

Some observations from the trip:

1. The 12 pass van makes for some comfy sleeping, the kids didn't really miss a beat.
2. Those Nebraska folks sure love their "Big Red" football team! The game was on seven radio stations.
3. The Nebraska state slogan is "The good life" Not so much so in the dark of night at 75 MPH. (That one's for you Jim!)
4. From 1 to 4 am the AM radio conspiracy theorists are in full swing.
5. Eastern Colorado should be Western Nebraska.
6. Through the magic of AM radio signal reflection off the curvature of the Earth's atmosphere, it IS possible to listen to a Cajun radio station in Louisiana! Wayne Toups and Clifton Cheniere were in rare form.

We leave for Ukraine in TWO WEEKS! Whoo-hoo!

~ Felix ~