On Sunday we ran around doing the shopping we were scheduled to do on Friday. After shopping we met up with Jean and Uncle Dan in Oak Forrest where we ate at an Italian restaurant. The food was good. We rolled out of the restaurant and went to the movies. Mark went in to see The Dark Night and we went in to see The Stepbrothers. It was a completely raunchy movie that made us laugh all the way through it. It is NOT for kids.

We went into Chicago on the train. Christie was very patient with me. She relaxed in the park while I got my Art Institute of Chicago fix. This institute is one of the best I have been in and I never tire of all the famous works of art they have in there.

From there we took a cab to the Field Museum. It is a great place for kids. They have a terrific exhibit on evolution with actual skeletons of T REX , woolly mammoths, stegosauruses etc. What we went to see was the interactive exhibit called Unleashing Natural Disasters. The exhibit was interactive. We stood in the middle of a tornado, saw great footage of tsunamis, volcanoes, and smiled at the people who were seriously studying our California earthquakes. We felt like saying, "Just ask us!"

Monday night I said my good-byes to the fireflies and packed. We left 203 South Adams at 5:15 a.m. and I had a very good flight back to California. I landed in Long Beach around 9:00 a.m. and prepared myself for an almost 5 hour layover. Well...all my smiling at the people seriously studying California earthquakes came back to bite me in the *ss. At around 11:42 a.m. we had a 5.4 earthquake in southern California. The terminal was a metal building and it shook for a long time. I would have been more frightened but I happened to be surrounded by out of state tourists who were really shocked. Everyone tried calling and none of the phones would work.

I finally got home around 3:45 p.m. and was greeted by my welcoming committee of two.

Thank you Christie and Mark for your wonderful hospitality, perfect weather, and a great time!!