Our trip from Houston to Chicago was mostly without incident. We did get out of the gate about 1 1/2 hours late but the trip was short and we landed only about 1 hour behind schedule. After an extended bathroom stop for the ladies, we got our bags, called the limo (who was there within minutes) and we were on our way. The limo driver gave us a cook's tour of Illinois but finally got us to Barrington.

Sleeping is a little tight at Rebecca and Trey's house when there's as many visitors as we presented. So, Ellie and I slept in the basement on the Futon. Not too bad except for the heater blower periodically kicking on and the water softener doing it's thing in the middle of the night. But you can get used to anything and I did, sleeping through the night with only one wakeup to go to the bathroom.

About mid-morning we took the train from Barrington to Arlington Heights to visit a little city park which has been decorated with loads of Christmas things. It's cold in these parts now and being outside was a little daunting for people from the tropics. After about 45 minutes, I was wishing I had put on my thermal underwear as I had originally thought.

We braved it for an hour or so then left to have lunch at Egg Harbor. As one would guess, this is a restaurant that can cook eggs in just about any way you want them. I had a nice omelett and potatoes; not bad food especially when you're ready to eat your shirt collar as I was.

When we left the restaurant, Ellie and I decided we would take Jordan, the youngest to the train station while the others went back to the park. We would wait at the station for them to join us and then catch the train back to Barrington.

Ellie and I had not been in the station more than a minute when they closed the thing and kicked us out into the cold. So, we spent the next 45 minutes tromping around in the weather until everyone else returned and the train picked us up for the trip back.

We spent the rest of the afternoon messing around with my laptop, trying to get the wi-fi working. Finally gave up trying to use 802.11b and bought an 802.11g card. It worked perfectly as soon as I installed the software and card. So now I've got high speed access through my machine for the rest of the time we'll be here.

Dinner tonight at Shaw's Crab House. We'd been there before and I liked it but tonight was a different story. Service was mediocre to poor, the food was mediocre at best, and they slapped an 18% service charge on our check. I almost didn't pay it but decided to let it slide this time. Probably won't go back there.

Since Michael, Patricia, and Walker are returning to Houston on Monday, we opened some of our gifts tonight. I don't think they're going to try to do anything that looks like Christmas stockings tomorrow morning. Rebecca has prepared some colorful bags for us to put the "stocking stuffers" in tomorrow morning.