Chicago here we come... we HOPE!!!

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Well we are supposed to leave for Chicago tomorrow night... IF the weather cooperates! I said a few weeks ago that it would be just our luck that it doesn't snow all winter, but then we get a blizzard on the day we are supposed to leave. It appears that I may be able to read the future because that is exactly what the forecast is predicting. The trains are mostly immune to winter weather unless it is really bad, but we have to be able to get to Denver to catch the train - which requires going over Monument Hill! If it is as bad as they are predicting - that may be impossible. We are supposed to get over 4 inches here, and double that in Monument. Which isn't a ton of snow, but winds up to 40 mph it could be total white-out conditions. You can't drive over Monument in a white-out.  

So the smart thing would be to leave first thing in the morning and try to beat the storm up there -but Brian would have to miss another day of work, and Lily would miss the class field trip to Itz that they have been working toward for months - they had to earn enough points to be able to go, and she earned her final points last week. She has been counting the days until Itz for almost 3 weeks... so I'm not very inclined to make her miss it. I guess we could just push everything back by a day or even two - then I would miss my RE meeting on Wed. night though. I don't know what to do. There isn't a good solution, I guess I am just hopeing this storm will be delayed at least a few hours and we can get up there before it gets bad. If by late morning tomorrow it doesn't look like we will be able to make it, I will get on the phone and see what changes I can make. I am trying not to stress - we will get there one way or another, and if I have to change all our plans and reschedule everything at the last minute then that is what I will do. 

This morning we looked up our hotel on Google maps, they even had the Google-mobile street view and it looks like a really nice area (even if my map said it was "good if you're on a budget") Here is the link- not sure if it will work right or not... You may have to hit "search map" or scroll around a little to find it.

Let's see, other news...we went to get Brian some glasses last night. He has had an infection in his eye for a while and isn't supposed to be wearing his contacts. He hadn't been following that rule very well and it was making his eye worse. Our insurance doesn't cover LensCrafters, but since he had already gotten contacts this year they weren't going to also cover a pair of glasses anyway, so we decided to go ahead and get it there since they could do them right away. And Lily's glasses are supposed to be ready today, so they will both have new glasses for our trip. Lily wanted to know if I was going to get glasses too so we could all match - I told her hopefully not! My vision has degraded a little since the surgery, but so far not enough to require any correction. 

This weekend we went for a long hike (~7 miles) at Cheyenne Mountain State Park - getting some use out of our annual pass. Lily was definitely out-doing both of us by the end... even had enough energy to play on the playground when we got back to the parking lot! Then on Sunday we went to the zoo - had to leave a little early because Lily's adventures the day before were catching up with her... she starting getting rather cranky, no doubt due to being tired. But we have an annual pass to the zoo as well, so we can always go back. 

Well that's about it - hopefully we will be on our way tomorrow night, if we can catch a break with the weather. We are supposed to have internet access at the hotel, so if I have time I will post some updates here.