Thanks Mom!

Loyal readers might remember that about a month ago I was gone for a few days in Chicago with my mom. She won a trip because of her hard work at U.S. Bank (her employer). She is one of the top 5% of personal bankers in the NATION for U.S. Bank. (If you live in the area and want to open an account or get any non-home loan she's the one to see!)

I took pictures on the trip - with a film camera and finally got them developed (above). The top one is my mom getting into our limo and the bottom one is of our limo coming to pick us up outside of the Ritz Carlton at the end of our little vacation.

There is a story to the limo - this year the trip was to Chicago, where in the past it was to Las Vegas. Now, we could drive ourselves to Chicago, as it's maybe a 2 hour drive. We could have also taken the Amtrak train and then a cab, or even have flown. But, we didn't want to have to deal with downtown Chicago and traffic when we don't know the area. And why deal with the airport when we'd end up in the airport as long as we'd be on the plane, plus have to deal with the whole baggage search and stuff. The train doesn't really have anywhere for luggage, and although we only had small suit cases, it seemed like a pain to have to deal with that. So, my mom being the clever person she is, called the trip coordinator to make our travel arrangements and asked if we could take a limo instead, and she had the prices already for when the trip coordinator asked. It turned out that the limo was just about the same cost as our round-trip airfare would be, so they were fine with it. And it worked out GREAT for us - we had room to spread out, we had door-to-door service, we could listen to any music we wanted, we could talk and laugh as loud as we wanted, we ate snacks and drank champagne in the limo on the way there. It ROCKED! My mom is awesome!