Sweet home Chicago

Last weekend I made the trek home to the north suburbs of Chicago (Highland Park) to see my parents, show my girlfriend where I grew up, and catch a White Sox game.  Not having class on Thursday/Friday, I decided to jet out on Thursday morning to get some quality time with my parents before my girlfriend got in Friday evening.

Thursday and Friday were great, ran some errands with my mom and visited a few of my favorite lunch spots in my hometown.  Lindy flew in Friday night after she got off work, I picked her up at the airport and met my parents for dinner at a new restaurant that just opened in our town called Benjamins.  The food was fantastic, and the company even better.

Saturday was our touring day.  Lindy went with my mom to spinning class in the morning while I worked on a paper, and then when they got home I began to take her to all the sites of my childhood.  We went to my elementary school, middle school, the field I played baseball at growing up (Highwood field which has not changed a bit), the field I played both baseball and soccer at in high school (they've made some AWESOME improvements to Wolters field) to the high school, and then around downtown highland park including a nice trip to the lake (though the weather wasn't the most phenomenal).  We met my parents at Michaels Red Hots for lunch (kind of the go-to place in downtown HP) and then my mom wanted us to come into Goodies (the candy shop she works at) to say hi.

My sister at my bar mitzvah circa 1997

After that we went back to my house and looked at pictures.  We went through me and my siblings bar mitzvah albums (man my sister was a cute little kid), as well as some other pictures and then headed downtown for dinner.  We went to Joe's Stone Crab House and on the way down drove down Michigan Avenue so that Lindy could see the Magnificent Mile.

On Sunday we went to Walker Brothers Pancake House for breakfast for their famous baked apple pancake and then headed downtown to go to the White Sox game.  We took the scenic route downtown driving along the lake (first on Sheridan Drive and then on Lake Shore Drive) which afforded us not only a great view of Lake Michigan, but Lake Shore Drive's famous view of the Chicago skyline.

My dad had gotten us some phenomenal seats to the Sox game.  They were playing the Red Sox and the seats were so close you could actually reach out and touch the on deck batter (in fact, AJ Pierzynski, the White Sox catcher likes to mess with the fans by seeing if he can scare them taking his on-deck cuts suuuper close so that you think he's going to hit you).  The game was great, Gavin Floyd had his good stuff and pitched well and the White Sox cruised to a 4-1 win.