I actually returned midnight Sunday night (July 6), but because of medical issues & fair, I am just now getting the chance to catch up.
We got on the plane at 8am Wed. and had a good flight to Chicago & landed early around 1:45pm.

Here is a picture of Mt Hood & Mt Adams from the plane

 

And the Rocky mountains

 

We got our rental car and headed for Great Lakes. Just as we got into town my phone rang and Matthew told me he passed Battle Stations (yeah!)

http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/09/navy_bootcamp_070909w/

 

 We got to our room and relaxed for a few and then went to the Navy 4 Moms 'get together' at Flanagan’s. It was fun to meet the Moms that came. The food was good and chatting was fun, but because of such an early start (4:30am) we were tired and headed back to the room shortly after 9.

PIR was great. I enjoyed all the ceremony & 'pomp' during it and finally getting to see my sailor. I couldn't find him during the review, even borrowed some binoculars from a friend and still couldn't find him. Turns out he was behind a flag most of the time.

(I put a star above his head)

 

Afterwards, we went to Gurnee mall, had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe (expensive, but cool decor & delicious). We went to the Jelly Belly factory (interesting, but not what I expected) then we wandered back to check out the base for the pre-celebration for a while and eventually took Matthew back because he had to be in at 2100 hours.

For the 4th we picked up Matthew around 8:30 and went to Waukegan for breakfast. Wandered around a bit then went to the base for the rest of the day.

Here’s Matthew in his ‘working whites’

Saturday, we took the train to Forrest Lake for breakfast at Egg Harbor. OMGosh that was a wonderful breakfast. Here are some pictures from Lake Forest

 

We got back on the train and headed for Chicago. Once there we waited for the trolley and went to Navy Pier. I wasn't impressed. It is more of a 'kid thing' with carnival rides & stuff. Waaaaay too many people.

 We then walked through town (for what seemed like forever) to catch a different trolley .

I may be just a country bumpkin, but those buildings were HUGE!

We rode the trolley to the Sears tower.

It was an hour wait just to get in the elevator and we didn't have that long before catching the train back, so we walked over to Union Station, another HUGE place. I was in awe the whole time I was in there. What really amazed me was how many people just passed through as if it was 'just another building'.

It was amazing.

Chicago River

Then we rode the train back and got back just in time for Matthew to get in for watch.

Sunday we tried to find the beach. We found the lake at Lake Forest, but there was no parking and we were running out of time for getting Matthew to base and getting to Chicago for our flight home. Here are some pics I got while Craig drove around the loop since there was no parking.

I hated saying goodbye to my new sailor.

It was a good relaxing trip.