More to come very soon!!!

I have been off work for the past week for vacation with my family and haven't had the chance to get caught up with the blog yet. I will try really hard to get it up-to-date within the next week! Hope everyone is doing fabulous!

Chicago

Pictures:

Matt, Jamie and I playing with the iPhones on display at the Apple store

Matt after purchasing the iPhone

View from our room at the Ritz

Jamie at Navy Pier

View of Chicago from the Signature Room in the Hancock Building

Matt and the cookie dough he stepped on in the middle of the sidewalk

Matt and Jamie figuring out which horse to bet on

The Race

The Big Screen and Scoreboard

Jamie, Matt and I at the Arlington Race Track, before the races began

Uncle Jim and I

Arlington Race Track

Me, Matt and Jamie by the finish line at the race track

After spending about three hours in transit from the Midway Airport to Penske to downtown Chicago, Jamie, Matt and I headed to Michigan Avenue for a little lunch and then browsing in the Apple store. Matt had been a little undecide as to whether he was going to buy the new iPhone, but after only about five minutes of fidgeting with one in the store, he conceded and bought one! I must admit, the iPhone is pretty incredible.

After a fun day out in Chicago, I had the chance to catch up with my Uncle Jim the following day via cell phone. Jim happened to be in town for business reasons, but promised us (the night of the SH picnic) that he would meet up with us in Chicago. Not only did Jim meet up with us in Chicago, but introduced us to his business associates and treated us to two fabulous days in Chicago! First of all, we met up with him later in the evening at Twin Anchors for dinner. The weather was perfect so we all sat outside on the patio. It was a group of about eleven people. They brought along a dice game (which I can't remember the name of) and we played before our dinner came. It was a pretty intense and very fun game of dice. For dinner we all ordered ribs and they were great. Following dinner, we continued our competitive game of dice. Not only did we play dice, but we then played poker with the serial numbers on one dollar bills. Apparently it was a night for gambling:-)

After dinner, Jamie, Matt and I walked around the city a bit and stopped at Navy Pier and even went to the Signature Room of the Hancock Building. We then grabbed desert a neat little place that Jamie introduced us to. Since we were in downtown Chicago, Jim invited the three of us to stay with him in his hotel room at the Ritz Carlton. It was a beautiful and extremely large hotel room with an absolutely gorgeous view of the lake. It was so relaxing to stay the night in such a nice hotel. Thank you Uncle Jim!

The following day, Jim took us to the Arlington Race Track. The horse races were such a fun experience. It was the first horse race that I had ever been to and I believe Matt and Jamie's as well, therefore Jim gave us a brief synopsis on how the horses, trainers and jockeys rank and the best way to make a wager. We watched about five races or so from an owner's box and even went down right next to the track for a race. Arlington race track is so beautiful and we had wonderful weather!

Later that evening, after the race, we had to move on to our next event. We were supposed to load in to our event, the USG Sheetrock 400 (a NASCAR race) in Joliet, Illinois that evening, but due to the crazy busy traffic around Chicago and Joliet as well, that was postponed until the following morning. Therefore, we headed to our hotel in Naperville (which is approximately an hour from Joliet) dumped our luggage off and headed to town for dinner. Naperville is a very cute suburb of Chicago and had a neat little downtown. We decided to eat at Catch, a seafood place downtown. On our walk to the restaurant from the parking lot, Matt randomly stepped in a huge pile of....cookie dough. Yes, I said cookie dough. I don't know how a huge wad of cookie dough winds up on the sidewalk downtown, but somehow it did and Matt then managed to step right in it. It was a funny sight and no worries, we re-enacted it so we could take a picture!

Passing through St. Henry!!!

Pictures from St. Henry:

1. Our trailer as it approaches the bridge that is too short for us to pass under

2. Matt, Jamie and I having fun at Northside

3. Matt, Jamie and I on the train

4. Jamie with the guy who sang "You're So Vain" with us on the train

5. Matt, Jamie and I "playing" Bingo...who's it gonna be???

6. And the winner is....

7. Matt, Jamie and I in the food tent at the SH picnic

8. Lori and Chloe...Chloe's now one year old!

9. Linds, Julie, Peg, Mom and Kim singing proudly with the little squirts as background dancers

10. Doug and Dan singing "She Thinks My Tractor's Sexy"

11. Our crowd...aka my family:-)

12. Brooke and Rachel singing their hearts out with Daddy-O

After leaving Bridgeport, West Virginia, the three of us stopped in St. Henry on our way back to Illinois for our next event. As we passed through, it just so happened to be the Sunday of the St. Henry picnic, so there were lots of people in town. When we got into St. Henry, our first stop was my parent's house. As we pulled the big bad trailer down the long driveway, my ENTIRE family lined up outside to watch me pull the trailer into the parking lot. Lucky for my so-called "big rig" driving skills, I made it into the driveway with no collisions.

It was so great to be able to see my entire immediate family (as well as some aunts, uncles and cousins) and introduce them to Jamie and Matt as well. The whole fam cooked a fabulous meal for us and we got to hang out and chit chat with everyone. After dinner, we partially opened up the stage and had a mini stage show with some karaoke. My family seemed to really enjoy our entertaining abilities...but maybe they were just being nice;-) They also participated in some hard-core karaokeing and performed well. All of my nieces and nephews seemed to be having a ball and definitely aren't stage shy. It was also little Miss Chloe's first birthday so we got celebrate her birthday too!

After entertaining the family, Jamie, Matt and I headed up to the St. Henry picnic to meet up with some of my friends. I was so happy to see some friends from SH and spend a little bit of time with them. I put a little money down at the grocery stand while Jamie and Matt tried their luck at Bingo. We also had to have a "picnic burger".... of course!

I hope small town St. Henry was fun for Jamie and Matt, because it was wonderful for me to be able to see so many SH friends for a night.

Monday, we decided that we would spend one more night in St. Henry. It was nice to be in a home for awhile and have home-cooked meals. During the day, we went over to my aunt and uncle's house to bother them and chat and then I gave Jamie and Matt the "grand" tour (or ten minute tour) of our small town. At the end of the "tour" we of course had to stop at the Dairy Dream for some ice cream...mmmmmm!

Tuesday morning we woke up to a mini interview with the Daily Standard (our local newspaper) and took a quick snapshot, which hit the newspaper the next day. We grabbed a quick lunch and then began our journey back to Chicago, which was a slight fiasco in itself.

As we neared Chicago from the south side of the city, it began to down pour. So not only is it raining, but we also entered into a somewhat shady part of the city (or as others would call it, the ghetto). As we drove further and further into the ghetto and edged into a heavy flow of traffic, we were headed straight under a bridge that had a clearance of 11 feet 8 inches...well, no problem if your truck doesn't need a clearance of at least 12 feet 6 inches. Needless to say, we had to stop in the middle of heavy traffic. Now we are somewhat of a blockade in traffic with no way to get out of our sticky situation other then backing our haus of a trailer up into an intersection with 6 streets of merging traffic. While figuring out how we would execute our plan, we managed to flag down a cop car and they directed traffic so we could back up our trailer and turn ourselves around. Those cops must have thought we were idiots, but we thanked them quickly and jumped in the truck so we could get our big trailer out of there.

Eventually, we made it to our hotel which was out by Midway Airport in Chicago. We dumped our stuff off and headed into downtown Chicago for dinner. After dinner, the three of us went over to a cool little bar called Northside for some drinks. It was a really fun evening and we were happy to be off the road after our little escapade of the day! Our train ride home also proved to be somewhat interesting as we sparked random conversation with others riding the train with us. At one point we were actually singing "You're so vain" with one guy on the train! I guess we just make friends everywhere we go:-)

Bridgeport Benedum Festival

After passing through Columbus and meeting up with lots of friends, our trio headed on to our next event. The destination: Bridgeport, West Virginia - the event: Brideport Benedum Festival. The festival was very small, but we met all kinds of interesting people...including "Pat in the Hat". Pat was a local patron who frequented our trailer and also graced us with his karaoke abilities over the weekend. Pretty much...we are now BFF's with Pat:-)

On our last day at the Bridgeport Benedum Festival, the grand finale was a fireworks show. Matt, Jamie and I packed up the trailer during the fireworks and then hitched up the trailer to pull out. This is where things went downhill. First of all, the lock that secures our trailer to the truck refused to work. We realized it was bent so we couldn't do anything but call Penske and have them send a local repair service. They told us that they would be sending "Hillbilly Truck Repair". You read it right...ha ha! We are definitely out in the sticks. As we waited we tried to pull the truck up a bit and the parking break got jammed. It absolutely would not release, so not only are we not hitched securely, but we can't move our truck and trailer out of a very inconvient location.

Matt labored over the parking break and finally got the break to release, but unfortunately his face was too close to the break as it released and it sucker punched him right in the face...I am sure that was not a good feeling.

About an hour later, Hillbilly Truck Repair came to our rescue. And get this, his name was none other than....Bill! So Hillbilly Bill took a look at our trailer and went to his truck to grad an extremely oversized hammer. All three of us were a bit nervous at the site of what we expected he was about to do. Solidifying our thoughts about what he was about to do, he drew back the hammer and schwacked the crap out of the broken part. We all thought something was going to severly break, but to our pleasant surprise he not only fixed the problem, but fixed it to a condition where it was in better shape then before this incident. What do you know...the two times our trailer has had to be fixed, the repair man just smacked the crap out of it with a hammer, no miraculous tools involved:-)

Here are some pics of the weekend in Bridgeport:

1. Our trailer setup at Bridgeport (and if you look closely, you can see "Pat in the Hat" singing onstage!)
2. Matt, Jamie and I with our volunteers, Megan, Kristen and Lakin
3. Jamie and Pat...check out his shirt...yes, we teased him for the pick-up line that is stated on it... "Is your name summer? Cause you're hot"
4. Matt, Jamie and I with our truck in front of the Time Warner office in West Virginia. Time Warner was our affiliate in Bridgeport for the Benedum Festival

Passing through Columbus

Pictures:
1. The whole crew: we both randomly stopped at the same Cracker Barrel for lunch
2. Mark and I at Lodge Bar
3. Angie and I at Lodge Bar
4. Dana and I at Lodge Bar
5. Pam and I at Lodge Bar

Our next destination on our tour was the Bridgeport Benedum Festival in Bridgeport, WV. Jamie suggested that we stop in Columbus on our way to West Virginia because it is approximately the half-way point to Bridgeport. I, of course, was game for this plan. It actually turned out to be the perfect night to travel through C-bus because it was July 3, which is the night of Red, White and Boom! So of course I called up my big bro, Mark and all of my Columbus friends to let them know that we would be hanging out in Columbus for the night. We ended up pulling into Columbus around 9:00 at night and grabbed a cab downtown with Mark. LodgeBar was the choice destination because of all the Mercer County folks that would be there. It was so much fun for me to be able to see so many of my Ohio friends again and to introduce them to Matt and Jamie. Marky Mark also let us stay at his place for the night, so it worked out well for us. The next morning we had lunch at Champps with Mark and Angie and then headed on our way to West Virginia.

Meeting in Chicago

Pictures:
1. John, Jamie, Matt, me and Skip in front of Wrigley Field
2. The awesome view of Chicago from my room at the Hilton Hotel in downtown Chicago

After Summerfest in Milwaukee, me, Skip and Matt drove the trailer to Chicago to meet John and Jamie. John and Jamie had been in Chicago working at "Taste of Chicago". All five of us got to go out together in downtown Chicago for the night. First we went to RA, where Jamie used to bartend and had a "pre-meal". We also got to meet, Ashley, Jamie's former roommate and friend. After RA, we jumped the train to Jamie's old apartment to see where she used to live. She lived just down the street and around the corner from Wrigley Field, so of course we had to take a picture on our way to her apartment. After seeing the apartment, we had dinner with Ashley and Cathy (Jamie's other former roommate) at SOPO. Dinner was great!

After dinner, we headed to a neat little bar called Guthries. Most everyone there was playing boardgames when we arrived. That is the unique theme of the bar. The five of us grabbed a table and the game, Taboo. We had a pretty intense game of Taboo, but it was fun. Our night in Chicago was a success!

Sunday of Summerfest

Over the course of our stay at the Hilton in Milwaukee, Matt, Skip and I have become friends with the employees at the hotel. Grahm, our bellman, was one of the employees we became friends with. Because we stay at each location for such long periods of time, it's nice to be able to become somewhat aquainted with the staff at our hotel.

Sunday afternoon consisted of our regular protocol at the trailer. Later that night, CMT was taping for our last concert of Summerfest. The performance of the night began with Cowboy Troy who opened for Big & Rich. Big & Rich put on a great show and really got the crowd going. They were definitely fun to watch. Their show was a great way to end Summerfest for us.

Sunday of Summerfest - Pictures

1. Skip, Matt and me with our bellman, Grahm, at the Hilton

2. Cowboy Troy

3. Big Kenny

4. John Rich

5. Big & Rich

Saturday of Summerfest in Milwaukee

Saturday of Summerfest Matt, Skip and I had fun taking pictures by the water. We had lots of people come through the trailer and it was pretty much a typical day for us at Summerfest. Later that night the three of us threw out T-shirts and koozies to the crowd before the evening performance. Sara Evans was the big show of the evening and she has a great voice.

Saturday of Summerfest pics

1. Pic of me by Lake Michigan
2. Skip peering out of the "peek hole" in our trailer
3. Matt passing through the trailer
4. View of Lake Michigan from our trailer
5. Sara Evans