Wednesday In The Windy City

We left Michigan at 8:00 am for our trip to the Windy City to get Cassie's passport. After driving 5 hours, we finally found a parking garage that had space available. We forgot that Chicago was an hour behind us until our time on our cell phones changed. We were about 5 blocks away from the Passport Office building, so we grabbed a bite to eat & then headed to the building. While waiting & waiting (& waiting) in line to go through security, we were informed by the security guards that if you weren't traveling before the 26th of this month, that you would NOT be seen, even if you already had an appointment. Needless to say, this put me in panic mode since Cassie wasn't leaving until the 29th, but I refused to leave the line! Come to find out, they were taking people that didn't even have appointments, too, which really ticked me off! They wouldn't be so busy if they made everyone get an appointment! ARGH!

After a while, Jim saw a guy walking around pulling certain people out of the line & we went up to let him know that we had an appointment with a confirmation number. He told us to follow him, along with several other people that also had confirmation numbers. He took us up to the 18th floor were we had to wait in another line. Then we finally got to hand in all our paperwork & luckily, they never even asked us when Cassie was traveling. So we were then sent to yet another line where we had to wait for our number to be called. Once we got up to that line, I asked the guy if there was any way to get the passport today & he said that they were only giving them out today if you had an emergency; otherwise, we would have to come back the next day to pick it up. Then a few minutes later, he said he would go ahead & let us wait for it now since he obviously saw that we traveled a long way. WHEW! I didn't even care if we had to wait another hour & a half in yet another line! It took us a total of 6 hours, but it was worth it because Cassie now has her passport & she's SO happy! And so am I! Now I can stop stressing & start relaxing :)

The weather sucked while we were there & we forgot to bring umbrellas, but we still managed to get some pictures before we left. I have some more on my cellphone that I need to upload to my computer since we weren't allowed to take our cameras into the federal building, but here's the pictures we took from our car. Enjoy & don't forget to click on each image for a better view :)

Upon entering the city, we saw the Chicago Stock Exchange building.
Chicago buildings & some scary storm clouds. Look at the license plate on the car in front of us.....SPORTS. Jim, of course, thought it was cool :)
More scary clouds! It was like these clouds just covered the city & nothing else.
I wish this picture would have turned out better. I don't know exactly what this is on this building, but I thought it was neat.

Hard Rock Cafe.

A really cool McDonalds. It's 2 stories & has big screen tvs.

Sports Authority Building.....just thought it was cool :)

Chicago Tribune.

Home of the Chicago White Sox.

Flag on the back of the White Sox field.

Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge.

Welcome to Indiana.....Jim's hometown state :)

That's it for now. Next time I update, I'll add some more pictures of Chicago plus some pictures from our photography class on Tuesday.

Taking Cassie to get a haircut today & to buy her a lighter suitcase as her luggage can't weigh more than 45 lbs. on the airplane. She has to pack for 10 days, so this should be interesting!

Have a super day,

Benita