We have a Sailor to see!

Yesterday found us leaving Seattle on a 4 hour flight to Chicago. For those of you not familiar with our current adventure, our eldest son left for Navy Basic Training at the end of April. We have stayed updated about his activities via several phone calls and his propensity to provide much detail in his letters. To keep herself informed, comforted, and well connected, my wife has frequented a web site called Navy For Moms or N4M for short. Did you even know that there was such a site? Or that there is now one for dads too?

We arrived in Chicago and made our way north to Great Lakes Naval Training Center here in Great Lakes, IL. We are staying at very convenient and pleasant place called Navy Lodge.




This is particularly nice as we are less than a mile across the base from where we will be attending Pass In Review tomorrow (6/27). Needless to say we are very proud and excited as we had received a call earlier this week with "Mom, I'm am now a sailor!" Since we arrived early, we had made plans to attend a Chicago Cubs game at the historic Wrigley field. We had a great time riding a series of trains for just over an hour south towards downtown.


What a beautiful day to spend at the ball park. It was festive and our seats were perfectly positioned just up and slightly left of home plate. I was particularly intrigued by the bleacher seating on the rooftops of buildings just across the streets along the ivy covered outfield walls.

Following the game, we hopped back on the trains and headed back to the base. This evening we had a wonderful time over dinner with many of the parents of other sailors also graduating this week. It's getting late, so I must hit the "rack"...wakeup at 0500!