Naperville – here we come

So my mom and I drive to Arkansas with Brady, Madison, my niece Alexis, and nephew Trevor for my cousin’s high school graduation and for the Underwood family reunion. We left the night of June 20th and returned the afternoon of June 23. Justin and I had train tickets to Naperville and left Macomb around 6:00 p.m. on the 23rd. The rest of this entry was supposed to be super easy to write because Justin actually wrote a journal entry about the entire event. Unfortunately, someone decided to spill coffee on her laptop a week and a half ago and fried the hard drive of the computer. You would think that since this person is a technology director that she would have all of her files backed up. But no, of course not!!!

So we get to Naperville in the evening; grab a cab; stay at a less than stellar hotel; arrange for a cab to pick us up by 7:00 a.m. for our 8:00 a.m. appointment. The next morning we got up, check out of the hotel bright and early and were off with our backpack to spend the day in Naperville. So the first moment of panic was that our cabbie was clueless how to get to the CIS office. We had the street address so you would think that that should have done the trick. He was calling back to his home base to get help and no one seemed to know what he was talking about. My heart was pounding. We could NOT miss that appointment! Finally after we told him to keep driving and get us to the block where the building was 'supposed' to be, we found the CIS office nestled in a strip mall. We were in line right at 8:00 a.m. So the entire fingerprinting process took a whopping 30 minutes. Seriously we were back outside the building at 8:30. We had the remainder of the day to backpack through Naperville. Luckily there was a mall right across the street from the CIS office. As we headed that direction, I noticed a large tent set up in the far corner of the lot with rugs. I jokingly said to Justin, we should get a rug to take home. Ha Ha. We spent the entire day in the mall. We needed to be back at the train station by 6:00 and wanted to grab a sandwich for the ride home. So we headed out of the mall with our backpack and few bags in tow. Off through the parking lot we went - straight toward the rug tent. Ohh, we have some time before we have to get the cab, let’s just take a peek right??? Wouldn’t you know it. I found a rug that would be just perfect for the house. The salesman tried his best to get us to take it, and we explained that there was just no way that we could carry the rug on the train and get it home. We told him why we were in Naperville and walking around with a backpack, and he was moved by our story. He made us a deal that we just could not refuse. So after laughing hysterically at ourselves, Justin packs this rug on his shoulder and off we went down the streets of Naperville. We took it into Panera to order our sandwiches, and we called a cab. When the cab arrived we discovered that the rug would not fit in the trunk!! This was getting more and more ridiculous. Luckily we got it to fit in the back seat with the window rolled down. And we were off. We were able to get it on the train with no problem at all.

I am pleased to report that the rug fits nicely in our office. It will always bring back the memories of our Naperville fingerprinting excursion.