As you may have read in my previous post, we took a trip to Illinois to visit with  family and also tour the area’s haunted houses.  Well, I’m done whining about my painful mouth, so  here’s a run-down of the fun parts:

Got to visit with lots of family in the short time we were there.  We had nice visits with one of my husband’s father’s only living blood relatives, his niece Lilly.  Lilly is a really sweet person who  has been going through a few tough life experiences lately.  We don’t get to see her often, so it was great to see her on  Saturday.  We hope to be able to get her out to Ohio for a visit soon!  We stopped by my mother-in-law’s house where we also got to see my husband’s sister and her family.  Our kids had a ball playing with each other; there are 7 of them altogether!  After that, we also got to see where my Grandpa moved; it’s a very nice place with a cute little main street area for visiting, complete with ice cream shop.  We discussed the Chicago Bears (no comment as of the game’s unfortunate status right now in the 2nd quarter – poor hubby!) with my grandpa and told my grandparents of things like the kids’ awesome grades at school.  Afterward, we had a really great 40th wedding anniversary for my parents at my sister’s house.  The kids had such a great time that they  refused to leave – literally.  My sister’s family had to literally lock out my kids, which was slightly embarrassing, but mostly just a humorous result of their incredible come down from their awesomely fun weekend – also known as a fun-down.

The family stuff was Saturday, so Friday night we were lucky enough to be joined by 4 friends (3 all the way from Ohio!) for some haunted house fun!  We went all over the ‘burbs, with a goal to complete a huge square if you plotted our stops on a map.  Because of an hour-long line in a cramped basement tunnel in Elgin, we did not make it to the Aurora stop, but we cajoled my mom (even though it was her anniversary party) into watching all 6 kids on Saturday so we (along with fellow tangenteer derek who made the drive south for the second consecutive night) could go to the haunted house with my sister and her husband, who hadn’t been to a haunted house in probably about a decade – FUN!  Here is a run-down / rating of the Illinois haunted houses –  haven’t made it to any Ohio ones this year, don’t know that there will be time for that!

Haunted Mansion and Asylum 13 – Bolingbrook IL – Saving the best for last would mean the worst is first, right?  This haunted house was definitely the worst of the lot.  It had lots of actors, not much else.  Average costumes, not much scenery, blasting music not relevant to the theme of the haunted house…  the only noteworthy and the most enjoyable part of the entire thing were the live chickens in the ‘crazy hicks’ scene.  Seeing Drew Peterson’s house in Bolingbrook might have been creepier.  Grade: C-

Eleventh Hour – Elk Grove Village IL – This haunted house is located at Berthold’s, a family-owned plant nursery and is actually  4 attractions in one.  The corn maze is small but succeeded in losing us, even if for a short time.  The haunted house was actually a string of 3, but it wasn’t really clear when one ended and another began.  Eleventh Hour had some really cool haunted house concepts, along with the obligatory chainsaw guy and spinning tunnel to walk through.  The scenery was REALLY cool, complete with (SPOILER ALERT!!!) moving staircase and refrigerator door that both actually became passages to walk through!  And, they had a live zombie band performing in a separate room while we viewed them through little windows –  now that is something I haven’t seen in a haunted house before.  A very cool haunted house, and without all the same old tiresome gore.  Prize moment when an extremely creepy little girl made my husband scream like a…  well, that seems like a mean thing to say about a guy who’s been doing nothing but wonderful things to help out during my illness.  It was hilarious, that’s all I’m going to say.  Grade: B+

Evil Intentions – Elgin IL – This one also had a few very unique fright concepts, but they really need to work on the wait time –  we waiting in a dingy narrow basement hallway for over an hour!  After that, they separated our group of 3 guys and 3 girls into individuals and put us each into a casket!  Mary and I  lucked out and got to share one since there were 6 in our group and only 5 caskets, but it was still terrifying knowing that they were probably going to do something sudden and scary to us in the casket.  SPOILER ALERT!  They pretended to show us a movie on a screen in the casket, but the screen went to colored bars and made the high-pitched beeping noise, which was creepy, but that’s all that happened.  They really should have lengthened the movie or banged on the casket or something, anything.  This, like a few of the other concepts in this haunted house, really needs to be better developed in order to heighten the fear factor.    You take a bunch of people and put them in a haunted house with only 5 caskets for them to queue thru, and of course you’re going to have a huge long wait to get in.  The makeup in here was average, there seemed to be a relatively low number of actors (all of whom seemed to have the same mannerism of getting right up in your face – how many times can that be scary?), and I would consider the scenery downright bare – they definitely could have highlighted the building’s casket company history in the scenery as well as they did in their marketing.  The guide ghouls are particularly fond of separating the groups of patrons, especially isolating the women from their men, a concept I sort of hated and also really enjoyed at the same time – it was weird.  If I factor in the wait time for this one, you don’t want to know the rating, so we’ll just pretend I’m rating this as if I walked right in like I did in the previous two rated houses.  Grade (not including wait time): C+/B- (hard to forget that awful wait time!)

Basement of the Dead – Aurora IL – Because we had to wait an hour for Elgin on Friday night, this one had closed and we didn’t make it.  But as I said earlier, my mom, dad, and uncle graciously agreed to watch the little ones so  that us sisters, hubbies, and a friend could venture to downtown Aurora – a frightening experience in itself, haha.  Seeing the line outside was daunting, and one character said the wait would be at least an hour.  We were about to leave since my brother-in-law had just come off a double work shift and hadn’t slept in 36 hours, when intrigued by the totally awesome looking makeup on the characters wandering outside, my husband inquired about the wait time at the ticket window.  We took the gamble, and it paid off when we were admitted after only about 15 minutes.  During our stay in line, we were entertained by a few of the haunted house escapees; including a super-tall, slow moving dude who had a habit of very creepily and slowly inhaling the scents of patrons of his choosing.  The guy’s build kind of reminded me of an Ohio friend, but I won’t mention who, even though I know he’s not a reader of my blog.  There was a KISS rocker meets clown guy who succeeded at making his makeup and mannerisms really creepy also, and a blank face guy (a nylon stocking on his face, I would guess?), and a guy who moved quickly through the bushes on all fours, kind of like an ape.  When it was our turn to go in, the scary clown slob manning the door burped and blew it in my face which was not scary, just stupid and rude, and if I get his H1N1, I will consider a lawsuit.  Kidding, but it was still gross.  He made me go first into the haunted house.  Whatever, I would just let my husband ahead of me when we got in the door anyway, except that when I got in the haunted house, they shut the door on me and someone came running up and told me to go through it alone.  I flat out refused – I’m not going to PAY to do something I don’t want to do, and they reluctantly let in the rest of our group.  Sorry I foiled their plan, but I would not enjoy the experience alone; that’s not really my thing.  It was fun to see my sister and her husband in the haunted house since they hadn’t been in one in years, but we quickly lost them in the dark mazes and didn’t bother trying to find them.  We figured they wanted to hang back and enjoy the startles they would get if they weren’t so close to us.  When  we got back outside, we waited and waited, but two groups emerged before the rest of our group, and when they came out, my sister was white as a ghost.  Hilarious, and I  think they had fun – most people can benefit from venturing into a haunted house once in awhile, especially parents who can go without their kids – it’s nice to just have only yourself to worry about for a little bit 🙂  The makeup in this one was stellar, best I’ve ever seen.  Scenery was good, if a little dark for my taste since it was difficult to see some of the blood and guts.  Also a few good animatronics and lots of blood and gore, which was actually a a change of pace from the others we’ve seen this year.  Grade: A

I’m not a big fan of the place and try to avoid it like the plague for the most part, but there are about two times a year I am willing to travel to the place of my birth which I lovingly refer to as “Hellinois”, a nickname for Chicagoland, with its insane traffic patterns and millions of unfriendly citizens: around April for my nephews’ birthdays and also around Christmastime.  Making the 4-hour trek across two states twice a year is doable and definitely worth it so that my kids can have fun and get to know their relatives.  So Friday afternoon, we took off and headed over to the Land of Lincoln.  I don’t understand why it took me two hours to pack our family of 6 for a one day trip, especially because there were plenty of things that were forgotten, but more on that later.  We arrived outside the Loop right about 6:30 on a Friday evening local time, but much to our surprise, we barely hit any backup.  What the?  Unheard of for a Friday night!  But on our way past the Chicago skyline, we did have fun trying to find the new Trump Tower and comparing it to the John Hancock and also to the other new skyscrapers that have sprung up, seemingly over night.  I have to admit that Chicago’s skyline is more impressive than that of New York, at least in my opinion – just for the heck of it, I played tourist and actually took a picture of the Sears Tower.  While I was there, I heard that they’re going to build balconies on the observation deck of the Sears Tower with glass floors.  They got the idea after watching all the tourists bump their foreheads on the windows while trying to look straight down.  I have to admit, I’ve done that myself a few times.  Wonder if I could keep my new-found vertigo in check enough to give the new balconies a try when they’re complete?

We arrived at our hotel and got the kids ready to go down to the pool, and that’s when we realized that we forgot my son’s bathing suit, as well as ALL of my husband’s clothes that had been put in the dryer before we left and forgotten.  So we all had to sacrifice – I had to sleep in my clothes and give my pajamas (sweat pants and a t-shirt) to my husband to wear to the birthday party the following day.  He had to wear pajamas to the party and also roast inside a sweatshirt all day since the t-shirt was ripped.  My son went swimming in his pants – luckily I had learned a little something from the New York trip and brought plenty of extra baby clothes with me.

We were only down at the pool for about 30 minutes, but the kids had fun – my son kept clapping.  We had called fellow blogger Derek to join us, but we kicked him out soon after we got back from the pool since the room was very crowded and the kids needed to settle down for their big day ahead.  We ordered pizza (MMMmmm, Chicago-style pizza!) and tried to get the kids to settle down, but it took a long time.  We got so tired that we forgot to close the drapes, which led to everyone rising bright and early in the morning – big oops.  Our almost 5-year-old Sammie, the handful (putting it mildly) of the bunch, decided to draw a bunch of block letter T’s all over her cousins’ birthday cards.  No problem, until she ran out of room for any more T’s and threw a 2-hour tantrum about it – I am not even exaggerating.  By the time we checked out of the hotel, so many people had walked by glaring at our family; it was not a good way to start the day.  We were so not in Kansas (err, Ohio) anymore.  I  have trouble getting used to that every time I visit other places.  It feels weird to not say hi to everyone I pass, or worse yet, to say hi and get a weird stare in return.

We had decided that my husband was going to take Sammie somewhere else rather than for us to subject my elderly grandparents to her screaming, but luckily she calmed down on the way over to their house.  We had a nice visit, and as usual, my grandma made too much food.  What was supposed to be a light lunch (so we could fit in as many other samples of fine Chicago dining as possible during our short stay) turned out to be a buffet spread of strawberries, black raspberries, cheese, smokies in biscuits, deviled eggs, pickles, cheese spread and crackers, not to mention 3 kinds of dessert!  So anyway, we had a really nice visit with my grandparents, although we were walking on eggshells with Sammie, who got an early birthday present from them, which was nice.  But then fights broke out over the birthday present, and rather than stress my grandparents, we beat a hasty retreat.  My grandpa did manage to make a joke, despite all of his discomfort from the Parkinson’s and who knows what else.  He asked how our 10th Anniversary vow renewal ceremony went, and we said great!  So then he said, “You made the same mistake twice, huh?”  Obviously, I don’t feel I made a mistake once (or twice) marrying my husband, but it was funny  anyway and so  great to see the old tease that is my grandpa back in action.  So we left their house in Schaumburg and headed to Aurora to see the rest of the fam.  After little sleep the night before and the 2 hour tantrum in the morning, I offered to drive so my husband could take some much needed rest.  Wanting to think as little as possible, I turned on Jill the GPS and sat back and let her lead me through the tangle of expressways that is Chicagoland.  Except that Jill had apparently had one too many morning cocktails.  She directed me to stay on I-290 rather than to merge onto I-355.  I knew better than that – I had made that trek many a time when my husband and I were dating.  But my brain was fried, so I lemmingly went along with Jill’s directions, and next thing I know, we’re traveling east TOWARD the city, instead of west toward Aurora!  Finally I saw the toll road we needed – I-88, and now we were finally headed in the right direction, after going 10 miles out of the way!  Oh, well, at least we were running early since my kids had decided to get up at the crack of dawn!

Just writing about this makes me tired.  I think I’ll take a break here, unpack a little and save the rest of this huge weekend for another post!