Chicago Weekend Away

Two Fridays ago now, we made the seven hour trip down to Chicago for Emily and Doug's wedding. The weekend was great fun; here are a few highlights:

During our drive down on Friday, we learned the sad news that Chicago Cubs legend Ron Santo had passed away. Ronnie was a first class third base man in his day, winning a few gold gloves and getting perennial all star calls. He began broadcasting in the mid-nineties, and spent, I believe, fifteen years with Pat Hughes. Pat and Ron had an amazing chemistry. There are clips all over the internet but Here is one of my favorites. Here is Pat Hughes' lovely eulogy from the funeral. Pat shares some of the best stories from the booth over the years. Ronnie will definitely be missed -- it will be a totally different broadcast without the old boy. He brought an unrivaled passion to the booth. Rest in Peace, Ronnie!

Friday afternoon I did an interview and a bit of work, before we headed out to the rehearsal at Flossmoor Community Church. We came in for the rehearsal because, much to my honor and delight, Em and Doug asked me to do a reading at the wedding. After a few practice runs, we headed to Lorenzetti's over in the Heights, where the Stojak family put on a beautiful dinner -- delicious lasagna, hmmm... Following the feast, we went home to watch the most recent episode of Psych with my parents, since my hip dad DVR'ed it for us!

The wedding wasn't until late Saturday afternoon, so I had time to sleep in in the morning and knock out a quick article on the Knights of Columbus for, as it happens, a Chicago parish. 

The dignity of my lectoring duty that evening required a certain dignity of dress: enter the bow tie!

Cousin Sarah, who blew all our socks off with a fabulous toast, was well pleased with the Noter Dame colors on my bow tie. I had hopes that at least cousin Sean would also be rockin' the bow tie, but to no avail. I alone donned that gay apparel, as the Christmas song has it.

It was a great wedding: always fun to be with the whole fam. all gussied up. We hadn't seen my cousins Sean and Beth in a long time so it was fun to get to sit next to them at dinner.

Sunday we went to an early Mass at IJP and then over to Jer and Cath's for a tasty breakfast; it was a very fun little visit. Everyone was still pretty pooped from the late night, but we had a blast. The party was very interested to hear about our adventures up here at the farm -- especially Grandma and Grandpa Esposito -- so we brought our laptop and ran a few slideshows of pictures. It was great. 

Our Captive Audience

Then we watched some of the Bears game with Jerome and headed home. The Bears beat the Lions on more than a technicality this time, so that was nice.

Sunday evening we were privileged to be able to go to my Dad's vespers concert at the beautiful church at the Benedictine Monastery of the Holy Cross on the south side. Check out their website; they seem like a really neat group. The concert was just a vespers (Evening Prayer) service with some additional polyphony music sung by a small group from the Chicago Chorale -- of which my dad is a part. It was spellbindingly beautiful! It sometimes slips my mind how talented he is!

The Sky Was Beautiful That Night!

After the concert, we were all rather hungry so we dined at the Flossmoor Station Restaurant -- a family favorite, to be sure. 

Monday morning I again did some writing, while Steph hit up an exchange at Kohl's and an oil change on the snow panther and picked up some Portillo's on her way home -- what?... Then we hit the road, happy to know we'd be seeing my side of the fam again very soon.

You can all breath easy, the chicks, thanks to our housemate Jordan, were neither cooked nor frozen upon our return home. They're even bigger than when we left. I'll get some more pictures up soon.