Dads Weekend

E wanted to go to her karate club this morning so we knew we had some time to kill until 1 p.m. before we could meet up with her. We drove around the town of Rantoul, which L promptly labeled a ghost town. We drove around the old Rantoul Air Force Base, which was pretty neat to see. L, though, couldn't wait to get to Champaign because we agreed to pick up her friend, J, who moved there over the summer.

This was how one business welcomed dads and advertised their specials for the day.

Before we let the girls walk around the campus together, L had a little "homework" to do. Her engineering teacher is a U of I grad and when she told him she was going to visit her sister this weekend, he asked her to take along his stuffed blue-footed booby and get a picture with the Alma Mater statue. On the way to that statue we passed this one by the engineering library so L decided she needed to take its picture with the booby too.

And the Alma Mater!

And about 1 p.m. E met us by the Union. The girls went to the Union to choose lunch from a variety of fast-food options and we took E to Panera.

After lunch we made a quick stop at Wal-mart then went back to campus and walked around ... and walked ... and walked some more. We walked nine miles. This is the dorm where E will be living next year. It's being built now and should be done (fingers crossed!) before school starts in the fall.

We were going to have dinner near campus, but it was really crowded with Dads Weekend and the football game being over so we got in the car and headed to Brixx Pizza, which apparently just opened last month. Nice place and E was able to take a couple slices of her wood-fired margherita pizza home with her. She told us good-bye. She'll be busy studying tomorrow so we're planning on leaving straight from the hotel to go home.