CHICAGO — Good friends, good food and the comforts of his own home.
President Barack Obama enjoyed all three when he brought his family home to Chicago for the Memorial Day holiday weekend. It was the first family's first sleep?over at their red-brick home in more than a year.
Obama's only public appearance Sunday was for a round trip to a private gym for a workout. Top advisers also updated him on efforts to manage the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The president was due back at the White House Monday after paying respects to the nation's war dead during Memorial Day observances at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill., south of Chicago.
Some veterans groups have criticized Obama, who has sent tens of thousands of troops into a ramped-up war in Afghanistan, for skipping the traditional wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery. Obama helped lay a wreath at Arlington last year but this year has handed the honor to Vice President Joe Biden.
Obama spoke at the Lincoln cemetery on Memorial Day in 2005.
Before taking office in January 2009, Obama expressed a desire to visit his $1.6 million home in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood about every six weeks.
"Our friends are here. Our family is here. We are going to try to come back here as often as possible ... at least once every six weeks or couple of months," he told the Chicago Tribune back then.
But the demands of the presidency and his daughters' busy schedules of weekend soccer and basketball games, birthday parties and sleepovers have thwarted his intentions.