President-elect Barack Obama will visit Hawai'i in December to honor his grandmother "Toot," who died two nights before the election, and to relax with his family before he takes the reins of the federal government in January.

Campaign officials will not specify when Obama will arrive. He, his wife Michelle and his two daughters have vacationed in Hawai'i during the winter holidays in recent years.

Obama's maternal grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, died in Honolulu at 86 after a long illness. As a youngster, he called her Toot, from the Hawaiian word "tutu," which means grandmother.

Obama planned to stay home in Chicago this weekend, with a blackout on news announcements so that he and his staff can rest after a grueling campaign and the rush of their victory Tuesday night.

No plans for Dunham's funeral or memorial service have been announced.

It is not uncommon for funerals to be held more than a week after the death of a Hawai'i resident because of the time it takes for loved ones to fly to the Islands, said Jerry Andrade, funeral home manager of Borthwick Mortuary, which is handling Dunham's arrangements.

He added that visitation and funeral services tend to be larger affairs in Hawai'i than in the rest of the United States because residents here often have large families and collections of friends.

"Everybody is so close here. Everyone is related to each other," he said.

Dunham was the last remaining relative who had a hand in the upbringing of the future president.

Obama's father, with whom he had little contact during his childhood, died in a car crash in 1982. His mother died from ovarian cancer in 1995 and his maternal grandfather, Stanley Dunham, died in 1992.

His half-sister, Maya Soetoro-Ng, lives in Honolulu with her husband and daughter. She teaches at La Pietra Hawaii School for Girls in Honolulu.

Obama began Thursday as he usually does, with a workout. Later, he planned to visit with the transition team he officially announced Wednesday but had been under way for weeks. Officials had kept deliberations under wraps to avoid the appearance of overconfidence in the weeks leading to Tuesday's election.

He also spent time at the FBI office in Chicago, a secure location for him to receive his first president's daily brief. The document is mostly written by the Central Intelligence Agency and includes the most critical overnight intelligence. It is accompanied by a briefing from top intelligence officials that typically lasts 45 minutes to an hour, although Obama's first is expected to be longer.

The president-elect planned his first public appearances since his victory for Friday.

Aides said he will meet with economic advisers to discuss the nation's financial woes — Americans listed the economy as their top concern on Election Day — and then talk to the news media. Aides also said that Obama and his wife, Michelle, will visit the White House on Monday at President Bush's invitation.

"Michelle and I look forward to meeting with President Bush and the first lady on Monday to begin the process of a smooth, effective transition," Obama said in a statement. "I thank him for reaching out in the spirit of bipartisanship that will be required to meet the many challenges we face as a nation."

Obama advisers said he was selecting the leaders of the new government with a sense of care over speed, with no plans to announce Cabinet positions this week.

Democratic officials today said Obama's fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emanuel, the hard-charging No. 3 Democrat in the House, has accepted the job of White House chief of staff, Democratic officials said Thursday.

One of Obama's first decisions as president-elect was to ask the Illinois congressman to run his White House staff. The selection of the fiery Democrat marked a shift in tone for Obama, who chose more low-key leadership for his presidential campaign.

Emanuel, who served as a political and policy aide in the Clinton White House before running for Congress, weighed the family and political considerations before accepting. He will have to resign his seat, relinquish his position in the House Democratic leadership and put aside hopes of becoming House speaker.

Democratic officials who disclosed Emanuel's acceptance did so on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering Obama's team; it had not planned to announce the chief of staff position on Thursday.

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Liz Sidoti reported from Washington. Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo in Washington and AP reporter Beth Fouhy in Chicago and Nedra Pickler contributed to this report.