Mac Crash

So, I am a little confused about if I can just shut the lid and this mac will go into sleep mode, or what. I have no idea how to tell what it is doing. So far, this is one big deficiency. I have no insight into the workings of this machine. I even find myself missing the disk actvity light, even though it doesn't mean much, at least I know something is going on.

Anyway, I left my house to go over to the in-laws and chose sleep from the apple menu. When I opened it back up at the in-laws it just froze. Wouldn't do anything for 3-5 minutes. Finally just held the power button down until it restarted.

So I had a mac crash in my first day owning my first mac. I am loving the experience so far, but I think that is mostly the newness of the whole thing.