Weekend in Chicago

Eric and Alicia have been inviting us to Chicago for over a year now. I should probably apologize to them since we've never made it happen...until now! The weekend before Thanksgiving with kids in tow, we hit the road and arrived in the windy city at about 3pm. Our hosts were still busy at work so we delayed an hour or so at the Lincoln Park Zoo.

We saw flamingos, lots of things with antlers, a few empty cages. But the gorillas were definitely the hit of the show. I assure you Alyssa was more enthusiastic than this photo would lead you to believe.

There was a 500 lb silverback gorilla that was very active and we followed him around his habitat until eventually he went inside.

The kids tried his handprints on for size. Much larger than you might think!

There was also a cute farm / barn area at the side of the zoo. We saw cows and a piggy. Evan started oinking for the first time! There was a neat kid's area with several hands-on demonstrations of farm "stuff." The John Deer in the middle of the room was cool - and it was hard to pry Evan out of there when we were ready to go.

Eric and Alicia's apartment is really cute and they've picked a nice, quiet area of Lincoln Park with a gate and a courtyard. They have a really neat service where you can pick the groceries you want online and the grocery store will bag and deliver them to you for $6! I really wish I had that...  Anyway, that night we tucked the kids in their office on the floor and we inflated a bed in the living room to sleep on.  It was cozy! The next day we visited Omama in Elmhurst. Evan did his usual thing and repeatedly asked for candles to be lit so he could blow them out. Omama obliged!

She provided us with a little spread of snacks and we enjoyed ourselves for a couple hours. That afternoon we took the train downtown to Navy Pier to visit the Children's Museum. 

Lots to do! A cool room where you put on rain coats and let loose with all sorts of fun water stations.

A dinosaur "dig" in a pit of shredded rubber bits:

There was "Kids Town" - complete with gocery store, cars, gas pumps, and a sewer system you can crawl around in.  

We pretty well exhausted them...but we weren't done yet. We walked about half a mile back towards town to get to a restaurant right off the Miracle Mile.

They must have been deep in conversation because I couldn't get anyone's attention for a photo - except Alyssa! Thanks for smiling hun.

The parade down Miracle Mile was underway and we threw ourselves deep into the crowd as we could. Alas, I fear only the kids on Eric's and my shoulders had any sort of show worth seeing. I really couldn't see any floats over other people's heads.

We packed ourselves onto a train to ride back to Eric and Alicia's place. It was quite a busy day, and I didn't even mention that it started at 8am with a 1 1/2 hour visit to urgent care to get Alyssa some antibiotics. That night kids went down without a peep (nice!) and we sat around a fire and just talked. Alicia kept the wine coming until a little after midnight when it was time to call it quits. The next morning we visited their church and had a great lunch that Alicia had prepared for us (wink ;). Then it was the long drive back to Midland.

Thanks Eric and Alicia - we had a really good time with you. We are looking forward to Christmas!

-Chris