Chicago

Okay! Here we go! I finally got around to going through all my pictures and narrowing it down to my favorites (which, I  know, there are still a ton of photos but believe me, this is quite narrowed down). So my trip began on Friday, Oct. 29. I worked for a few hours in the morning, caught a bus to Salt Lake, then a plane to O'Hare, and finally Craig picked me up and took me to their apartment. Eleven hours of traveling later plus one hour of time change, I finally made it! Needless to say it was a long day. But it was all worth it, when within seconds of walking through the door I was greeted with these two:

Lindsay and my mom were also there, but they didn't love up on me the way these two did :) Kate was pretty excited, although I don't know how much of that had to do with me. She's pretty excited most of the time.

 On Saturday, we took Kate Trick-or-Treating. They had a sweet setup where you could go Trick-or-Treating around the downtown shops. So within just a couple of hours, Kate had a huge bagful of candy (the picture above of all the candy is just from these shops - it was awesome!) I love the picture in the middle-right of my mom and Kate with the statues - Kate's face is genuine. She was really scared of those guys, which is kind of funny because she seems to be fearless in just about everything else in life. I took the video below as she was walking out of the shop and saw the statues for the first time.

 

 On Sunday, we went to church and then just bummed around. On Monday, we went to the Museum of Science and Industry, which was super cool. The whole time we were there, I kept thinking how much Brandt would have enjoyed it - everything there was right up his alley. We took a tour of a smart house, saw the U-505 submarine, there was a model railroad display, a few big trains; we got to see newly hatched baby chicks, a road to "yester-year" where they had all these shops from back in the day (I don't know which day necessarily - just "back in the day" - hence the pictures of the old dentist chair and tools). It was awesome. We were there all day and still didn't get to see everything in the museum.

 On Tuesday, Kate had school in the morning so we didn't go far. After she was done, we went to the beach for a bit. Lake Michigan is huge! It was too cold for the baby (and for us as well) so we didn't stay too long.  We took my mom to the airport on Wednesday, wished her a safer flight than her flight out there :), and afterwards took Kate to the Children's Museum. That place is awesome! And such a great idea. It's this place where you can bring your kids to basically play all day. They have different exhibits where the kids can shop for groceries, take care of babies, play vet., "work" in a deli, etc. Each station is designed to help kids learn and grow as they play. I've never heard of this in Idaho, but I think it's a brilliant idea. Kate loves it. Her favorite is the grocery shopping - she told me, with a huge smile on her face, "Look! I'm shopping like mommy." It was so cute. (p.s. I love the pic of her in the middle - she got into her mom's eyeshadow and she thought she looked pretty darn good! Hence why she is posing like that - I think she learned that from Project Runway :)

On Thursday night, Linds and I ventured into the city for a night of clubbing. Ok, not really. But it was still pretty exciting. We took the train into the city (my first time on the train by the way, and I handled it like a typical tourist. p.s. you know how on "The Polar Express" the conductor does that "snip,snip,snip,snip" with their tickets? Conductors actually do that in real life! Who would have thunk it?! I thought it was funny. Anywho, when we got off the train, it was raining - no, not just raining, it was POURING! And we had about ten blocks to walk to get to our destination. We made it about five block before ducking into a store and buying an umbrella. It was intense! Even amidst all the rain, there was still plenty of people out and about. Our first stop was Millennium Park. Due to the rain there was hardly anyone there. We saw Cloud Gate (aka The Bean), The Crown Fountain (which I thought was really weird, but whatever), and an awesome skyline. Being there totally reminded me of the Batman movies. Chicago was the perfect city to film those movies in. Most of the buildings were dark, and with the rainy weather the sky was grayish - perfect setup for Batman. 

Our next stop was the Art Institute of Chicago a few blocks away. This museum was huge as well. And very crowded. But lots of fun. We saw lots of famous paintings, sculptures, etc. After The Art Institute, we headed back to catch a train home. Thankfully it had stopped raining by this point. Chicago is really a pretty city. I was in awe of how huge the skyscrapers were right in front of me. And with the dark sky in the background, it was awesome. Hard to describe, but definitely awesome.

On Friday, we bummed around the house again. I love the picture in the upper left corner of Linds and Henry - this was right after his bath and Linds was humoring me with a picture, so Henry took the opportunity to pee all over himself. It was funny. One time I was changing his diaper and out of nowhere he started whizzin' all over the place. It surprised me so I screamed and hurried to cover him with a diaper, but not before he had whizzed all over the wall. I took the diaper off when I thought he was done - and he wasn't done, so I screamed again and covered him up. Mom and Linds thought it was pretty funny - me, not so much.

On Saturday, we went to The Field Museum. We spent the majority of the day there and still didn't see everything. Those elephants in the upper-middle picture are real, taxidermied (not sure if that's a word or not) elephants - weird huh? My favorite thing there was probably Sue - "the largest, most complete, and best preserved T-Rex ever discovered". She (or he - technically they don't know the gender) was HUGE! They had this exhibit called Evolving Planet which was really cool. It walked you through the earth's 4.5 billion years of history. They had tons of dinosaur fossils on display. I had to call Brandt at that point so I could brag, but I made sure to take lots of pictures for him ;).

After the museum, Craig took the kids home and dropped Lindsay and I off at The Magnificent Mile. We walked around, did a little shopping, saw the famous Chicago Water Tower, which I believe was the only thing left standing in the area after the Great Chicago Fire. We had planned on taking a tour at the John Hancock building, but by that point it was getting late and we were hungry. So we just walked around inside the lobby while waiting for a table at The Cheesecake Factory. It was my first time eating there and it was dang good! Definitely worth the nearly 90 minute wait. I had to take Lindsay's picture with her monstrous burrito - they weren't kidding when they named it Burrito Grande! I think it fed Linds and her family for the next week.

I wanted to give a shout out to my beautiful sister, Lindsay. I love this picture of her with her cute kids. She is such a great mom. Kate has so much energy and with a new baby Lindsay handles the stress very well.  Craig works long hours during the week, so most of the time it's just her raising her cute little family and she's awesome at it. I really didn't expect to get out much while I was there - I was happy with just sitting at home and helping with Henry and Kate. But Lindsay made sure I got to see some really cool things while I was there and we had so much fun. She never has let her kids hold her back from what she wants to do. I know a lot of moms who are so concerned with their kids' schedules that they, in my opinion, miss out on a lot of fun (p.s. I'm not judging those moms AT ALL - I can totally see myself being one of those moms - I don't handle stress very well, and I LOVE schedules - that's the only reason that I mention this - I hope that when I have kids I follow Lindsay's example) I couldn't believe that with having a 3-week-old baby how much we were able to do. No doubt it was more work for her having me there, but she never made me feel that way. She's such a great mom; I think that if I'm half as good at the whole mom thing as she is, then I'll consider myself doing a pretty good job. Thanks Linds for all the fun!!

I headed home on Monday afternoon. Linds took me to O'Hare, I flew in to Salt Lake (no throwing up or sickness of any kind on either one of my flights!!! I was thrilled!) caught another bus for I.F. and Brandt picked me up at the bus stop at around 8:30 that night. Another long day of traveling, so it was good to get home.

So that is my first trip to Chicago in a nut shell (a VERY LARGE nut shell :)