Chicago!

Happy weekend bloggies!

We have had a nice relaxing week this last week.  We were on vacation and had a good time not having too many plans.  The one big thing we did do was drive my brother and his wife to the airport...in Chicago.  So it's like a four hour drive.  But what it meant was a day-cation for us.  We drove up on Wednesday evening and the four of us stayed at a hotel.  Then we were up and at 'em Thursday morning to get Zack and Georgia to the airport.  We sure will miss them.  We got kind of used to having them and their cute faces around.

Once they were safely dropped off and situated at the airport we made our way downtown.  Which took about 45 minutes to drive the 6.5 miles.  Yuck!  But hey it's part of a city right?  So we made our way to the parking garage that we had mapped out and came recommended by my cousin Robin.  We were trying so hard to get there before 10AM because they have an early bird special which makes it only $14 to park for the whole day.  Guess what time we arrived????  10:02!!!!!  Two minutes!!  So we paid $10 more to park for the day.  Bummer!  But it was still cheaper than a lot of other parking we had looked into.

See I have a hard time on vacations because I am so torn in what I want to do.  Everything in me wants to relax and have no plan and just rest....but then there is this overwhelming need to have every minute planned and to rush around and see everything there is to see.  Anyone else like that?  So when we were deciding if it was time to go home or not, I was starting to feel stressed because we hadn't seen and experienced EVERYTHING the city has to offer.  (As if that were possible in one day.)  So sometimes I just have to put myself in check and remember the things we did and how nice it was to not truly have an agenda. 

Awesome things we did while were in Chicago are as follows....
* Saw the Bean!!  Heck yeah!  I mean you have to see it.  It was super fun and of course we took pictures of our reflections in it. 

* Met up with our tour guide Krista.  Ok, Krista wasn't our tour guide.  Krista is a long lost friend...maybe she was never lost.  But it has been like 10+ years since we have seen each other.  And it was fabulous to see her and talk.  It's great to have a friend that so much time can pass and you can sit down and start chatting like you just shared a chai tea the day before.  Which we did chat this time over the most amazing iced chai tea ever.  I am dreaming about it....there might be a homemade chai tea post coming up.

* Saw Crown Fountain.  Yeah it's pretty sweet.  I would love to take the kiddos back in the summer so we they can play it. 

* Saw the huge Marilyn Monroe statue.  It's so big and life like!  I mean really...you can even see little veins in her legs.

* Had an amazing salad at the Water Tower mall. 

* Made our way to the Contemporary Art Museum, but ended up not paying to go in.  A couple of the exhibits were closed and so it just didn't seem worth the money. 

That is just about it for the major sights.  Other than that we walked a lot and just took in the city.  We were only there about 4 hours.  I know it really wasn't that long, but we were tired from all of the driving and knew we still had a 4-5 hour trip home.  Overall it was a great trip.  Ryan and I had some nice time alone together and we got to enjoy the company of a wonderful friend and chai tea that dreams are made of. 

We did walk past the Apple store while we were downtown. There were flowers and cards sat outside in honor of Steve Jobs.  If you didn't know, while we were gone Steve Jobs passed away.  It's interesting how sad I actually feel about his passing.  While driving to Chicago after I read the announcement from Apple, we discussed our first computer experiences and how much has changed.  We are all Mac people and will never ever stray.  It's sad to see a great person of our time pass away.  I mean there are lots of ways he wasn't great I am sure, but in some senses he changed a lot.  It's weird to think my kids will never know life without computers or iPods of some variation or some amazing iPhone/smart phone variation.  This is all in part to Steve Jobs, but he definitely played a role in this and for many reasons he will be greatly missed.

Because this is the kind of people we are...the kind that make funny faces at cameras.

It's been a wonderful week off.  The weather has been amazing for a random week in October.  Who would have known that it would rain a drop and it would be in the mid 70's to 80's.  Well we are off to enjoy the last couple days we have that don't have an agenda or time schedule.  Right now I am going to finish my iced coffee and watch Lincoln man try to not fall asleep on the floor.