Chicago Vacation: Part 3

Monday morning we headed back into the city to do some sight seeing! This is the skyline driving in. It was a cloudy, cold day, but thankfully it wasn't raining.


That big, black tower in the middle is the Willis Tower. It used to be the Sears Tower and for a long time,the tallest building in the world. It is 110 stories. But, now it's only the tallest building in the United States.

It is the building where you can visit the skydeck- the clear glass ledge where you are basically suspended over the city and you can see far below you.

Yeah. Um, thanks, but I. don't. think. so.

I'll just look from down here.

Here we are driving onto Michigan Avenue. The "Magnificent Mile". I would liken it to the "Rodeo Drive" of California. (I've never been to Rodeo Drive, but that's what I would liken it to.)

It has all the expensive stores, restaurants, banks and exchanges and more expensive stores.

This is Grant Park. It is the oldest section of Michigan Avenue. Most of Michigan Avenue used to be residential and was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1871.

This is the Chicago Art Institute. David took me here right after we started dating, on my first trip to Chicago in 1994. This weekend was actually the 17th anniversary of that first trip!

This is the skyline heading back into Chicago. We took a little detour to drive along Lake Shore Drive to look at Lake Michigan and then turned around and headed back in. The black building in front is the Hancock Center.

The Drake Hotel.

This is Lake Michigan. I wanted to get better pictures, but we decided not to stop and get out because is was COLD. About 9 years ago, when Bethany was a baby, we took a trip up there and stayed with some friends closer to the Wisconsin border. Brittany, Tyler and Timothy got their feet wet in Lake Michigan, but it really was too cold to go swimming then. That was in JULY. I can only imagine in November.

This is Moody Bible Institute. David actually considered applying here to get his Masters, but decided against it.

We were teasing Timothy about his name being on that pub, since he always sings Tim Hawkin's "I don't drink beer." That light blue building in the upper right corner is Trump Tower.

Wouldn't it be kind of cool to live in one of these buildings on Lake Michigan near all the hustle and bustle of downtown Chicago and Michigan Avenue? I believe Oprah's apartment is in Water Tower Place and was on the market for over a million dollars.

Maybe for a brief while, but I still want my land out in the country.

It appears someone hijacked my camera.

Chicago Vacation: Part 2

Sunday we went to the Chicago Field Museum. We gave the kids a list of choices of things they wanted to do and the first choice on everyone's list was the Field Museum. (I mean, who wouldn't want to go to a museum with a big poster of chocolate on the side!)

The museum was really quite large, and the architecture was very cool.

This is Sue, the world's largest T Rex skeleton. I expected it to be bigger, but I guess if it had skin on and it was running toward you, it would seem pretty scary.

A little bit of evolution, of course, but we do what we always do in that case and ignore it, and go with the fact that the Bible says that God created everything in seven days.

These are the lions of Tsavo. A very interesting and frightening story, indeed. In the late 1800's, workers in Kenya were constructing a railway. Two lions stalked around the campsight and over the course of nine months, killed and ate I believe 140 workers! A movie was made about this, The Ghost and the Darkness. The two lions were finally killed and then eventually sold to the Field Museum. They were in very poor condition (I think it said they had been turned into rugs!), but were able to be reconstructed and still have the original skulls.

The museum had an amazing display on Ancient Egypt. I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egypt. It is one of my absulute favorite periods in history. Maybe because it's just so different (and bizarre) from what we know today. You started off in a pyramid recreation, which took you downstairs to a huge collection of artifacts, mummies, even a boat. Here is Timothy on an Egyptian bed.

I was really surprised at how many mummies they had. And, at how many of them were children. They even had an infant mummy. It really just brought a well of sadness over me. Those were somebody's children. Even 4000 years ago, mamas still loved their babies. It made me thankful for my healthy children.

The museum had an awesome area for kids. Here are some of them gathering corn at the Pueblo village (there was even a small Pueblo house).

The kids had fun in the sound proof music room.

We were at the museum for about four hours, but I honestly could've stayed all day if I were by myself!

This is Soldier Field where the Chicago Bears play football. It's across the street from the museum.

The wind coming off of Lake Michigan was C.O.L.D.


Then it was off to Portillo's for some Italian Beef. What is Italian Beef? You say you've never heard of it?

Well, it is only deliciousness on a bun.

It must be a somewhat localized thing, because we've been all over the country and never seen it outside of Illinois. It's basically a shaved roast beef, marinated in some sort of broth and seasonings, slapped on a bun (that gets soggy from the broth) with peppers on top.

This isn't a picture of my actual sandwich because I wolfed that baby down before I could even think about getting my camera, but my it looked exactly like this.

The kids got Chicago style hot dogs, but since they are not adventurous, they opted to leave the Chicago off the top. (I think they all were switched at birth.)

Finally, we headed back over to Grandma and Grandpa's for goodbyes, since we were leaving the next evening and Grandpa had doctor's appointments.

Chicago Vacation: Part 1

We just got back from a little vacation to Chicago! We had been planning it for about two months. We left about 9:30 on Thursday evening. It took us about 15 hours to get there, because we stopped for a nap in Springfield, Illinois.

And, the fact that we went through Kansas.

We borrowed a GPS that was programmed to avoid toll roads. So, David puts in the destination and the next thing we know we are headed to Kansas.

Well, we had never been to Kansas so we just decided to go with it.

I can't believe that I agreed to even drive at night because I had sworn that I would never drive at night again after we went to Illinois about six years ago.

David and his brother had put in some fog lights on our van, because it can get quite foggy through the mountains in Tennessee (this is when we lived in South Carolina). They must have gotten confused with the wiring, because as we were careening down the interstate at night, the lights kept spontaneously going off and on. And then staying off.

Yes, that really happened. I said then and there we would NEVER drive at night again.

But, this time other than an unfortunate bunny hit and run, and some motion sickness, everything went fine.

Anyway, David grew up in the Chicago suburbs. It had been a long time since we'd seen his extended family and an even longer time since we'd been into the city. We were all really excited about getting to take this trip.




We passed quite a few windmill farms. I had never actually seen one up close. It is amazing how the windmills even turn, but I guess the engineers know what they're doing.

We discovered that Travis really does not like car trips. So, thankfully, since we travelled at night he mostly was doing this.

One of his rare happy moments.

After we pulled into town, we stopped at El Famous Burrito. I think it really should have been called "In-famous" Burrito, because it was totally huge.

This is only half of the burrito. Tyler couldn't eat all of his so he gave some to Thomas. He is holding only a third of it. But, it was delicious.

Next, we stopped in to see David's grandparents. This is David's Aunt Anita and Uncle Jess, David's Dad's siblings.

David and his Grandma.

David, me, the kids and Grandpa and Grandma.

Aunt Anita got pizza for us that night. We went back to the room and were pretty much ready for bed by that point. It was a beautiful sunny day.

The next day, Saturday, we drove up to Rockford to visit David's parents' graves. That was the first time I had been there in sixteen years. David's mom died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1995-the day after Christmas. Our wedding day back in February of that year was the last time either of us saw her alive, because they had come down to Alabama for the wedding (David was already stationed in Hawaii) and we left for the Smoky Mountains for our honeymoon. They drove back to Illinois that next day.

David's dad passed away from cancer on New Year's Day in 2007. Yes, our family apparently likes to make the holidays memorable. (My grandfather who I was very close to died three days before David's mom). I wasn't able to go to his Dad's funeral because David was in the airport in Charlotte for a business trip when he got the call that his dad had died. He switched flights to head up north, but the kids and I had to stay behind.

We also went to see Joann, who David's dad had remarried. Then, headed back toward Chicago to visit David's aunt and cousins.

It was a really cold and rainy day on Saturday, but we had a really good visit with family that we hadn't seen in a long while.