Chee-cago, Saturday

This post was greatly delayed due to complications (when we returned home) with our beloved pug Toby and general craziness of school life right now (March and April are always my busiest months). SO, without further ado...the second half of our trip to Chicago.

We started out our day at The Field Museum. We could have spent a TON more time here as they had so many cool exhibits. I decided to take a picture of the first time we found from each persons country (for the girls) or state (for George and I). So, Australia (Amy), Germany (Daniela), Nebraska (George's home state) and South Dakota (my home state).

Precious Opal from Australia

A woodcut depicting the fall of the Ensisheim meteorite in Germany.

Rhino bones from Nebraska

"Sue" the most complete T-rex ever found from South Dakota

 I think I win for coolest display from our countries/states. It was a lot of fun looking at awesome artifacts from around the world and learning more about them. We walked to Shedd Aquarium after we finished at the museum. It was CROWDED at the aquarium! We didn't get a lot of pictures there due to the volume of people but they had some neat exhibits. My favorites were the dolphins and the penguins!

Watching the dolphins swim

Just keep swimming, just keep swimming...

We drove to Fremont, NE that evening and returned home on Sunday. It was a quick tour of Chicago, but a great one! I think we were all glad we went and took a small vacation from life and school here. Tonight George and the girls are out enjoying the foot of snow we received yesterday and I am cuddling our poor little pug Toby and listening to Lola bark at the crew outside. Pictures of a snowman (or something like that) will be coming soon. Happy Sunday night!

Chee-cago

This is post #1 about our trip to Chicago, IL with our girls. I will probably post at least one more time with more photos after we are home again but I wanted to log what we've done thus far. First though I will start by saying that we have all survived so far but the trip has definitely had its moments of craziness!

CTA Bus system--I hate you! I maybe would have different feelings if we actually knew our way around the city but, well, we don't. Every time we tried to go somewhere we would first have to locate our bus stop and it seemed as though each time we would either miss the bus we were supposed to get on and end up having to wait in the freezing cold OR we would head the right way, think it was wrong, turn around, walk the wrong way, figure out IT was wrong, and finally turn and head the right way--the same direction we went the first time. SO FRUSTRATING! I am SO happy tomorrow will be a drive, park and then walk between the two attractions since they are super close to each other kind of day. Not so happy that tomorrow we leave the Windy City because it seems there is so much more to see and do!

Okay, on to what we've been up to:

Wednesday night we drove from home to Fremont, NE and spent the night. Thursday morning we left early and headed for Chicago. We knew we had arrived when traffic on the interstate was moving at a whopping 10 mph one minute and 80 mph (which by the way is at least 15 over the limit) the next! We checked into our beautiful motel (which we got for a GREAT deal) and then began our adventures. We spent Thursday night at the SkyDeck in the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower). It was awesome to see the city lights from way, way, way up in the sky!

Beautiful Chicago

Our feet above Chicago

George and the girls

Me and the girls

Chicago lights

We ate delicious deep-dish pizza and then returned "home" to the motel.

Friday morning was the Museum of Science and Industry. We could have easily spent the entire day there...SO much to see. Friday afternoon brought us to The Art Institute of Chicago (which I sadly have no pictures of). Friday evening we ate at Al's #1 Italian Beef where we all had delicious dipped Italian Beef sandwiches--all except Amy who ate a lame-o Italian Chicken sandwich that was the size of her head! After returning to the motel and spending some time hanging out, watching "Duck Dynasty," the girls and I headed down to the Navy Pier. (George has been fluctuating from sort of sick-really sick the entire trip and needed to rest so skipped out on the late evening activities.)

Amy at the Museum of S&I...butterflies landing on her shadow.

Amy, Dani, and George--lightening!

Chicago skyline near our motel

Flags at the Navy Pier

So far, despite the difficulties and George's illness, we have had a good time. Lots left to see tomorrow and we've barely even made a dent in all there is to do here!

P.S. The title of this post is lovingly dedicated to Miss Dani--she says Chee-cago in a super cute way :)