Labor Day weekend in Chicago

Alan had saved enough rewards points from his recent trips to Baltimore that we could cash them in for three free nights at a hotel. It is getting more and more to the now or never point before Baby Boy gets here, so we took advantage of the holiday weekend and packed up our new van and took off.

 We got in late Friday night, and the girls were so excited to be in a new place and sleep in the same bed, it took them awhile to fall asleep. Saturday morning Alan got up early to make it to the 7am session at the Chicago Temple, and the girls woke up with him at 5:30. This was them after breakfast trying to "relax" and watch some morning cartoons.

 While I went to the temple, Alan took them swimming and wore them to the point of exhaustion. This was the scene I came back to after my session.

 We finally made it out to downtown Saturday evening. It is a little crazy driving in the city... I'm just glad that Alan was driving, and that our big city driving isn't quite like that.

We went to a big mall that had the Chicago American Girl store. The girls really liked walking around looking at and playing with all of the really expensive dolls and accessories.

 Right next door was the Lego store.

 We spent a lot of time in there building little people and playing with them.

 Alan made this scene on top of the body parts dispenser... He had some story about how the girl broke out of jail, but was chained to one of the guards, so things got messy... I think he had as much fun as the girls playing with all of the people.

It was late and everyone was hungry, so we ended the night at our favorite Chicago BBQ, Sweet Baby Rays.

 Sunday morning dawned clear and bright and we headed back to the temple to let the girls walk around. Luckily for us one of the gates was unlocked so we could actually get on the temple grounds.

 Love them and their matchy shorts...

 We found a little garden with benches and a big stone circle pattern. Elsie insisted that everyone had to take turns standing in the middle and give a talk about the temple.

 We headed back to the hotel for lunch, and then the girls wanted to show me how they can swim in the pool.

 Elsie's swimming lessons have really paid off. While she still uses her floaty, she is a lot more confident and comfortable in the water. She swam laps back and forth in the pool most of the time we were down there.

After a mandatory rest time, we headed back downtown. This time we parked by the Millennium Garden and walked around. Little did we know that the 30th-something annual Jazz Festival was going on . We listened to it a little bit, the girls danced and followed a parade of musicians, and then we moved on. We headed to the "Cloud Gate", or the giant bean as everyone calls it and got the typical pictures of ourselves in the reflective surface.

 We stopped by the Crown Fountain which supposedly had a big screen on it and lights up with different faces, but it wasn't on when we were there.

 Next we saw the Buckingham Fountain and walked all the way around it.

We made our way to the harbor, picked up some ice cream, and walked along looking at the boats until we led two exhausted girls (and one swollen pregnant Mommy) back to the van, and called it a night.

 We started our last morning in Chicago at the Lincoln Park Zoo. We went to the farm and saw the morning milking of the cows.

 We petted some goats, and one of them tried to eat Elsie's shirt. Alan even saved another pregnant lady who's shirt was being nibbled on and was kind of freaking out a little. I guess it was their breakfast time.

 We finally loaded up the van and headed back to Wisconsin. Just inside the border we made a pit stop at the Jelly Belly factory and went on their tour.

It was a good trip and a nice escape. There are so many things to do in Chicago that it was very hard to pick and choose what we should hit. There are so many things that we want to do, but we just need to wait until the girls get a little older so they can enjoy it more. I guess we will have to make more trips back to the city as the years go on so we can fully explore it.