Chicago

We got a chance to take a quick vacation up to Chicago for a few days. It was SO fun, but the trip went by way too quickly. We drove up on Wednesday night/Thursday morning (yes, we did drive - it wasn't too terrible) and hit the ground runnin' as soon as we checked into our hotel.

Thanks to one of my friends from college (Bret) we found a place to park our car for FREE - fyi there is nowhere in downtown chicago to park a car for less than $25 a day - and we headed up to Wrigley to try to see a Cubs game. We didn't have tickets yet, but figured we could probably find some on the streets outside the stadium. We got to hang out for a couple hours at the Cubby Bear Lounge right across from the main entrance and then about 5 minutes before the first pitch we headed out to find tickets. We got a decent deal for some upper level seats and the game was a great time! The Cubs won 12-6 and hit a bunch of homeruns. It is so different to go to a game that is packed on a weeknight since we're so used to the Royals. :)

On Friday, we started the day by heading down to Millenium Park. Several people recommended that we check it out...and it didn't disappoint. It was beautiful! There was a bunch of neat areas like the Pavilion and a big fountain that had hundreds of kids splashing in it.

The above picture is of a cool area called Wrigley Courtyard (I think that's the name anyway - I should've written it down). Below is a rather recognizable piece of art called the Cloud Gate. I'm sure on the name of this one - it has become a symbol of Chicago in recent years even though it's only been there since 2005. It's called the Cloud Gate partly because when you look at it you can see the clouds in the reflection. We had some fun taking pictures of our reflection as well. :)

In the afternoon we went over to Navy Pier. It's the number one tourist attraction in Chicago. Although it was neat, I think we will get more out of it once our baby is big enough to try some of the rides they have and experience the children's museum as well.

One of the cool things that was happening while we were in Chicago was the filming of an upcoming movie - Transformers 3!! The movie production had a section of Michigan Ave. closed down to traffic for the entire time we were there. You could still get to all of the shops and restaurants, but you couldn't get across the bridge over the river. We were able to get a few shots of some of the setup for the shoot, although there wasn't a ton you could actually see. The place was setup like some sort of destruction area though and we periodically would see smoke and there were cars turned over. Pretty cool!

It's kinda tough to see in this picture, but if you look closely you'll see a parachuter. We were on our boat tour (more about that in a sec) and a helicopter flew over downtown and out jumped five or six skydivers! They swooped around the huge Trump building and then parachuted their way down onto the movie set. It was really neat to see. (PS - this pic was taken from about 1/2 mile away, so I was lucky to even get the guy in here!)

Now to that boat tour...we had been told we should check out one of the architecture tours in Chicago, and specifically one that was by boat. We found one the had half-price tickets on Saturday morning and it was great! Although the river was closed due to the filming of the movie, we still got to go upand down the shore line on Lake Michigan and were able to get some great photos of the Chicago skyline.

The other tourist activity we took in was going up in the Hancock Building to the observation deck. All the way up to the 94th floor - it was pretty cool to see the city from up above.

We returned after 4 days to see our little girl with 2 teeth (don't have a good pic of this yet) who can sit up on her own...kinda. She still fairly wobbly. I can't believe it, only 4 days away and she changed so much! It's good to be back home with her!!