We took our annual trip to CHICAGO from Weds Oct 17- Sat Oct 20, 2018. We had a blast! Most of our time was spent with the Hill family!
This was a maiden voyage for our new car. It proved to be perfect for road tripping! Everyone was closer together since we downsized vehicles, but not squished. A perfect medium for our family size. We enjoyed lots of pistachios during the drive.
Our first night there we stayed with Uncle Doran and Dianne in a suburb of Chicago. We had a nice visit with them Wednesday evening, but I dont have any pictures. On Thursday morning, we drove into the city, parked the car and then rode our own bikes everywhere!
We first rode to a delicious Vegan restaurant for lunch. It was actually amazingly delicious. Then we rode to the Museum of Art and explored in there for a couple of hours. Then we rode through Millenial Park on our way back to the car. Jeremy led us on less busy streets, but it was still busy! We all loved seeing the people and trucks and cars and huge buildings. There were lots of bike paths for us, and the boys did a really good job following the traffic rules. Yes, we had a lot of faith in their bike riding abilities and in the goodness of Chicago citizens. Everyone was safe and had a super ride!
At the Museum of Art, we had a really fun time! Before getting there, we showed and taught the boys about several famous paintings that would be at the museum. Their reactions were absolutely priceless when we found “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by George Seurat. The painting is huge, so they could see it down the hall from another gallery. They both were grinning from ear to ear, trying to stay quiet and pointing frantically to where it was, telling us to look, look! Their gittiness was contagious and brought me so much happiness. 🙂
To make the adventure more engaging, we took Jayne Ekin’s idea to make a scavenger hunt. The boys helped contribute to things they wanted to find. The list included stuff like something fluffy, something colorful, a lion, an eagle, a picture of someone that looks like Tanner or Dallin, etc. We checked off a lot of the items in this glass ball exhibit.
We tried to make the same face as this statue, which was part of our scavenger hunt.
Tanner wanted to find a double spiral shape, and here it was!
This is the painting that saved Bill Murray’s life. It’s called Song of the Lark by Jules Breton.
There was an area in the museum for family discovery. It had community art, hands on games, books, and a chance to make your own tour of the museum.
Tanner designed his own tour of the museum through a computer program that they had in the family area. Then it printed out a customized museum map for him to go on his tour. He chose a lot of modern art in the museum to look at. So we went and found some Jackson Pollock paintings and very simple symmetrical paintings. Fun to see what he was interested in.
We then loaded up our bikes onto the car and headed to Brian and Callie Hill’s home. The kids didn’t waste any time having fun together. We stayed with the Hills for Thursday and Friday night. Tanner and Riley were little buddies the whole time, it’s fun to see their friendship still growing even though we only see each other about once a year. We had lots of fun chats with Callie and Brian, ate yummy food and desserts. Callie and Eden took me to a delicious gellato place while Brian and Jeremy played hide-and-seek with the rest of the kids. That’s when Tanner decided to not come out of his hididng place, which was a really tricky place, and everyone freaked out because he was missing for 45 minutes.
Also that night, Jeremy’s bike and my bike got stolen. Considering that Jeremy’s main form of transportation is his bike and that he had it locked up, this was really devastating to him. He was pretty beside himself for awhile. He reported it to the police and had it registered when he first bought it, so a few days after our trip, the police actually found it! The Hills are keeping it for us until we get back to Chicago. What huge blessings! (Jeremy has a winter bike that he’s been using the past few months. He did not take that one with us to Chicago).
On Friday morning, the kids lazed around and played. We had a yummy breakfast and then took the two big girls with us to the Children’s Museum. It was raining on our way from the parking garage to the museum, so the kids huddled up waiting for the crosswalks to let us go.
The kids had a blast at the museum! Such a joyful time watching them play and play and play.
This building area was mesmorizing to the kids. All four of them spent over an hour in here. First they each built their own thing and then started working on projects together.
These two buddies decided it would be awesome to build a table together. They were absolutely pumped as it got closer and closer to being done and were SO extremely proud of themselves that it was a real structure, not just pretend, and it could be used as a real table!!
It was even strong enough to hold their own weight!!!
I built this shack with lots of other pieces that were already built. Then Dallin decided to test the strength of the roof with all kinds of bolts and screws and wood pieces. It held up pretty darn good.
Jeremy and I had fun building, too, but we just could not stick with it as long as the kids did!
There were lots of little exhibits. The kids played well together the entire time.
Tanner decided to go back to the building center to make a chair for the table.
Meanwhile, I took the rest of the kiddos to the workshop exhibit. The ride home we played 20 questions while wading through traffic. We got home in time for dinner that Callie made for us. It was delciious Philly chease steak sandwiches! We liked it so much we have done that meal in the crock pot several times since then.
The next day was Saturday and Jeremy’s birthday! Jeremy and Brian went to play basketball with church people early in the morning. For Jeremy’s birthday service, he ordered deep-dish Chicago pizza for everyone to eat for lunch. OMGoodness it was so good. We had fun visiting and playing with the kiddos. In the afternoon we all headed off to the Garfield Park Conservatory. It was free, and it exceeded all of our expectations! Best of all, the children LOVED it.
Only cool dads like Brian walk with diapers in ready position, hanging out of their back pockets. 🙂
