This summer flights were so expensive that we decided to save a little money and fly into Chicago on our way to summer in Wisconsin! And why not take advantage of being there and see the sights? So we had it all planned out - three days, our family of four, Navy Pier, Sears Tower, deep dish pizza, the works! Only . . . things didn't quite go as planned!
The night before we left, Jake came down with a stomach flu. As cute as he is himself, the result of the flu was anything BUT cute. And the fun continued allllll day traveling!
Soph was rockin' the Strawberry Shortcake carry on). . .
Three entire clothing changes, one discarded onesie (there was NO way to save it) and lots and lots of crying later, we were only in Dallas. Yes, Dallas. That summarized only the first 2 1/2 hours of the trip.
Eight hours later . . .
Yes. We were
still on airplanes.
After a short delay in Dallas, circling an impressive lightning storm outside of Chicago for an hour, running low on fuel and being rerouted to Missouri to refuel, we finally made it to Chicago - at 1:30 in the morning. Yippee!
The next morning after a few hours sleep, Jake was still sick (from the bottom end), we were all really tired, but nevertheless, we were ready to hit Navy Pier! Our hotel was only about a mile from the Pier, so we walked Michigan Avenue and took pictures along the way!
Even sick, Jake is such a happy trooper!
We think of Soph as such a little beach bum, so it was entertaining to watch her in a big city and see little her against the backdrop of such large buildings.
Totally dug this window with antique sewing machines. The display was impressive (this photo only shows one little part of it). There had to be at least 200 machines in the display of the store, and each of them different. (Couldn't get back far enough to take a photo of the entire front of the place without getting hit by traffic. Oh well. Save a life, sacrifice a photo.)
When we got to the entrance of Navy Pier, we had just enough kid time to get one photo, then they both fell fast asleep (remember, we
had gotten to bed at 2:30ish the night before). So we sat outside on a park bench and let them sleep, people watched and enjoyed the warm and balmy weather, a welcome change from the horrible heat and humidity of PV.
After the nap, we went to the Children's Museum (super fun!) and spent a few hours singing karaoke, crawling through what seemed like hundreds of connected forts, pretend grocery shopping, tree climbing, building and constructing and so much more!
When the kids started drooping again, we decided to end the afternoon, jumped in a taxi and headed to Giordano's (which was supposed to offer up some of the best deep dish pizza around). But, just as we made it no further on to Navy Pier than this:
We made it no further than the entrance of Giordano's before Sophia started throwing up. Lovely. So we spent a while apologizing profusely to the appalled hostess and then dashed out to the street and around the corner to our hotel to put our sickos (one from the bottom and now one from the top) to bed early.
But we didn't give up. Later on, we called back to Giordano's (keeping our identity top secret of course) and ordered deep dish pizza. Only the woman on the line was SO mean that I got flustered and actually ordered ingredients we don't even like! She was so rude that I couldn't believe it and just ordered whatever the first pizza on the menu was. Nevertheless, we ate deep dish. In the bed watching TV on our first night of summer vaca! Not quite what we had planned, but fun anyway!
Day two everyone seemed to wake up healthier and ready for action!
We let the kids have some downtime in the morning just to be sure we wouldn't be faced with any unwelcome surprises (from the top or bottom) once we left the hotel, but everything seemed to be under control, so off we went to the John Hancock Conservatory which we heard had an equally great view as the old Sears Tower but less expensive tickets and shorter lines.
We walked around Chicago some more and ended up at the Billy Goat Tavern for some Cheeseburger, Cheeseburger. Again, right on cue, the kids both crashed.
We gobbled up the burgers and headed back to the hotel for our last night! Chicago is a beautiful city, but in all honesty, it just wasn't the right place or time for us! Jake was really sick almost the whole time we were there, and it was really stressful feeling helpless without his pediatrician or even a familiar doctor around. We weren't sad when it was time to hop the Amtrak and head to Milwaukee to see the Uncles!
Amtrak was a fun experience - we were a little unsure of what we were doing! I feel like we can get through airports blindfolded at this point, but the train was a whole other thing! But once we had our luggage hauled up and stored, it was super fun! Soph's only complaint was that the the train didn't say ChooChoo.
