Chicago

I am still trying to play "catch up" on the blog. We had all these pictures from Chicago and I felt that I had to put them to use. In order to break up our looong trip back (18 hrs), we stopped for a day in Chicago. Getting a great hotel deal on priceline made that possible! Charlie and I both really enjoy Chicago. We used to take students there for Christmas Conferences but visiting in the summer is much much better. These first few shots are of all of us at Lincoln Park. It a free zoo and the whole area is really pretty, right by Lake Michigan. You can just make out Callie petting the goats behind the fence. That was probably her favorite part.


Her with the gorilla family.



Love the city in the background of this picture. The only problem with this is that we had to walk from right where we were all the way into the city. I didn't think I'd have too much of a problem with it because I walk everyday, but I was wrong! For some reason, I really feel like that day I was having a growth spurt and I was in flip flops! I literally waddled the 5 or so miles into the city. Thankfully, Charlie and Callie did their parts to make the walk more bearable. Charlie used a walking tour guide and took us down historic streets w/ neat old homes, and Callie slept in the stroller the entire hour and fifteen minutes it took us to walk!

This was the light at the end of long walking tunnel for me. Chicago style pizza! Who wouldn't smile?

After that we visited the infamous "bean" It's this huge kidney bean made of mirrors. It's cool, you can see yourself reflected in it and people like to take pictures of themselves at it. Being the tourists that we were, we couldn't resist. We then proceeded to a nice playground area in Grant Park for Callie to play. After that we walked over to Navy Pier that stretches out into Lake Michigan. By that point it was starting to rain and we were too tired for pictures. We ended the day with another mile and half walk in the rain back to the subway.

We had about a 40 minute ride on the "L" to get back to our hotel. So, we entertained ourselves by watching Callie try to roll her tongue. Yes, this is what she does when she is trying to mimic us rolling our tongues! So funny. I was just glad to be sitting down. We got back to the hotel and I didn't even move! I didn't even want to go out and get dinner. Instead I opted for a PB and J in the room. We had a great trip even if it did take a week for one of my feet to stop hurting!