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Thursday, September 25, 2014

Chicago Part 2

 Wow! Our first full day in Chicago was jam-packed!!! We don't fool around when it comes to vacationing! We started the day off with a nice free breakfast at our hotel. And it actually was nice!! It had omelets, bacon, cereal, bagels, toast.... now I want some breakfast. But back to the vacation. After breakfast, we went out to look around and walk to the nearest Target. Hey, I loves me some Target, right?!? No, really, we just wanted to pick up some snackie type foods, sodas and waters to keep in our room. Vending machines are pricey! Our walk was really fun and the weather was perfect. In the mid 70s for almost the entire week we were there. Crazy cool for July! We walked down over the Chicago River and the kids were so amazed and excited! They were dredging the river and building a new river walk under the bridge that goes along the entire river. So they had a huge crane on a barge scooping out gravel and dumping it to make the foundation for the river walk. I think we walked by this every day we were there and every time we had to stop for about ten minutes for the kids to take it all in. It was fun and cute! We weren't the only ones, lots of people were stopped to watch!
 My sweet family!

Slight wardrobe malfunction on Lucy's part!

 After we took care of Target, we decided to head over to Navy Pier. It was going to be a little bit of a walk, but we discovered the city runs a free trolley shuttle from downtown to the pier and back every five minutes! Score! So we hopped on and it took us right to the Pier. Navy Pier is awesome. I didn't really get any pictures of the pier but it's very touristy. However, right in the middle of it, is the most amazing Childrens Museum I have ever been to! It was three floors full of awesome kid stuff. And since we were there on a week day, it wasn't crowded. My pictures don't do it justice and I failed to get pictures of all the room, but the kids seriously could have come back here every day and been completely happy! The first room we visited was the "Fire House." It was so neat! They had authentic Chicago Fire Dept. clothes and boots, masks, helmets, fire pole, the dispatch station. They even had a room filled with "smoke" to teach the kids how to crawl through a house and get out in case of a fire.
 After the fire room, we went to the Circus Room. It was super cute! They had a little hot dog cart with crocheted little hot dogs and buns. Henry loved pushing it around and "sharing" hot dogs with everyone. (sorry, no picture.) And they had all sorts of fun circus stuff.


 The tightrope


 Henry was the boy on the flying trapeze!

 Jonah's turn!

 Henry did pretty good!

Sadly, Lucy slept through the fire room and the circus room. But she woke up for the room full of building stuff. The boys LOVED this room. We stayed here for about 30-45 minutes. It was just a bunch of wood with holes drilled in them and nuts and bolts and allen wrenches. They could just build anything they wanted. It was so cute! Jonah took it very serious and even wore the safety glasses.



Another room we went to was done up like a forest with camping stuff and tents. It was probably my favorite. They had this water feature that looked like a little stream full of plastic fish and fish nets. Lucy LOVED this! She loved "catching" the fish and putting them back. The room also had a big tree house to climb up into and logs to climb through with reading nooks at the end of them.



 This was from the fire room. They had a big fire truck the kids could climb up into and the "hose" had a red light that could be aimed at a "burning" building next to it. You pushed the button to help put out the fire. Really fun!

 This was part of the building room. A real dozer tractor thing. It didn't move but the kids could climb in it and push all the buttons. Lucy was fascinated with climbing up and down the stairs to get into it.


 This was part of the log from the camping/forest room. Henry liked hiding out in it!

 Another room was done up like a little city. It had this bus they kids could get in and take turns driving or being a passenger. Henry waited a long time to get a turn driving! This room was really great! It had a car that the kids could change the tires, change the license plates and "wash" it with mits and buckets. It also had a gas pump that you could use on the car. It also had a grocery store and a restaurant where kids could cook food in a little pizza oven. Of course there were shopping carts, but not enough. So there were tears. But there was so much to do, it didn't take long to distract everyone. Jonah loved playing Postman and delivering mail to all the mail boxes throughout the town.


The next room was a dinosaur dig room. The room was covered in these little rubber bits (it smelled like old tires in the room!). The kids could get little shovels and brooms to sweep away the bits and uncover dinosaur bones! It was cute, but not their favorite. It was kind of hard to walk on and the rubber bits kept getting inside everyones shoes.


 Next we went to the garden/bug room. That's Henry and Jonah up there!  This room had giant flowers to make you feel like you were as small as a bug.  They also had some cameras set up to take your picture and transform you into a bug. Jonah was a willing participant!

 Henry - not so much. He was being cranky so while he cried and Dan lectured him, Jonah took his picture. He hates this picture but it's one of our favorites because it really captured Henry!


The water room was next. This was probably Jonah's favorite. They had little rain coats for everyone to put on before going in. The room was full of these contraptions that would spill, pump, dump and shoot water. There were boats to race down water ways and all sorts of ways to play with water. Henry and I could have done without this room. Dan kept track of Jonah and I took Henry and Lucy. They enjoyed this little spot where they could "paint" with water on tiles. It was pretty safe and no one got too wet. This room was definitely fun but it was right next to an open door and it was really cold outside, so the room was really cold. Probably more fun when it's hot.


My crew!

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