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!

Chicago Vacation Part 1

This year we decided we wanted to take a vacation that involved flying somewhere. The kids are all sleeping pretty good through the night and travel pretty well, so we thought it was a good time to take the plunge. The boys have always wanted to fly in an airplane and they were so excited when we chose to go to Chicago for just that reason! We've been to Chicago several times before kids and it's a really fun city with lots of family friendly things to do.

Packing was fun! Lucy loved climbing into and out of the suitcases. As you can see, she chose to pack a few things too! The morning of our flight, the boys were super excited!! They each had a little backpack full of new things to do on the plane - a four hour flight is a little scary for a momma! They each got a special Star Wars book to look at and play with on the plane too. Exciting! Dan brought his iPads and everyone was happy! Even Lucy did awesome! She fell asleep right at take off and didn't wake up until we had about an hour left of the flight. One hour of entertaining a toddler is much easier than four!

Our flight landed around 5:30 so it gave us time to get our luggage and gather up before heading onto the subway during rush hour traffic. Part of the reason we chose Chicago was because we could get around easily on public transportation. We did not want to travel with three car seats and have to rent a car. Well, our experience was mainly good, but the subway from the airport was a bit creepy. We soon learned the subway is for people who want to rob or murder you! Everyone else takes the buses or the "L" (elevated train). Anyways, we made it through the subway in 90 degree heat with very hight humidity. We were swamp rats by the time we got to our hotel!!!

 After we checked into our hotel, we decided to walk down the street for some authentic Chicago deep dish pizza! We stayed downtown so everything was in walking distance. I think we probably had over 50 restaurants to choose from all within a few blocks of our hotel! On our walk, we discovered the hotel was right across the street from a fire station! It was kind of cool to see it. All the firefighters were sitting outside visiting and had the fire doors open so we could see all the vehicles. This also meant we heard the fire trucks all night long, but it wasn't really a big deal! We got used to it. The boys wanted their picture taken next to this giant fire hydrant. It was really big!!

We were headed for a specific restaurant that the concierge recommended to us. When we got there, there was a huge line waiting to get in. We were all starving and it was close to eight o'clock. So we went over to another deep dish pizza place that I had heard of several years ago. It was really neat! It was in a super old brick building and was two stories tall! Well, once we ordered the pizza we understood why the other place had a huge line. The pizzas take 45 minutes to cook!! But it was totally worth it. We got half meat lovers and half bbq brisket. Yum!! We had a ton of leftovers so we took them back and had pizza for lunch the next day. Score!

Swimming Fishies

 The boys took swimming lessons mid July. I had been gearing Henry up and trying to prepare him since he really had no interest in swimming or getting wet. The first day of lessons was terrible. Henry cried. Jonah cried. No one wanted to get in the water. It was a disaster. But we regrouped and Tuesday, everybody got in the water and never looked back! Henry surprised me. He LOVES swimming!! He had a great teacher and only two little boys in class with him. By the end of the session, he was even putting his face in the water and jumping off the edge!

Jonah is a natural fish and did really well also. He actually learned to swim! He was swimming out to the middle of the pool! Both boys can't wait to take swimming lessons again!

crazy

 Sunday afternoon, after church and lunch, we and about 17 million other San Diegans hit the beach. Seriously. What were we thinking? The beach was so crowded, we had to walk on a little path the lifeguards had set up and snag a tiny section of beach surrounded by tons of other beach goers. Cramped. But, it was a hot day and the water felt really good! The kids all had SO much fun in the water! Lucy wouldn't come out!

ice cream and legos

 Saturday night, we (and by that I mean I made the ice cream mix, and the boys took turn manually turning the ice cream thanks to our defective ice cream maker) made some homemade ice cream. It was SUPER yummy!! It was a whole ordeal trying to get the stuff made, but thankfully the boys all thought it was fun to stand out in the heat and take turns hand cranking the machine! But later that evening, we had ice cream sundaes with lots of yummy toppings and we all hunkered down to watch The Lego Movie. I don't think Jeff and Suzanne were impressed with the movie, Gavin had nightmares, but the rest of the kids loved it! Success?

Independence Day

 Best. Picture. Ever.  I have no idea why Henry has that face, but I love it!!

Jeff and Suzanne and the kids came down to visit for the long weekend on 4th of July. It was so fun to have them back! The kids all love each other and it's fun to hang out with them. Friday night we went to Poway High School to watch a big firework show. It was a lot of fun! We got really lucky on finding parking spaces and found a nice grassy area to watch the show. Suzanne and I took lots of snacks for all the kids and tons of glow sticks/necklaces so they were all happy campers! The show was really well done and lasted for quite a while. Not too bad for free! Although it took over an hour get out of the parking lot. Thankfully, Jeff and Suzanne have a DVD player in their van, so the kids all piled in and watched Frozen. It was really fun!

Lucy wasn't a big fan of the boom from the fireworks. It was just too scary for her. So Dan took her back to the car and they watched inside where it was a bit quieter.

 Happy little guy!

Butterflys

 Jonah got this great butterfly hatching kit for his birthday last year. Since we had just moved, we didn't really have time to undertake raising butterflies. Then it got cold and took a while to warm up. So we waited patiently and finally, after Henry's birthday and all our house guests had come and gone, we decided to send away for our baby caterpillars. They came in a jar with all their food. They just ate and crawled around until finally one day, we saw they climbed up to the top of the jar and formed cocoons. It was neat but also kind of gross. They lived in the jar, crawling around on their food which they also pooped on. And for whatever reason, they made a lot of silk strings that were really tough to break up.

We followed the directions and moved them carefully into the special butterfly cage for the time when they would emerge from the cocoons. It was a little over a week and I was pretty much convinced they were all dead. Then one day, as I was walking by our school room, I noticed something moving around. It was all our butterflies! They had hatched without anyone noticing! So we quickly got them some flowers and sprinkled sugar nectar on them for the butterflies to eat. It was neat watching them eat. We kept them in the cage for a couple of days and then decided to let them go. The boys had so much fun watching them go and were actually able to hold several of them, as they landed on Jonah while they were leaving! Overall it was really fun, but it was kind of gross and I really don't want to do it again!

 So cute!

 Henry enjoyed watching the butterflies as the left

 Love this little guy!