Downtown Chicago

The months leading up to our cross country trip I thought it would be fun to make all of us a special shirt that we could all wear during our trip.  I know families have shirts made through a company or the like, but I thought it would be more fun to make tie dye shirts.  It would be a project for the kids and I to do and would serve a purpose for our trip.  Boom, two birds with one stone!

I remember doing it as kid with buckets of dye and white shirts that were scrunched together with rubber bands.  When I went to the craft store they had tie dye kits for about $10.  Cool!  We all sat around the TV as we watched "how to" make the different designs.  Each kid chose his design and Anne and I got to work.  This became a mother-daughter project since the boys chose not to help - which was fine because we had a lot of fun.

So we are already on day 8 of our trip and we still haven't worn our shirts.  We decided this would be the day!

Out of all the shirts, I liked Max's the most!

We decided to go downtown and visit Millennium Park.

What a fun place.  As soon as we got there, the first thing we see are The Crown Fountains.  I certainly didn't read about this place before coming so I wasn't expecting to see this.

I've never seen anything like this before!  The kids just went crazy and wanted to play in the water.  How could we not let them, right?  If I did read about Millennium Park before we got there, I would have brought bathing suits and towels.  Our first stop for the day and our children get soaked!  It was another beautiful day with mild temps and blue skies!  Just loving it!

Lots of squeals of delight!

Thank goodness Max stayed put in his stroller!  He stayed nice and dry.

It would have been perfect to have Max in the middle of this photo, but that wasn't going to happen.  We already get comments from random people when crossing paths with this big family of 8, now we were more of a spectacle with being a big family of 8 in tie dye shirts!  I certainly don't mind showing off our beautiful family - I'm blessed - but the tie dye may have embarrassed me a bit!  I got over it eventually, but people are free with their comments as usual!

We eventually left the Crown Fountains and started exploring.

There were art sculptures all over the park.  In this one, it looks like someone dumped water all over the sculpture and Bernadette.

This is Anne being one with the art (by Jun Kaneko).

We walked through the Lurie Gardens.  I just love the skyline of Chicago.  It is such a beautiful city.

Once we got through the Lurie Gardens we heard some music and knew something was going on.  We approached the Jay Pritzker Pavillion and on it's Great Lawn they were having a huge Zumba class!  The music was lively and there were tons of people participating in this Zumba class.  We stood watching.  There were all sorts of people exercising from old men to bag ladies - all shaking their thang!  It was almost contagious to go out there and join them - didn't happen.  This is definitely something I don't see everyday.

Then we headed over to a red tent which had something going on inside. 

I don't really remember exactly what it was, but I think it was something Target was sponsoring and they had a bunch of activities for kids.  So our kids stopped by to play a bit.

Then we headed off to my favorite part of the park...

The Cloud Gate, aka The Bean.  I remember reading or seeing this before and again, didn't realize I was going to be seeing it that day.  I think it was a neat idea of putting this in the middle of the park.  It's not just a piece of art, but a fun toy for people of all ages!  You can just see why it's fun to hang around.  It's a big mirror shaped like a bean that distorts it's reflections in a fun way.

There we are together in our tie dye!

At this point my kids are damp not wet.  Drying off still...

You can get under this bean and get some cool reflections.

After walking around Millennium Park we decided to walk through the city, down Michigan Ave.,  and get some lunch. 

What a fun city.  I keep having to compare it to New York when I talk about it.  It's just more open, cleaner, friendlier people, classier, prettier - however, New York is classic, artful, interesting and is really a city that is always awake!  I'd choose Chicago to live in, however.

You know you watch a lot of movies when you start recalling a bunch of different scenes from movies when you look at the Chicago River.  Gotta get a picture of it!

We walked around Chicago for a while.  Had to find a potty for Eddie to use.  And then find a corner to nurse Max.

We walked through an art fair which was nice.  We headed back to our car and realized we lost one of Bernadette's bright green crocs halfway there.  The kids and I parked ourselves near a building on Michigan Ave. and timed Daddy to see how long it would take for him to return to us.  I think we clocked him at a little over 12 minutes.

Once we got to the car, we went on a drive to visit where my father-in-law grew up.  There were two homes that he lived in which were very close to each other.  We took pictures of us there and then we headed back to our hotel to call it a day!

We rested up at our hotel for another day downtown.  We were going to head to Lincoln Park Zoo and also spend time at the beach along Lake Michigan!

4th of July in Chicago

We left Ohio and headed to Chicago on the fourth of July.  We drove most of the day and got there just in time to check into our hotel and head to a local celebration.  Our hotel was near the airport and we found a place to celebrate not too far away! 

When we got there, it was a familiar scene of tons of people walking to the same place looking for the perfect spot to lay their blankets and stuff.  We had no idea where the fireworks were going to show up since it was a large park with a huge lake in the middle.  We used our imagination and decided on a spot.  It was also really near the food!

The kids stayed with me while Joe went and got some food for everyone.  He came back with a large pizza and some Mexican food!  I'm always hungry and remember the food as being really yummy.  As we were waiting for the food, the kids noticed all the other kids playing with toys that glowed.  They saw some swords that lit up like light sabers and Bernadette was eyeing the battery operated bubble gun.  There were bubbles everywhere!

After eating, Joe took the kids out and about to look around since we had some time to kill.  When they came back, they had a bunch of those toys that lit up and that bubble gun Bernadette was eyeing.  They all decided they would help Daddy with some of their own money to purchase all these fun toys.  Joe said that the guy selling the toys didn't realize what a hit they were going to be.  They were all sold out - our kids got the last double sword thingymabobby.

 

Eddie came back with some cotton candy.

 



We watched the sun go down, listened to a really good band playing Journey songs in the background while the kids played with their toys.  We were getting a little wet from all the bubbles coming our way from every direction, but the sound of their laughter and look of their smiles was just awesome as we enjoyed the gorgeous evening.

The fireworks started at 9:30pm!  To me, that's late.  I seem to think that they usually start at 9pm.  What's half an hour?  A lot when you have 6 kids.  Thankfully, it didn't matter.  The kids were great and having fun!  The fireworks started and our view was pretty good since they had one on either side of us.  I'm not sure if that was planned or another celebration going on at the same time.  Anyway - stunning fireworks!  All the kids enjoyed it, even Max who didn't show any signs of being tired.  No one was scared of the loud noises.  Yeh!

Overall, a great evening!  Thank you Chicago! 

The next day, we were going downtown!

Cross Country Conintued - Butler, PA & Toledo, OH

I really tried to blog about our cross country trip, but with all the craziness involved with sneaking a family of 8 into one hotel room, getting kids ready for bed, getting ready for the next day, winding down AND rarely getting a strong Internet connection, made blogging not possible.

The three weeks of traveling has now turned into one huge blurred event in my head.  I no longer have those great details of the trip in my head to share, but still have the highlights - I think, we'll see.

Thank God, we have the itinerary Joe made on an excel spreadsheet I can refer to as I continue to record our travels.

Tuesday, July 2-3

After leaving Niagara Falls, we headed to Butler, OH to visit Joe's brother's family.  Tom and his family live furthest away from us and our visits are rare.  The kids were so excited to play with their cousins.  When we arrived, their cousin Timmy shared all the Star Wars toys they had!  This provided endless entertainment for my kids since they are consumed by world of the Jedi at the present time!  We spent the evening eating pizza and chatting while the kids played.

The next morning, the kids spent the morning playing Wii.  Our kids just spent their money combined on a Wii set and it arrived right before we left for our cross country trip.  The kids were so happy to be playing Wii and looked forward to coming home to play some more.

 

 

After the kids played for a while, the grown ups played a game or two.  It became pretty competitive between Joe and Tom and it spilled over into the kids' cheering for their dads!  That competitive spirit is contagious!

 

After, eating lunch it was time to continue our trip.  It was a short, but nice visit! 

 



Our next destination was the Toledo Zoo.  We love to visit zoos and see the animals.  The highlight of this zoo were the polar bears!  It was crowded, perhaps because the polar bears were very active when we visited.

We were also told that the hippos (old time favorite animal) had a great show at this zoo, but we were a little disappointed because we couldn't get a good look at them. 

Did I mention how great the weather was?  Our whole trip was so pleasant with mild weather.  It makes for really great traveling!  It was even better knowing we were away from the sweltering weather back home - yeah!

This picture reminds me of the fish we left at home.  We have a 10 gallon and a 50 gallon fish tank at home filled with tropical fish.  We had a neighbor who graciously volunteered to feed our fish twice a day!  So blessed to have good neighbors.  This particular fish would not fit into our tank.

This was the first of many zoos we visited on our cross country trip.  We spent the night in Toledo.  Our original plan was to head over to Indianapolis, IN the next day and hang out at the Indianapolis Speedway and then celebrate the fourth of July somewhere near or in the city, but because of rain in the forecast, we decided to head straight to Chicago, IL and spend the fourth of July over there.