Chicago

We took a post-Christmas trip to Chicago for 2 nights with family.  Look what gas station we stopped at on the way there!
The first day we parked then walked up to Navy Pier and had lunch at Margaritaville.  The margaritas were very good and the food was pretty good too.  After that we went to the Winter Wonderfest.  It was basically an indoor winter-themed carnival with rides, slides and ice skating.  I didn't have my camera for that.  After that we checked into the hotel and had a few drinks and relaxed for a bit.  Then we met up with Nana, Pa, Kent and Maeve and had dinner at Timothy O'Toole's.  After dinner, we went swimming at the hotel pool then hit the hay.  

We stayed at the Grand Sheraton.  The location was good because we were able to walk to everything that we wanted to go to other than the Science and Industry Museum (we drove to that one on the way back home).  We also had a partial view of the lake, which was nice.  The sunrises were pretty.  

On Thursday morning we walked along the lake to the Field Museum.  The weather on the days we were there was pretty mild and the kids were very good about walking.  This was in front of the Married with Children fountain.  Though you can't really see the fountain.

A view of the city from the front of the Field Museum.

Anna in front of the owl exhibit with her new owl dress.

Lukey liked seeing the Red Panda and Giant Panda.  Are these all real animals?  How do they get in the museum? If anyone reading this knows about this, let me know. It seems kind of wrong that all these animals would be hunted down just to be on display in a museum so maybe there's another answer.
There was also a very good mummy display at the museum.  Anna liked the gem area a lot too.  Its a pretty good museum and the kids liked it a lot.  They had never been there before.

On the way back to the hotel we stopped by the Maggie Daly park to play and have hot chocolate.  

I have a picture from last time we went with the kids on these same pole things.

The park also had an ice skating "ribbon" and hot chocolate.

The park.

The skating ribbon.  Its the white part that circled around the rock climbing thing.  This was when it was being zambonied though so no one is out there.  It was pretty cool though.

After having hot chocolate and watching skating for a bit, we visited the bean.  Always a hit.

The kids were very accommodating about taking pictures.  I think its because they love Chicago so much.

We found a lovely Christmas tree.

After we got back to the hotel we once again had a few drinks.  Then we met up with the rest of the folks for dinner at Gino's East. The kids had fun drawing on the walls with the white out pens we got them.  We found a few areas that the kids wrote "poop".  So funny.

The kids wanted to go swimming again when we got back to the hotel but we outnumbered them and decided to go to Ben and Meredith's suite instead and drank while the kids played.  Ben bought the kids a key lime pie.  The kids all got along very well together.  

And that's the end.  The next day we went to the Science and Industry Museum on the way out.  The kids had a lot of fun there.  The lighting was one of the favorites.  And a snow fall they had at a winter display.  It was a fun trip!