Chicago Road Trip: Part 3

 

Day 6:  Chicago, Illinois

Chicago was our main destination for this road trip.  We spent three nights and two days there – it was nice to have a break from all the driving, and also to be able to spend a lot of time in the city with our family.  Daniel used to live in Chicago when he was a little kid, and he’s been back for business trips since, but I had never been before, so I was pretty excited about it.  

Our first day in Chicago we went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  It is a great museum.  There is so much to see and do, you could spend all day there (and we almost did – some friends of ours who had recommended it to us had told us how big and fun it is, so we had set aside several hours so we wouldn’t feel rushed). 

There were lots of human body exhibits, with actual bones and organs, etc.  It was both fascinating (if you are Oliver) and gross (if you are Rachel). 

There was another cool exhibit that had the technology to track different kinds of brainwaves.  Here Tristan and Oliver are trying to see who can think the calmest thoughts, which causes a little ball in a tube to roll to the other side (the object is to try to be so calm that it forces the ball all the way across the table).  I have no idea how it works.

After Ollie beat Tristan easily (which was not surprising – Oliver is pretty good at tuning everything out, and Tristan may be incapable of not thinking a million thoughts at once), I decided to try it against Oliver.  At first he was beating me and the ball was almost to my side, but then it stopped, switched directions, and went steadily back to Oliver’s side until I’d won.  Daniel had been watching, and he told the kids, “I thought Ollie was going to win until I saw mom put on her labor face, and then I knew it was over.”   It made me laugh because he was exactly right – I had totally just pretended that I was having a baby, with calm breathing and everything.  Haha.  I guess after watching me have six kids, Daniel knows that face pretty well. 

Here we are having more fun at the museum, and also Cynthia taking a nap in her stroller:

And here we are having ice-cream for lunch, because that’s the kind of thing you do when you’re on vacation. 

After lunch there were still lots more things to see, including trains, tractors, giant replicas of the sun, baby chicks actually hatching from their eggs, fake cows, astronaut suits, and a miniature model of Chicago:

There was a whole section just about circuses, and the kids loved the wacky mirrors.  I couldn’t stop laughing at Cynthia’s super long legs sticking out of the pack. 

When we had seen all we wanted to see and walked about as far as we could handle, we left the museum and drove over to the nearby Promontory Point Park on Lake Michigan.  I don’t know why, but I was pretty excited about seeing Lake Michigan.  I had been looking forward to it the whole trip.  I love that Chicago is right next to such a big lake.  I love water.  Whenever I see some, I feel like I might be tempted to jump right in and go swimming.  Luckily Daniel knows this about me, so he says things like “don’t even think about it” the minute we get out of the car.  I wonder if I have a recognizable  “ooh, I want to go swimming” face, kind of like my labor face. 

Here is Daniel with all the kids, looking out at Lake Michigan.  This is one of my favorite pictures of the trip.  I love Cindy’s little purple bum right next to Daniel.  Sometimes it is neat to have six kids just for the cool pictures you can get. 

However, I realized the secret to a good family picture is to have everyone facing away from the camera!  Daniel tried to take one of me with the kids, only this time everyone was turned around, and it didn’t turn out quite so cute:  Lizza is protesting about something, Henry’s covering his face, and Cindy wouldn’t stop climbing up my stomach to try to leap over my shoulder into the lake (I guess she takes after me). 

Me and Cindy with Chicago in the background:

Even though we didn’t bring our swimsuits, we decided to at least let everyone go touch the water (because it’s not every day you get to touch Lake Michigan). 

Next we went to dinner at an Italian beef place.  That place was kind of a disaster.  There were no tables or chairs inside (it is tradition for people to just eat their sandwiches standing up), so we were at a dirty little table outside with flies everywhere, and all the kids were starving, only the Italian beef was too spicy, or it had too many peppers on it, or they were sad because we were making them share a hot dog because they didn’t like the sandwiches, etc.  Anyway, it was a stressful meal and somehow we were all still hungry when we left (looking back, it was probably the kind of place Daniel and I would love going to on one of our couple trips, but it just wasn’t the best place to take all the kids at the end of a long day when all they’d had to eat was ice-cream for lunch). 

After dinner Oliver and I went to an Eddie Vedder concert at the Chicago Theater.  It was one of the best experiences of the whole trip.  You can read more about it here.

 

Day 7:  Chicago, Illinois

The next morning we drove back to downtown (our hotel was a little bit outside the city) and went to Millenium Park. 

Here we are at the face fountain:

The kids loved splashing around in the water.

And here we are in front of the “Bean”:

Walking through downtown Chicago, and taking the subway to Wrigley Field:

In all the other cities we had decided to just have Daniel take the older boys to the baseball games in the evening while I hung out at the hotel with the younger kids, who would rather go swimming anyway.  In Chicago we got tickets for the whole family, though, because we thought it would be neat for everyone to be able to go to a game at Wrigley Field. 

Our seats were up high, but in the shade, which was all that mattered to me.  The game started around 1:00, and it was a hot and sunny day; I was so happy I didn’t have to sunscreen everybody.  It was fun being there all together, although all the kids except Tristan and Oliver lost interest in actually watching the game after the first five minutes.   

On the subway, heading back toward downtown.  I think the subway ride was Henry’s favorite part of the baseball game.  He was chatting with everyone and making lots of new friends. 

Then we did a lot of walking to get to Gino’s East, where we tried the famous deep-dish pizza for dinner.  It was good, but I think we all liked the regular thin crust better.  As Tristan is illustrating so well, the deep dish was a little cheesy. 

After dinner we did a lot more walking to get to the John Hancock Center, a 100-story skyscraper that is over 1000 feet tall.  We got tickets for the observatory at the top.

There were amazing views of Chicago in all directions.

While we were up there it started to rain.

Here the kids are watching the storm roll in.  It was so interesting to see it from so high up.  And here’s something funny about this picture – I didn’t even notice that Lizza was crying until I uploaded it onto the computer.  I’m guessing she was either hurt or teased by one of her siblings, or she is panicking about the storm.  They are equally likely. 

We stayed up in the observatory for a long time during the storm.  There was one area that was an open-air skywalk – it was really windy and rainy in there, and neat to think that we were in the middle of a rain cloud. 

We kept waiting to see if the storm was going to pass by – we still had a really long walk back to our car, and we didn’t want to attempt it with all the kids in the rain.  We went down the elevator to the bottom of the Hancock Center, and then decided to have Daniel run back to get the car with Tristan and Oliver while I waited there with the younger four kids.  I had pictured us finding a nice cozy bench or something inside that we could wait happily on until he came back with the car.  It didn’t really happen like that;  it was freezing inside, and there was nowhere to sit.  I decided to take the kids outside to see if there was a better place to wait.  It was still pouring rain.  We crossed the street to try to go inside an American Girl store (Rachel and Lizza were so excited about that plan), but it was closing right when we got there.  Meanwhile, the storm had gotten worse.  It was raining buckets and thundering louder than I’ve ever heard, with lightning flashing everywhere.  I was really glad we weren’t still up in the tower.  There were people everywhere, trying to huddle up under any sort of cover, but all the stores were closing, so we couldn’t go inside.  We ended up just staying outside the American Girl store under a little overhang.  Henry and Cynthia were crying, and Rachel and Lizza were scared, but at least we were dry. 

Here they are sitting on the dirty sidewalk, trying to be good sports. 

We waited and waited, and worried about Daniel and the boys trying to make it to the car.  Then after they finally reached the car, they had to wait in the parking garage for awhile because it had started hailing gigantic chunks of hail that were not really safe to be driving in.

It was a very adventurous and slightly tense final night in Chicago, but eventually we all were reunited and were able to drive back to our hotel and put some very tired kids to bed.

Next morning, on to Detroit!