Chicago Day 3

Day 3 was Sunday and it was our last day of our little girls trip! We got ready slowly that morning and checked out of the hotel around 9am. The hotel held onto our bags for us because our flight out wasn't until after 9pm that night, so we still had a big day of adventures ahead of us.

We started with breakfast at The Corner Cafe. It was similar to a Panera Bread and my baked French toast was super yummy!

My mom's pick for the day was to shop at Macy's. We got to the store before it even opened, so we did a little shopping at Old Navy first. I bought stuff for the boys. Of course. Then we headed right across the street to Macy's. A Macy's with 9 floors! Not my ideal of a super fun place, but the fact that my mom told my sister and me that we could each have a $100 shopping spree made it a lot better! We were in Macy's for a quite awhile since we knew we had so much time to kill and I did end up getting some super cute clothes. For myself!

After our shopping spree, we walked over to Michigan Ave and caught the bus again down to the Mag Mile. We went straight to eat lunch a Gino's. Thanks, Val, for the recommendation.

My pictures end there. After our meal we walked in a few stores, but still had about 2 hours to kill before we needed to head towards the airport, so we went to see another movie. This time we saw 22 Jump Street. It was silly, but nice and relaxing after three days of tons of walking.

After the movie, we went and got our bags from the hotel, caught the L back to Midway, and then my mom and sister flew home to Kentucky and I flew home to Connecticut. My flight landed at 1am, so it was a long day for me.

It certainly wasn't the most relaxing trip. All three of us would have loved to have had a pool to just lay by, but it was still super fun. A little getaway was just what I needed to recharge my Momma batteries!

Chicago Day 2

Day 2 in Chicago was my birthday! I woke up early even though my kiddos weren't there! I was able to FaceTime with the boys that morning so they could sing me Happy Birthday! Since we were already up, my mom and I decided to go for a walk. We thought the Chicago River Walk was a little circular path we could take, but it turns out it's not. We walked and walked and walked and we knew we were walking around Lake Michigan and not the Chicago River anymore, but just kept walking. We finally turned around and retraced our steps. We definitely walked at least 4 miles that morning and at a brisk pace. My legs were sore the rest of the trip!

We got back to the room and all got ready and went right next door for a yummy late breakfast.

After eating, we walked to little local art shop and then walked to Millennium Park. I wanted to take my picture with The Bean for my birthday. My main observation: The Bean is super dirty!

We then hopped on a bus and rode straight down Michigan Ave to do some shopping at the Magnificent Mile. I'm not a shopper at all and of course only bought things for the boys at first. We did stop by an indoor mall called North Bridge Tower because I wanted to treat myself to some new earrings I'd been eyeing at Nordstrom. I also got a little makeover in the cosmetics sections just because.

After that we thought it would be nice to relax at a movie. I don't see movies very often anymore, so it was fun. We went and saw Tammy. It was very funny and pretty cool that some of the movie takes place in Louisville, Kentucky! After the movie we walked to go buy tickets to a fireworks architecture cruise; another birthday request of mine. The guy we bought tickets from gave us a recommendation for a pizza place so we headed there next. It was PACKED. Like 1.5 hour wait for a table packed, so we ended up going to a restaurant close to the hotel.

We were then able to go relax in our hotel room for about an hour. It was a well-deserved rest after all the walking we had done! Then it was time to go get in line for our little cruise. When we walked outside it was raining a little, but it stopped right as our cruise was taking off. The cruise was a lot of fun and we learned a lot about the buildings in downtown Chicago. We stopped down at Navy Pier and watched the fireworks show they do every Wed. and Sat. night during the summer. It wasn't anything huge, but it was fun.

After the cruise it was back to the room and that night I slept like a rock!

Where to Begin???

So it's been ages since I've blogged. I miss it, but just have not had the time to sit down and write out a post. So I'm going to try to play catch up over the next few days and hopefully I can get back into blogging regularly after our vacation to TN and KY!

My last blog post was on July 2nd, so I'll start my catching up with my birthday trip to Chicago. Kyle kept the boys the July 4th weekend, so I could fly and meet my mom and sister in Chicago. It was my first time being away from the boys overnight!

This recaps our first day there:
I flew from Providence to Midway. It has been a long time since I've flown without children and it was quite nice. Thankfully our boys are great travelers, but this was very relaxing. My mom and sister were at the airport waiting for me, so we hopped on the "L" orange line and headed to State and Lake. I love public transportation. I don't think I would want to live in a super big city forever, but I certainly think it would be fun to live there for a while. From the train stop we had a short walk to our hotel. It was very nice and super modern. We got settled in and decided to go eat at Billy Goat Tavern. We had to go underground to get there and your food isn't served on plates, but it was so yummy. And a super good value. I definitely recommend it! We even got to sit in the VIP Room, which it turned out meant Very Insecure Person. Oh well.

After eating we walked down to the Navy Pier. Keep in mind this was July 4th and there was going to be a big fireworks show down there around 9:30pm. It was pretty crowded already at 5pm. We didn't do anything except walk the entire pier and take some pictures. We weren't up for waiting for 4 hours for the fireworks. 

We passed by the Chicago Tribune building on the way to Navy Pier and the base of the building contains 120 stones from important places all around the world. I took a few pictures of those.

 These pictures came from the Navy Pier and our walk back towards the hotel afterwards.

And that was Day 1!