Chicago!

I think I've mentioned before how much I love baseball.  I know I've mentioned before how S and his dad and brother have traveled to see the Pittsburgh Pirates play.  This winter, as S and his dad and brother made further plans to travel again this spring to Phoenix to see the Pirates play, I think S felt a little bad that I wasn't able to go along (especially since he promised me a baseball game last summer which, for whatever reason, never happened.)

A few months ago S told me that he thought he and I should go to San Francisco or Seattle to catch a Giants/Mariner Pirates game.  I loved the idea, but I had just been to San Francisco so we started loosely making plans to go to Seattle.  Then out of nowhere I blurted out, 'Hey, you know where I have wanted to go my whole life?  Wrigley Field.'  Mecca.  The epitome of baseball.  One of The Best Baseball stadiums in the world.  I had grown up hearing stories of baseball and Wrigley Field from my dad, who loved Chicago.  What was just kind of a thrown-out-there idea quickly became a reality and before I knew it, we had flights booked to Chicago.

Naturally, the whole reason for going on this trip was to see the Cubs play (S booked a trip around a week that they were playing the Pirates, obviously.)  But we ended up turning it into a 4-night trip.  Two days for travel and three days for play.  I took almost 200 pictures so be grateful that I was able to narrow it down to 30 or so.  I'm still giving you the 'photo overload' warning though!

Day 1

We arrived at our hotel on the Magnificent Mile (Yes.  We stayed in the heart of downtown Chicago!) around 11 pm the night before.  We were so hyper that we ended up walking down to the 7-eleven for Slurpees and may have possibly fallen asleep by 2.  Luckily, S and I have a lot of adrenaline at the beginning of a vacation so we didn't really have any issues getting going early the 1st morning.

We grabbed some breakfast-burritos-to-go from a local burrito shop and started walking down to Millennial Park.  I had seen pictures but I didn't know what to expect.  There was a lot of strange 'artwork' which I thought was pretty interesting!

The iconic giant jellybean.  I loved how you could see the reflected cityscape.

Taking a picture underneath the giant jellybean.  Can you find me?

As we headed down towards the south end of the part where all of the museums are, we climbed this bridge close to the Art Institute and got a view of real Chicago.  Loved it.

If you watched 'Married, With Children' then you'll recognize Buckingham Fountain.

Our first stop of the morning was the natural history museum.  EASILY the biggest museum I've ever been to!  We sped-walked through most of it and still didn't see anything.  The crowning glory of the museum was Sue, the most complete T-Rex skeleton in existence.  The whole time I was there I felt like I was in the movie Night at the Museum.

While we were on the top floor of the museum we spotted a Chicago dog stand not too far away.  We grabbed a couple of dogs as we left.  Amazing!

Our next stop was the Art Institute of Chicago.

Now is a good time to fill you in on a few more 'little known facts about Emily.'  My mom is an artist (which she would deny) and filled me with a love and appreciation for art and art history from a very young age.  In fact, one of my first games I received as a child was Masterpiece (which I've sworn, since coming home from the trip, I'm going to dig out and play again.)  From the time I was a kindergartener, she was in charge of Art Literacy for our school and then eventually the school district.  So names like Monet and Degas and Cassatt and Cezanne were just commonplace in our house.  I grew away from it as I got older.  Then I took an art history class my junior year of college and received a nearly perfect grade for the entire semester--easily the best grade in my college years.  My mom must still scratch her head that I ended up being a science major!

Anyway, you can imagine what it would have been like to go to this museum and see these works of art that were integrated so deeply with my childhood.  It brought everything to life and nearly moved me to tears.  I took more pictures here than anywhere else on our trip.  It was hard to narrow it down, but I tried to pick paintings that might look familiar to anyone reading this...

(Nighthawks is only my favorite piece of artwork EVER!  Tears.)

We decided to head back to our hotel to take a break before dinner.  On our way back I noticed the Willis tower (formerly the height record-breaking Sears tower) was only a few blocks to the west of us so we ended up taking a detour so I could get an up-close look at it.  I don't know what it is but I have the same jaw-dropping awe for enormous buildings as I do for enormous mountain ranges.  I took a lot of pictures of tall buildings this trip!

We ended up walking back to our hotel via the Chicago River.  This was one of the highlights of the day for me!  I think it is so awesome that there is this incredible river running right through the downtown of a major metropolis!

That night for dinner we went to the Gino's East Pizzeria (featured on Man vs. Food) for some authentic deep dish pizza.  S and I prefer thin crust, but this stuff was a-mazing.

We finished our first day having completed 90% of the things I wanted to do this trip (besides the baseball game.)

Day 2

This was the day for the purpose of our trip.  We decided to head up to Wrigley Field early to catch batting practice.  On our way there, we just happened to walk past a Chicago Fire Department and the firefighters just happened to be outside washing the firetruck.  Naturally, a picture was in order!

On our way to catch a train, we walked past the second landmark of the Chicago skyline: the Hancock tower.  Equally impressive!

I cannot even describe the feelings of finally arriving at this place which held so many legendary stories from my childhood.  Not even that--as I sat there I could picture all of these baseball heroes once playing here!  It is one of the oldest remaining stadiums in the country.  So much history here!

We ended up getting our money's worth.  It was a 14 inning game but the Cubs ended up winning!  I promised S that as soon as we got back home I would continue rooting for the Pirates on his behalf, but I could not NOT root for the Cubs while we were there!

Since the game ended up going a lot later than expected, we ended up just taking a train back and heading to Navy Pier.

I don't know if it was the weather or not, but this place was a ghost town and we barely stayed for longer than 20 minutes.  It did give us the opportunity to get some good pictures of Lake Michigan and the city, though.

We decided to go to this little hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from our hotel.  They served Armenian food, which S nor I had ever tried before.  It was delicious though!  And the atmosphere was really cool.

Day 3

For our final day we opted to head a ways out of the city to the Museum of Science and Industry.  This place was cool!  One of our goals for this trip was to rent bikes and ride along the lakeshore.  The museum was 8 miles away, which didn't seem that far away, but it was far enough for me to realize how out of shape I am!  I was pretty tired when we got there, but luckily this place was so fascinating that I was able to enjoy myself!

Another 'little known fact about Emily': my mom and dad got me involved in model railroading when I was a kid.  I loved it!  In fact, I still have my old railroad board in our basement.  This museum had the most incredible model railroad I have ever seen.  I think this trip was all about me reliving my childhood...

We opted to take the bus back to our hotel rather than ride back.  I needed a nap!  We went to a pretty disappointing Indian food place (which breaks my heart because it kind of ruined my desire for Indian food for the time being...)  We decided to go see Avengers that night--not knowing of the next time we'd be able to go to a movie (or the last time we had been!)  It was a great, relaxing way to end our trip, especially because the seats were full-on leather recliners.  If it had been any other movie, I would have been asleep 10 minutes in.  Luckily, I love the Marvel movies and this one didn't disappoint!



I was excited to come back home, but it was hard at the same time.  I had such a good time!  I think that I realized how much I love big cities.  I've been to big cities before, but this is the first time I've actually ever stayed in the middle of one.  It was a totally new experience, but so worth it.  I can't wait to go back some day!

My first experience as a field trip volulnteer

I had the opportunity to go with Bean's kindergarten class on a field trip as a parent volunteer the first week of May.  We were going to Hogle Zoo, which I love, so I was really excited.  I wasn't surprised when Bean opted to sit with her friends instead of me, but was pleased when my new little friend T asked me to be his bus buddy!

The fun new thing at the zoo this year is their Zoorassic Park 2 (...implying that there was a Zoorassic Park 1 at some point?  I don't know--we have only really become devoted zoo attendees in the past few years.)  There were life-size animated dinosaurs all over the zoo and this really cool dinosaur bone excavating pit that the kids loved.

My challenge of the day was B (in the lower right corner.)  He's the only one that I feared might fall into an animal cage--such as the gorilla pen.  Seriously, he climbed up onto the railing and was so confused when I told him he needed to get down.

Their favorite part of the day--and the part that they would have been pleased to stay at all day--was at the very end when they found the spitting dinosaurs.  I almost didn't get them back to the bus in time!

The experience was as challenging as I thought it might be.  Trying to keep track of 4 kids with different interests and agendas was a little tough!  But luckily, two parents showed up to walk around the zoo with us so really I just had to focus on B and Trouble.

I guess it poured everywhere else that day, which is about par for our zoo visits, but it only lightly sprinkled on us the whole time making it a very pleasant experience.  The kids all wanted to eat their lunches practically as soon as we got up there (which was, like, 1030) so I'm afraid we brought home some very hungry and tired kids, but if they were all as excited as Bean was the rest of the week, then I think it was successful field trip!

Easter 2015

Our Easter celebration wasn't much different than the past few years have been.  For some reason I was once again fairly busy the week leading up to Easter, so I put Bean in charge of dying the eggs again.  She did such a good job!  (And if you ask me, I think she prefers to do it by herself!)

S and I were actually both home the day before Easter, so we were able to take the kids to our town's Easter egg hunt again.  I am so grateful when he is there.  Bean and Boy are still just little enough that it really helps having one parent per kid.  Boy was so focused on one piece of candy that he picked up that he wasn't too interested in gathering a bunch more at first.  I finally coaxed him in to it.  Parents were, once again, well-behaved this year so the 1-2 age group was quite low-key and pleasant.  Which makes for happy mommy.  Bean made a killing again.  She is really strategic when it comes to this particular Easter egg hunt.  I have no idea where she gets it from...

That afternoon we met up with S's family to celebrate Easter a day early.  There was a yummy dinner and an egg hunt with all of the cousins.  I think Bean was in heaven!

Uncle W taking an instagram-bound photo of Aunt B and the kiddos.

I LOVE this photo of Aunt B and Boy!

Every once in awhile Easter and General Conference and S's birthday all come at once.  This year was one of those occasions.  That afternoon we left the kids at Grandma's house so S and I could go celebrate his birthday.  We met up with B&W later at a hockey game.  Have I mentioned how therapeutic watching hockey is for me?  That and driving a go-cart.  But that's a different blog post.

Easter Sunday S was scheduled to work in the afternoon.  Since it was conference Sunday as well, we didn't have church, so we were able to have our family egg hunt that morning.  It's just dyed eggs and plastic eggs with a few jelly beans inside, but I love how excited Bean gets.  I hope she never outgrows it.

The Easter bunny had fun with their baskets this year :)

With all of the rain and cold weather that followed in the weeks after, I am so grateful it was such a nice weekend spent with my very favorite people!