Chicago

We took our first trip with Lacey (other than going home to Utah over Christmas) over St. Patrick's Day weekend. Every year the river in Chicago is dyed bright green the Saturday before St. Patricks day. It was something that I wanted to be sure to see before we moved away from the Midwest. It was such a fun trip. We drove down on a Friday afternoon and were able to go to the temple. Scott and I switched off watching Lacey in the parking lot. I guess she wasn't too happy about me leaving (it was probably the longest I have left Lacey alone with Scott since she was born).

Not the most flattering, but Lacey's first trip
to the temple.

After that, we checked into our hotel. We shared a room with two other couples. Luckily, we found a hotel with two queens in one room, and a separate front room with a sofa bed.

For dinner, we went to the Shake Shack. We loved the burgers, but the custard we chose had big doughnut chunks and was kind of weird. We then went back to the hotel to put Lacey to bed while the other two couples went out to Navy Pier. Luckily, Lacey slept like a champ and only woke up twice the entire night.

In the morning, we snuck off early to grab some breakfast. Lacey is an early riser and we didn't want to wake up the other two couples.

Once everyone was awake we walked down to the river and down where the parade was. The river was much brighter than I was expecting it to be. It was really cool. The parade, however, was kind of lame. We were hoping for some fun floats. Apparently Chicago's idea of a float is a truck pulling a trailer with a banner of a politician hanging on the side.

Michael and Christie

Kedric and Kelli

Lacey loved being in her "Big Girl" stroller

No floats, just lots of walking people and political ads

Lacey was amazing the whole trip. She would laugh and giggle the whole time we were walking, and then she would take a little nap. It was so much fun having good weather and being able to be outside.

The streets were packed with people. Of course, since it is an Irish holiday, the majority of people started their day off with some morning cocktails. At one point we were crossing a busy street and the lady behind us not so quietly said, "I would NEVER bring my children to something like this, that's just bad parenting". I wish I would have thought of something witty to say, but instead we just ignored her.

We ended our trip with Gino's East for some Chicago Pizza. The pizza was good, but we prefer Giordano's crust.