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.

Chicago... Our Delayed Anniversary Adventure

There have been 3 or 4 times that Scott and I have made plans to go to Chicago to do all the touristy stuff. We always have the intention to go down but then it rains or something else comes up that we feel is more important. This time we actually followed through with our plans and we went to Chicago.

Our anniversary just happened to be right in the middle of Scott's finals week, so we decided to push back our celebrating until Scott was on his break from school. We also figure this will be our last chance to get out and do our own thing before the baby comes. Chicago was so much fun! (Excuse the pictures, it's hard to get the two of us in the same picture. We needed to find someone to come with us next time so we can get pictures of both of us together.)

First we went to the temple, since it can sometimes be hard to get down there when we plan to. The temple in Chicago seems so different from the ones in Utah. It is much smaller and much quieter. 

After the temple we checked into our hotel, and headed downtown. We decided to stay in a hotel by the airport and then just catch the train into the city to save some money. We walked around millennium park for a little bit and just looked at how huge all the buildings were. We got to see the famous "bean".

By the time we got into the city and walked around for a little while we were STARVING. So we pulled up a map of close by restaurants and saw that there was a PF Changs not too far from where we were. (We figured that PF Changs was perfect since we were celebrating our anniversary and we had our first date and got engaged at the PF Changs in Provo)

My phone didn't flash, so Scott's
picture of me is a little better

It took FOREVER to get our food and then even longer for us to get our check. By the time dinner was over both Scott and I were ready to go back to the hotel and just hang out for the night. The next day we woke up and headed straight for an architecture boat tour. Here are some of the cool buildings we saw. Scott went a little crazy with the camera. I think we have like 20 identical pictures of each of the buildings we passed. The tour was a little expensive, but it was really fun seeing all of the buildings and being able to hear about some of the history. It was perfect weather the entire morning, and we only started getting hot during the last 10 or so minutes of the tour.

Trump building

Wrigley Building

Sears Tower (now the Willis Tower)

The buildings are so Tall!

We just happened to be in Chicago while they were doing the air and water show, which meant that every 10 minutes or so we had fighter jets flying over us. I cannot believe how loud those jets can be. 

They look tiny, but they sure do make a lot of noise.

A friend of mine recommended that we go to Giordano's to grab some Chicago style pizza, and we happened to walk past one on our way back to the train. It was really good pizza, but the two of us couldn't eat the whole pizza by ourselves.

We had planned to head over to the Shedd aquarium for the rest of the afternoon, but when we got there the line to get tickets was HUGE and it wasn't moving. We decided that we live close enough to Chicago that we can plan a trip on a different day to go to the aquarium. Instead we walked over to the Buckingham Fountain. It was pretty cool, and something I hadn't heard of before.

It was a great weekend and I really loved being able to spend time with Scott. This year is supposed to be the hardest year of school, so I probably won't be seeing him too much once the school year starts.