Tuesday 20 September 2011

A Big City Weekend

Last weekend we were happy to have Aunt Katie and Uncle Jeremy come for a visit. They happened to overlap a few hours with Aunt Emily, so at one point we had five adults and two kids in our apartment- who would have guessed we could all fit?

Both Katie and Jeremy had been to Chicago before, but Jeremy's only visit was for a job interview, so he hadn't seen many sights. Also, Uncle Jeremy likes to eat. I think it might be his passion. Thus he had a few places picked out that he wanted to try, so the rest of us went along for the culinary adventure.

On Friday we drove first to UIC's campus to visit the Hull House. Aunt Katie is a social worker, so she was interested in viewing the exhibit. The museum supposedly offered a little game to keep kids distracted, but when we asked the docent she said they were revamping the program so they didn't have it. That was a bummer, because it was one of those museums that is on the boring side for kids and Tommy was not entirely thrilled about the visit. Even worse, it turned out that they did have the kid's game, but we didn't find out until right before we left when another docent offered it to us. It did distract Tommy pretty well for those last few minutes though. After the museum we went to Hot Doug's, one of the places Jeremy wanted to try that was fairly close to the Hull House. I had never been there before so I didn't realize that the lines to eat are very very long. Thankfully you spend most of the wait time outside, so Tommy ran around and played with sticks. The food at Hot Doug's is amazing- it was worth the trip. We made it home late in the afternoon just in time to rest for an hour and then drive to a pizza place Jeremy want to try in Morton Grove. It was very good pizza.

On Saturday we took the train into the city. It was a very long day, but it was also a lot of fun. We hit all the tourist spots, State Street and Marshall Field's, Millennium Park, the Magnificent Mile, and the Hancock Building. The only thing we didn't get to do was an architectural tour, but Jeff and I have been on quite a few, so we were able to do a fairly lame imitation of one as we roamed the streets. Then Jeremy and Katie went to a Rick Bayless restaurant and we took the boys to Chipotle. Same difference, right? After dinner we met up and the old guys went to a Hum concert while Katie and I took the boys home on the train.

Sunday we tried to make it to church, but I gave up on the idea when I realized we had about 20 minutes until the service started and only one person ready. It is not much fun to have six people and one shower. We ended up heading to Naperville for the river walk, then back to Oberweiss for some ice cream (Tommy's favorite). All in all, it was a great weekend, even though I never want to eat out again!








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