The Easter season usually finds us showing off pretty dresses, hunting for eggs, and spending the occasional few hours in the ER. This year, however, we did something a bit different (although there were still eggs in several forms) and met Matt's family in Chicago!
As Chicago had made it nearly to our short list of places to visit (it's a long list), we took advantage of the opportunity to do plenty of exploring. And although we faced endless parking garages and at least one rude Chicagoan, we were grateful that our plans mostly worked, our kids held up incredibly well and our colds held off until Monday.
We began Friday morning shortly after our feet hit the floor, and arrived at the Museum of Science and Industry not long after lunch. After grudgingly admitting that we'd have to pay a hefty parking fee to park in the garage, we gasped as even this unsatisfactory option looked as though it'd been yanked away from us: the garage's entrance was coned off, presumably because it was full. After 10 minutes on our smartphones in a permit-based parking lot for which we did not have a permit, we were faced with driving around busy Chicago and parallel parking our minivan, along with the other hundreds of vehicles also trying to gain entry to the museum. As we passed the parking ramp entrance, however, I noticed someone had cleared away the cones in our absence. We were in! And now super grateful to drop a $20 for 3 hours of parking.
As soon as we walked into the museum, and after a thorough lecture about what to do if you get lost, we made a beeline for the baby chicks (I may have mentioned the chicks once or twice to the girls). Some kind older girls made room for my shorter ones front and center to actually witness the hatching of an egg! My animal lovers were in awe, although I don't think we learned anything about genetics in the process.
We soon found our way to the impressive weather area, where everything was high tech and therefore hard to understand (but there were lots of buttons). We eventually found a guide talking about colors of light in a really fun exhibit, and Elise's green shirt was put on display as we watched all green light disappear from the room, and muted browns appear in its place.
Then there was this cow, in the farming section. After the cow, Kalina and Elise got to pretend to drive an actual John Deere combine with Daddy, while I tried not to turn chasing Naomi into a game and Naomi tried to push every button she could find, or at least everything that looked like a button, permissible or not.
Colleen Moore's fairy castle. By the second time around Kalina was ready to sprout wings and move in. Elise would've been more enchanted if she hadn't been pretty worn out by then, although she did single out a beautiful little vase. Naomi was very two.
And then we headed to the hotel, where we had two pieces of good news (in addition to friendly family members waiting for us): the first was that we all had rooms together instead of being scattered across the hotel, something for which I think we will all be eternally grateful, and the second was that pizza was ready for us, thanks to Uncle Brian. We said our hellos to the endlessly cute and entertaining baby Dean, passed out paper plates, and dug in.
The night was late and the morning came early, but Elise, especially, was in good spirits knowing that the day promised the event to which she was looking forward to the most: a trip to the bakery right next to the hotel. Having inherited not only the Grandpa Les baked-good gene but also baked-good genes from the entire Hanks-Owens clan, she was fairly drooling at the mouth. The girls instantly agreed on a cinnamon roll and a fancy powdered sugar donut, and we divvied them up along with a Nutella croissant for Mommy. Yum.
Grandma had come equipped with Easter eggs for the girls to find so once we were full of baked goods, which didn't take long, we hunted through the hotel room and compared treasures, sneaking as many m&ms into our mouths as we could before Mom noticed too much. Elise also invented a "sandwich" with some of her treats: two cheddar bunnies surrounding an m&m. Want one? She's happy to share! Especially with Uncle Brian, with whom she was best buddies by now.
On a last-minute whim, we decided to walk to Navy Pier with Dean, Laura and Brian. Our brisk pace covered the mile distance fairly quickly, with the Elise talking nonstop to Uncle Brian, Kalina birdwatching for a badge and Naomi wanting to walk as a general rule, but to be picked up every time we crossed a street, passed someone who looked scary or heard a truck (so, every three steps). Once we made it to the pier, we snapped a photo before dashing back so Dean could get a nap and we could eat lunch before heading out again to the next museum.
At the Field Museum, even Naomi could point out Sue. After admiring her and answering all the two-year-old's questions ("Did she bite Daddy?") we headed for the galleries of stuffed animals. Although Naomi insisted on walking a very wide path around the crocodile, she soon began a routine of dividing each group of animals into family members (Which one is the mommy? Where's the baby? Etc.) and the older girls managed to thoroughly enjoy each exhibit without worrying too much about the fact that all the animals used to be alive.
And then it was time for the Terra Cotta Warrior exhibit, which we were especially excited for because we had only just studied them the week before. Everyone thought they were pretty cool including Naomi, who liked them so much she wanted to be in the displays with them. She alternately rested in my arms, it being naptime, and tried to cause all kinds of mischief. We managed to avoid tantrums and setting off any alarms, although my arms were quite sore the next day. Thankfully, Daddy was around to read all the descriptions with her and make it a meaningful exhibit. Kalina poses here as a mirror image of this particular warrior.
If there's one thing Elise loves, it's shiny rocks, so we had to see the rocks, minerals and gems displays. And if there's anything Elise loves more than a shiny rock, it's a giant shiny crystal, as shown here.
Kalina, who increasingly enjoys photography and seems to have a good eye, captured this angle of the giant crystal.
After Kalina and Daddy had each picked out their favorite gem in almost every case in the Hall of Gems (while the rest of us waited fairly patiently), we accidentally ended up in a big Egypt exhibit, which the girls thought was creepy. We headed over to the Native Americans instead, where Kalina studied the dioramas and we all rested on buffalo skins in a Pawnee dwelling before calling it quits for the day.
At the Shedd the next day, we were all pretty tired but couldn't help but enjoy ourselves, although there's a certain gift-shop visit we would've done differently.
Kalina and Elise both touched some live starfish and described them as "bristly." Naomi declined to touch those, but put her hands on nearly everything else in the building. Afterward, we enjoyed cobbling together a quick and fairly cheap lunch (thanks to Daddy, who, like a camel, can pick or choose when he eats and drinks) beside a lovely view of Lake Michigan.
"The beluga whale smiled at me!" Beluga whales, of course, can't really help but smile, and especially when encountering these three cuties. We watched them for a long time and half-pretended they were putting on a show for us (or were they really?).
And then it was time for the actual show--which we had accidentally not gotten tickets for. There's no going back through the ticket line once you're through it, though, unless you want to wait an additional 20-100 minutes, but as it turned out, there was a show in store for us anyway.
While we were watching these dolphins, someone official closed the curtain in the background so the non-paying, non-special people wouldn't be able to sneak a peek at the ocean mammal show. Grand music played as, presumably, dolphins on the other side, and possibly some belugas, performed their hearts out. The thing is, the dolphins on our side never got the message that they weren't in the show. They heard the grand music, and they quickly got into show mode. I'm sure we didn't have quite the stunts and acrobatics the paying crowd did (after all, we'd forgotten our pail of treat-fish in the van). But I guarantee we had a better view, as dolphins would jump and surface little more than an arm's length away. The kids were fully convinced we had our own dolphin show, and really, we did.
Naomi very nearly fell asleep on the way back to the parking lot. And perhaps she did a little, because she certainly didn't sleep any the entire way home.
Happy Easter!
