Chicago - Birthday Trip

We headed to Chicago this past weekend for a celebration of Brian and my birthday's. We left Saturday morning and headed down the interstate. It was to be about 2 1/2 hours to get from our house to the hotel. It took a little bit longer than that due to the fact that as soon as we got into Illinois the interstate became a tollway. Too bad we didn't know about that in the first place, we would have changed the way we went into town. It was a bit frustrating to Brian, we ended up paying a total, over the two days, of $8.70. Besides that slight unknown, we had a really good time. There is a place called LegoLand. We decided not to pay the money to go in, but the outside was pretty neat. There was a life-size giraffe at the front door, which was made entirely out of duplos. I wish we would have had the camera for that. We had a good laugh as we searched for a Bank of America. There is not a single one in all of Wisconsin, so we had to drive to Chicago to do our banking, ha ha. We stopped by the Rain Forest Cafe. We didn't eat, but the kids had lots of fun looking at the moving animals on the outside. Again where was the camera, I was zero for two here. Our next stop was Ikea. This store, in Schaumburg, IL, is known to be the largest Ikea in all of North America. It was very overwhelming to be in there, there was so much to see. Brian said to shop there you would have to bring a truck to have room to take everything home. They had amazing escalators for your shopping carts, what fun. We then spent about an hour playing in the hotel pool, which was fun for everyone.

Then off to our big event of the day Medieval Times. The restaurant requested that we arrive one hour to one and a half hours early, we thought that the kids would go crazy being there that early, but it worked out. We bought them a wooden sword and a wooden axe to play with. Good idea/bad idea, that is yet to be determined. We have not had any major accidents or injuries yet so that is good. The dinner was gobs of fun for all of us as there is not silverware, you use your hands for everything. Angela had a hard time getting started, but once she got the hang of it she liked it. She even tried eating her breakfast the next morning with her hands, oops. Connor eats with his hands often enough that this didn't seem weird to him, he just kept getting distracted by the show. We were rooting for the red knight, Brian was a little disappointed that it wasn't the green knight. That is, until he learned that the green knight was the evil bad guy. The fighting and sporting games were a lot of fun to watch. Our knight didn't win, the yellow knight did, but it was a great adventure. Angela spent the entire car ride home "fighting" like the knights, it was really perfect of them. The next morning after breakfast we headed into downtown Chicago. It was interesting seeing all of the old and new buildings. We stopped at a store called cb2 to get some fun new cups for the house. On our way to the lake front we past Wrigley Field. We had a nice picnic lunch and a walk around the lake. Brian and Angela really liked how large Lake Michigan is. We walked by a marina and got to see how the put sailboats into the water. They had a few large cranes that they hooked the sailboat to. Then they used the cranes to lower them into the water. The kids spotted a horse mounted police officer that they thought was fun to see. We hopped back onto the interstate getting ready to head back home. But for some crazy reason there was "rush hour" traffic on a Sunday afternoon. It took us about an hour to get from downtown Chicago to the suburbs. I don't think we ever got about 20 m.p.h. Talk about road snap after that. We had to take a time to pull off, have a snack and have everyone walk/run around to burn of some of the grumpies. It was a really relief to get home after being on the road and having to deal with the tolls again.