The Agamalian's: Chicago

We went to Chicago over our trip to Illinois. Our good friend Laura, Zach's Godmother, lives in Oak Park, just outside of Chicago. We took our friend Grant, Zach's Godfather with us and had such a great time. I think our child-free friends weren't quite ready for what we had in store. No rest for those with the kiddos. I don't think we had a free moment the entire time.

We went to Chicago on a Sunday and arrived around noon. We then went to the Lincoln Park Zoo for the afternoon. It was a cold, cold trip to the zoo, but the boys didn't seem to mind. Zach (and mommy too) discovered the Mold-a-Rama machines. What a great (and cheap) souvenir. I think we hit all the machines we could. For dinner, we went into the city to the Rainforest Cafe. Zach has a fear of the gorilla at the Rainforest Cafe in Atlantic City, so we thought it would be better to take him there again, after seeing real gorillas at the zoo. It seemed to help this time.
We walked down to Ed Debevic's for dessert after dinner, but decided upon the 25 minute wait, that we didn't really need ice cream. It was also aobut 8:30 at this point and Ryan was already a tired baby. We had moments before a meltdown was going to happen.

The next morning, we woke up and went to the Field Museum. Zach loved the ride in and seeing the Sears Tower in the distance. We spent a lot longer at the museum than I had first thought. I figured we would get about two hours at most. Wrong. The boys loved the museum and we ended up staying for about 5 1/2 hours! Sue the T-Rex and the mummies were huge hits for Zach and Ryan loved the "stuffed" animals. I still can't get over the fact that someone taxidermed (for lack of a better term) two huge elephants. Ryan was fascinated, especially of the gorilla on display. I have one son terrified of fake gorillas and another fascinated by the real thing. Go figure.

We went to the Sears tower after the museum, but the wait was 90 minutes and it was dinner time. (the Chicago guide said to go after 5 pm, but I didn't take into account that it was the week of Christmas break! Duh!) We didn't go up, but did get our photos by the huge lego sculpture of the Sears Tower in the Skydeck Lobby. The Sears Tower was the only thing Zach wanted to do too, so next time we go!! We had dinner at Giordano's down the street and had real Chicago Stuffed Pizza. Wow, it was good!!! We went home with two exhausted boys that evening!

The next morning we had a late start due to some "Card playing and wine and vodka" the night before. We headed down to the Shedd Museum, which was shut down due to the overwhelming amount of people already inside. So, we walked down to the Adler Planetarium and had a fabulous time. I think Zach had a better time at the Planetarium anyway. They had an exhibit on Space travel and for our future astronaut, it was just as exciting as being at Kennedy Space Center. He had a blast. We have a photo of him next to the countdown to our return to the moon. Zach informed us that he will be on that shuttle mission to the moon. I don't doubt it!

After the Adler, we headed home. It was rush hour as we left Chicago and we had so much more we wanted to do, but it was impossible to get it all accomplished. If we didn't see you on our trip to Chicago, we're so sorry. As you can see, we didn't sit at all and didn't really budget our time well to see people. Sorry about that. We learned that the boys do acutally like museums, so the next time we're in town, we'll slow it down so we can see all the friends we couldn't.

When you travel with the Agamalian's, you see all you can see! :) Keep the kids moving and you can avoid all meltdowns!