chicago

Day one- yes, there will be a MAJOR picture overload!

Last Thursday we headed out of town to Chicago for the weekend. Luke's parents flew in Thursday night and we both arrived at our hotel about the same time that night. We stayed at The Palmer House. It was right downtown in a perfect location.

Grandma surprised Jack with a Cubs Mr. Potato Head. He loves it.

It was late but we had to go out and check out the town. Jack was amazed by all the tall buildings.

Of course our first stop was deep dish pizza. It was delicious. There is nothing like deep dish pizza at midnight. The next day we got up and headed over to Shedd's aquarium. It was a lot of fun. It was a pretty impressive aquarium with sharks, whales, penguins and all sorts of fish. Jack loved it, he could have watched the sharks for hours. He got to dress up like a penguin and play on the ice playground and got some fun new shark toys from Gma & Gpa.

The view from outside the aquarium. Lake Michigan is absolutely beautiful. It is like you are at the ocean.
After the aquarium we headed over to the Taste of Chicago. Every year restaurants from all over Chicago gather together at the Taste of Chicago. They set up booths and you purchase tickets that you can go around and sample food from all the different restaurants. It was so yummy. As you can tell we ate a lot, this was only the first round. Our favorites were the homemade potato chips from Harry Carays and the sausage deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's. The cheesecake from Eli's was pretty good too. Jack kept putting everything in his shark and eating out of the mouth. He is silly. Then we took a walk down by the lake and got some fresh fruit. I could really see myself owning a yacht on Lake Michigan one day....... :)Then we took a water taxi over to Navy Pier.My favorite part about Navy Pier was Garret's Popcorn. I am still thinking about it. You have to try the Chicago mix, cheddar cheese popcorn mixed with caramel corn. Oh my. Of course Jack found the build-a-bear and convinced Gpa that he HAD to have one. Gpa was excited because he had never done the whole build-abear experience. He got a dog named Wrigley, it is his new best friend. Then we wanted to go on the ferris wheel but it was closed so we went on the swings.Jack drove the toy boats.Picture on Navy Pier overlooking the city.Then we headed over and got a spot for firworks. They do the fireworks on the lake and it was quite the show.On our way back to our hotel. There were so many people down town after the fireworks!!! I think they said on the news that there was a million people down there, crazy.So this is just the end on day 1! Looking at all the pictures even makes me tired! We had a packed day but it was so much fun!