Our Chicago Trip!

We had an AWESOME trip to Chicago! I didn't have a ton of time to add individual pictures, so I made a slideshow. Sorry for slacking, but I have lots of things to do now, so it was the easiest thing to do. There are A LOT of pictures, so bear with me! :)

The pictures are backwards from what we did, but that's OK. When we got there Thursday mid-day, we ate lunch in the car in the parking lot of Legoland. It was POURING down rain, so it was kind of fun to have a little picnic in the car. It was actually a Legoland Discovery Center, which isn't nearly as big as the one one in CA. It ended up being the kids' favorite place, so I'm glad I kept it on the itinerary instead of doing something else. They had so many cool sculptures made out of Legos! There was this really cool Lego 4-D (3D movie with lights flickering, wind blowing, snow falling in the actual theater!) that Tyler loved. They also had a Bob the Builder 3D movie that Harrison liked much better. The first one kind of scared him. They had a place where they built the Sears Tower with Legos, learned how Legos are made and got a little souvenir Lego, played in big foam Legos, rode a little Medieval ride, played on a play gym, built their own Lego cars and raced them, and walked through the Lego Hall of Fame and a Tropical Rain Forest. It was amazing to see the creativity of all the designs! I think Morgan's favorite thing was this cool ride called the Technicycle. You had to petal to keep it up high while it would go around like a merry-go-round. I loved the mini Chicago, especially Navy Pier and the Sears Tower. In the picture of the Kent and the kids with the HUGE spider, Harrison is crying because he was afraid of the big spider!

After Legoland we went to the hotel and swam for a bit. Morgan is such a little dare devil! She loved standing on Kent's hands and then jumping into the water. We had the whole pool to ourselves!

We weren't for sure what good restaurants were around, but once we found out Rainforest Cafe was in the mall down the street, we were sold. It was so TOTALLY awesome! We had never been to one, but I had heard they were pretty cool. Wow! I've never had an experience eating out like that one! It just happened that the hostess took us to a table right under the gorillas who were roaring and pounding their chests right as we walked up - it scared Harrison to say the least! I could hardly hear anyone they were so loud and I was thinking to myself that if they kept it up it was going to be quite the evening and I was going to have to ask for a new table, but they stopped after a few minutes and Harrison got used to them after a couple more times. The food was amazing and the atmosphere was so fun and unique! We let the kids pick out a dinner plate as a souvenir from the gift shop in the front of the store.

The next day we went to Shedd Aquarium. There was this cool water show, but all the pictures I took didn't turn out b/c we couldn't use our flashes. Actually the animals didn't do a whole lot of tricks - I think the Indy Zoo has a better show, but the lights, costumes, etc were pretty cool. There were some neat exhibits, but by the end of the day one fish looked just about the same as all the others and Morgan and Harrison were exhausted. They had this really weird looking shark and REALLY weird looking turtle that were cool. The boys touched real star fish and Harrison was completely amused by a millipede. We found out that they invented Velcro because of the way the millipede uses its feet. I loved the jelly fish, sea anenomes, and the sea dragons - so amazing! There was this little penguin play area for the kids that was fun. There was actually another Morgan and Harrison there too!

That night we met up with Kyle, Kelly, and Leon. We went to Ikea with them for a bit. It was pretty cool, but not really my style, so we didn't stay very long. We ate at Uno Chicago Grill, which was pretty good and then went back to the hotel to swim some more. We were all pretty exhausted from all the walking we did during the day.

The next day we swapped watching kids with Kyle and Kelly, so Kent and I went to the temple early in the morning and then while Kyle and Kelly went we took the kids to the play area at the mall. It was cold and rainy so we didn't get to get the kids out at the temple and take any pictures. :(

I would love to go again some time and go to the Museum of Science and Industry.

Enjoy the pictures!