October Week 5: My parents and Chicago

Back to our regularly scheduled programming... (i.e. How our kids didn't go trick-or-treating this year)

The day after I got back from California, my parents flew out for a quick trip. They flew into Des Moines and drove to the Quad-Cities. My dad hadn't ever been out here, so that was fun. The kids LOVED having them here. In this first picture you can see poor Reilly's eyes were puffy because he had just gotten an infection in both eyes right before they came! Poor kid... it cleared right up with some drops though. He was so amazing about getting his drops in. He would go lay down and get ready for them half the time. All for a few fruit snacks! :)
It was such a nice visit, and my parents even got brave and watched the kids for us overnight so Jeremy and I could get away for a bit. We haven't been overnight together without the kids since Reilly was 8 months old! I say they were brave because with teething and Reilly being sick, sleep hasn't been going terribly well around here. They did fairly well though, and Reilly and Jaina loved having Grandma and Grandpa all to theirselves Friday and Saturday.

I haven't ever actually been TO Chicago (just in O'Hare 4-5 times) so we drove and parked in downtown (thanks to the Lees, who gave us all the insider info) and spent about 5 hours there. It was a beautiful day (like 70º) and we walked up and down "the Magnificent Mile," seeing all sorts of cool buildings and shopping choices.
We tried to get drawn for some cheap "Wicked" tickets (that would have been especially fun, to see "Wicked" on Halloween!), but it didn't happen. Probably a good thing, since I was starting to get sick. I don't think I would have been alive by the time we got to our hotel, which was 30 minutes away. (By the way, this is the only non-blurry pic of me - that's the only reason it's here. We have GOT to get a new camera...)
So yeah, our hotel. We got on Priceline and put a 3 1/2-star for $50. And it upgraded us to a 4-star Hyatt! Finding it that night was a little crazy, since "Hyatt" does not appear on any of the signs leading to it. It's actually owned by McDonald's, and is just called "The Lodge." It's the hotel at their world headquarters, connected to "Hamburger University" (where new owners get trained?) by a walkway over a pond/lake thing. It was a very nice, rather quiet, slightly strange visit... We like it though, and the bed was amazingly comfortable! Between that and no kids, we slept like rocks... (after we finally found some dinner at Maggiano's in a very nice mall there at about 8:30 that night...)
The next day (after sleeping in) we met up with our friends the Noordas and had some authentic Chicago-style pizza at Giordano's (too lazy to see if that's spelled right). It was very good, and it was fun to hang out with them without chasing our crazy kids around. Though I'm sure Reilly would be sad to know he missed hanging out with Kennedy, not to mention eating that pizza... Then we went to the mall with them for a little while. It's a very cool mall, but it was starting to get really cold and stormy, and I was starting to get sick, so I was glad to head home!