Chicago Trip Day 2

The kids did sleep well, though Jaina woke up rather grumpy from less sleep than usual (a recurring theme on this trip). Here she is with very exciting morning hair.
And here we have the face we saw a lot of, especially in the mornings...
A little happier finally:
It was kind of fun to be in a hotel together just to be on vacation. We didn't have anywhere we HAD to be, and we had chosen to all sleep in the same room; it wasn't being forced on us by circumstances... Reilly was excited about the cable, and Playhouse Disney. :)

We decided to try the "heated" swimming pool before we checked out. (we got that hotel separately from our other reservation when we decided to extend our trip by a day to account for the temple) Heated? Not ice-cold, yes. But it was outside, and at 9 am in Chicagoland, it wasn't exactly toasty. We got in for a bit until Reilly had to go potty, then Jeremy took him while I got Jaina out. But then Reilly wanted to get BACK in, so we swam (he and I) together for a bit. Here are Reilly and Jaina being very excited to go swimming. Jaina was also excited about her Winnie the Pooh swimsuit. They were shouting "hooray!" in that second one, along with the "If You're Happy and You Know It" song. :)

Here is the best way to get a whole TON of luggage and two heavy toddler from the 5th story room to the car:

After we checked out we decided to see the McDonald's "museum" that was there in town. It's built from the blueprints for the original McDonald's, and the sign that's up is the original one. Kind of cool.

After that we headed for downtown Chicago, but on side streets along the lake shore. There were absolutely beautiful homes everywhere we looked, it seemed. I felt like I was going to get whiplash trying to switch from one side of the street to the other so constantly. Seriously cool. We were also passing by the Baha'i' "House of Worship" (they also call them temples - there is only one on each continent), so we stopped to take a look. It was pretty neat, too!

I'm not sure what happened after that, but we basically ended up in stop and go side street traffic for the next hour and a half. Both kids fell asleep, but only together, like this, for about 20 minutes, I think...

It was a rather stressful hour and a half, and we were happy to get back to our hotel in Oak Brook finally... We went over to the outdoor mall there (it's huge!) and walked around for a bit, then had dinner at Olive Garden (we had a gift certificate to use) and settled down for the night.