Sunday, March 22, 2020

Chicago

Over spring break, we took a quick trip to Chicago.  It seems crazy now, just two weeks later, that we had trouble squeezing a 3 night trip into our busy calendar.  Even during the kids' week off from school, we still had sports practices, council meetings, volunteer obligations, therapy, piano, and of course wrestling tournaments.  Bryan has been exceptionally busy at work and only felt he could take two days off.  So, we left on Saturday after Reggie's wrestling tournament.  We drove about six hours and stayed just outside the city near the airport.
On Sunday morning, we checked out and went to the Museum of Science and Industry.  It's the largest science center in the western hemisphere!  It's huge!  I think we spent about 6 hours there and still didn't see all of it.


 Lydia made a card stock model of the Wright Brothers' plane last year.

 U-505 German Submarine


 Whispering Gallery

"Lightening"
 Our next stop was Millennium Park.  This is one of my favorite stops in Chicago, and Reggie agreed.

 It was busy on a Sunday afternoon, but a nice day.



We checked into a hotel downtown for the night.  We had a great view and could even see Lake Michigan in the distance.

We walked down to Navy Pier for dinner.  The Ferris wheel was closed, which, in hindsight, was a sign of things to come.

On Monday morning, we checked out and headed over to Shedd Aquarium.  The live show was our favorite part.



 The touching tide pools were fun and beluga whales were huge!

 Here is a live 4 foot clam.
 The sharks are circling their dinner!
 Reggie liked the baby alligator.
After Shedd, we headed over to Field Museum of natural history.  But we were already pretty worn out and ready to chill (Brett fell asleep on a bench), so we only stayed for about an hour.
So we returned to the first night's hotel for our last night.  We had planned to swim, but the pool was closed.

 We went to Giordano's for some Chicago-style pizza.  Yum! 

It was a fun night, but now I can't help but wonder how this server is doing now?  
Tuesday morning we packed up and headed home.  We needed to get home to a special event, which will be in the next post!

Thursday, March 19, 2020

science fair 2020

Brett decided to do a model/research project instead of a science experiment for this year's home school science fair.  We built a hydraulic arm.  It was a lot of fun and a big hit with the other kids at the science fair!  (If I had any forethought before I videoed this, I would have cleared the counters...)










Wednesday, March 11, 2020

ice ice baby

Here are a few ice adventures we've had this winter!  We went ice skating.  Lydia went on her first overnight church retreat.  We toured some Ice Castles. And Brett went snowshoeing with a friend.












As I post this, we have almost no snow on the ground.  Early spring?  Not convinced yet.

Winter Wedding

We had the honor of celebrating with Adam and Courtney on their wedding day in January. 












 Brett managed to sneak in a dance with the bride.
 Isaiah danced with two bottles of soda.


While we were in town, we got to go tubing at Title Town!