el train - the bean - museum of science and industry

This was the day I was going to go down to Hyde Park and catch a glimpse of Kari's life, pre-wedded bliss. Go see where her wedding reception was, eat at her favorite burger place, walk the campus where Isaac grew from boy to man. I'm kidding Olsons. But we didn't end up doing any of that.

The week was a lot cooler then I expected and the kids needed another pair of pants and a hoodie to get them through the week. So we went shopping in the morning. It was fairly successful (lamest clothing section ever at the Target downtown, but the sale racks at Gap saved the day) until Jacob randomly peed his pants. He went to the bathroom at the Gap and we'd also been directed to a restroom in City Hall (later I'm going to talk about the lack of security in this town), and yet he still managed to soak his pants. And the stroller. At least we weren't far from the hotel. Heading back for a quick rinse and a change of clothes did make for a change of plans though. But our day was still rad.

Jacob has been asking to ride the el train for over a year now. The 7 train to Queens for visiting Angie just isn't cutting it in his book. "This is not the el Train, mama." "But it is elevated, Jacob, so it's a kind of elevated train." "No mama, we need to go to Chicago." So we hopped on by our hotel and rode it around the Loop to get closer to Michigan Avenue.

Jacob loved being up "in the trees." 

Rebecca hardly noticed the change in scenery.

We were hoping for lunch at Chik fil A, but the location on State Street doesn't open until the end of June. We grabbed lunch at Noodle & Company (what, this place was awesome. We ate there twice.) and took it to Millennium Park to picnic by the Bean. Don't worry, we ate at another Chil fil A later that night. And possibly the next night too. I wanted to eat at Frontera but I just wasn't brave enough to take two tired kids to a nice place to eat. Next time I'm going though. Or I'm ordering take out and eating on a bench on the street. So many regrets...

Why am I writing so much? On to the blurry pics!

These middle school kids started playing tackle football  around us. But Rebecca was asleep and I was enjoying my salad so I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. The kids were wild but someone put the fear of God in them because when someone chucked a ball narrowly missing Rebecca and me, he got ripped a new one by his peers. "You almost hit the lady eating chicken, c'mon man." That was the clean version. There were lots of apologies. I was impressed. 

 Look at this picture. I was a bag lady that day. Toting umbrellas in the pink bag in case it rained but it totally didn't. A days waste of shoulder strength.

Mom, look at this crazy diamond building. 

What is the cow statue doing on the sidewalk?

Museum of Science and Industry

Here's another one we got into for free. It was one of the best museums I've been to. Every museum I went to blew the last one out of the water. This one might have been the best though. We went to nearly every transportation related exhibit. There was one about bicycles that d I really wanted to go to it but the kidlets were running out of steam. Here's some of what we did see:

They have a freaking German submarine from WW2. Amazing story if you have time to read it. 

 So excited to identify this as a "boat-tah".

They had a farm area with a giant John Deere tractor and a harvesting combine, but somehow I didn't manage a picture of either one. 

Airplanes everywhere. We even went inside one of them.

You can see the bottom part of a steam engine they climbed in. 

 We stayed in this area for a full 40 minutes watching the model trains go around this huge model of Chicago, the Midwest and I think part of it was Seattle? Toronto? No idea really. It was cool though. 

Jacob's favorite was the train hauling a bunch of John Deeres. 

Trolley Car

Paid two bucks for a plastic steam engine to be molded right before our very eyes

They also had these rooms that were like real life seek and find set ups, you know like the taxidermy animals dressed up and hosting a tea party with toys and puzzles all over and you could look for a list of stuff like a guy hang gliding, and 12 jacks, and a yellow cat, or whatnot. There was a circus exhibit with the funny mirrors that thoroughly confused Jacob. Apparently there was a whole boat exhibit we missed. A coal mine exhibit (luckily I've been to a read coal mine in the past month, so I could tell Jacob a thing or two about that). We watched a demonstration about gravity that consisted of kids dropping messy things off the second floor balcony. Balloons filled with water and jello and shaving cream, and a medium sized watermelon. The employees seemed genuinely excited about working there. At the end of the demonstration they said, "Give yourselves a hand and go forth; you just did science!" Jacob liked that a lot. On our way out we toured an original Zephyr train that we'd only read about in books. Jacob couldn't believe it. I wish I'd gotten pictures of all of it but that darn battery needed to last until we figured out where to eat and how to get home. Blerg. 

Proof that we made it. It was my birthday wish come true. 

And he's spent.