Farewell to the Windy City

Our last night in the city was one of my favorites.  We just walked around all the parks, we don't have parks like those in our parts of the world.  We visited the "bean" and Buckingham Fountain.  They are both such beautiful places.  We had drinks at the Park Plaza Grill and enjoyed taking in the sights around us.  We ate dinner at Miller's Pub I had some of the best barbecue chicken. 

Patrick and I at the Bean.  This was my favorite place to people watch.

Looking up inside the bean.  It almost made me sick to look up at it.

Under the bean

The view from the bar at Park Plaza Grill

 I promise we are not obsessed with ourselves we were just excited to have someone to take our picture so we took advantage of it!

Buckingham Fountain.  It's on the opening credits of the sitcom Married with Children and in Blues Brothers. It is one of the largest fountains in the world.

Neat fountain thing. These kids were having a ball playing in the water.

We were so sad to leave Friday.  Our flight home was much smoother.  O'Hare is huge.  We had to ask how to get to our gate.  It's like a little city in there.  It only took 5 minutes to get through security in Birmingham it took about an hour at O'Hare.  We almost started crying when we walked out of the airport in Birmingham.  It was so hat you could barely breath.  The temp on the car said 104.  If that doesn't say welcome home I don't know what does!  We went straight to get Ally and I don't who was more excited me or her!  She didn't love staying with Elizabeth or going to daycare without me!

Chicago Day 4

Our last full day in Chicago was a busy one for me!  I had a few things I needed to get but was without a car.  The other guy from Birmingham had driven and brought his wife and 20 month old daughter so they had a car.  They were getting out on Thursday and asked if I'd like to tag along.  So I did!  We quickly ran all the errands we needed but we didn't want to go back to the hotel but we didn't really want to drive to the city (it was about an hour drive).  A friend of mine had been in Chicago the week before and had stayed in a little town called Geneva.  She said it was a really cute place and it wasn't far from where we were staying.  So we decided to give it a go.  It was only about 14 miles from where we were.  It was the cutest little place.  We had a blast just walking around by the water and the shoppes.

We were driving back towards the hotel and this amazing structure caught my eye.  So we turned in and drove around.  It was amazing. Here are just a few photos of the Mandir. ( I think a Mandir is a Hindu temple of some sort.  I'm not positive though.)

Stay tuned for the rest of Day 4...

Quarter of a Century

Yep that's right...today I turned 25 years old.  At 5:09am to be exact!  Some days I feel like I'm a hundred and some days it's like I'm 16 again!  I'm loving these years.  I can remember when I was younger thinking that 25 was so old.  Now I'm rethinking that! Ha!  I always thought I'd have a least one kid by the time I turned 25... um not so much!  Ally is all the kid I need for now!  Even when Patrick turned 25 I can remember thinking he was getting old.  (That was the year I turned 21 so I guess I figured I was in the prime of my life!)  I've already been celebrating all over the place!  Friday the guys on the trip with us got me a birthday card.  It was so sweet of them!  Sunday, my mom cooked lunch and had Mississippi Mud for my birthday it was super yummy!  Then for dinner Patrick's mom cooked enough for an army and we had cake.  I was so excited to get to share our pictures from Chicago and visit with everyone!

Blowing out my candles at Mom and Dad's!  Can you tell that Ally is excited we are home!

I am so excited about my new shoe storage and shelves in my closet!  I got some birthday money from our parents and I'd had my eye on something like this for a while and it was on sale this week!  I know I'm pretty boring!  But I love how clean and organized my closet is. 

Navy Pier

Sorry for the long break... I had forgotten how long it takes to get back into the swing of things after a vacation. 
So Wednesday night we went to Navy Pier because I'd read online they have fireworks and live music on Wednesday nights during the summer.  I was so excited! I'll let the photos do the talking...

I'm loving the black and white ones of the city. 

This is my favorite picture from the whole trip I think.  I loved the pier!

This is our new friend Chris.  I thought Chris was going to beat us up.  He was upset that his picture was being taken at first but eventually he was posing. (I'll spare you the rest of the photos of Chris's tattoos.  They were not exactly tastefully done!)

Fireworks over the pier. 

The fireworks was the most fun!  We only have fireworks around here on the 4th of July so this was a real treat!

A few photos from Chicago.

We are heading home today! I'm sad to leave the city but I can't wait to see Miss Ally Bama!  There are so many things that I want to come back to do!  Here are a few photos from the past couple nights!  I'll have a few recap when we get back!

Take me out to the ballgame...

Last night we went to the Historic Wrigley Field to watch the Chicago Cubs take on the Houston Astros.  The Cubbies started out a little slow and the Astros took off to a 7-1 lead.  Not my idea of a good game.  But the Cubs got heated up and came back to win it 14-7!!!  It was so much fun.  I'd never been to a MLB game before so for my first to be at such an historic field was pretty amazing to say the least.

This was the view from our seats. (Except we could see the whole field too!)

This is Wrigley field's idea of a jumbotron! 

Aramis Ramirez.  He hit 3 homeruns.  Pretty exciting!

I loved these buildings that were across the street from the field that had bleachers on the roofs.  You can apparently rent them.  (I'm not really sure I haven't checked out the site yet!)

Patrick intensely watching the game!

Us and the field after the win!  A little blurry!

I think this was before the game started.

Cubs Win! 

(I accidentally deleted all the pictures I took of the stadium outside before the game.)

Tonight we're headed to Navy Pier for live music and fireworks!

Arriving at Destination

Our flight was scheduled to depart Birmingham at 4:16.  We arrived at the airport around 2 because we were both nervous about everything.  Well we got our boarding passes and our luggage checked and headed to the security check.  I gave the lady my boarding pass and ID and she looked a bit confused.  Well my boarding pass said Maggie and my id has my legal name which is Margaret.  Yikes!  She then called her supervisor over and he asked if I had any thing that had my nick name on it.  Well luckily I had a credit card with Maggie on it only it still had my maiden name.  So I had three different cards with different names.  I was sweating I was so nervous.  They let me go since I had the card with my nickname and maiden name and my id has my maiden name as my middle name.  So crisis averted!!!  We got through security and it was like 2:15 so we had two hours to kill.  We sat in the bar and had a couple drinks.

At about 3:40 we headed to our gate and learned it would probably be 5:30 before we departed.  I hadn't flown in about ten years and Patrick had never flown commercially.  I was already nervous because I hadn't flown in so long and I recently (in the last couple years or so) have started getting motion sickness again.  So I was afraid the flight was going to make me sick.  Then I was afraid to take something because the flight was so short.  So it was finally time to get on the plane.  It was the smallest plane I'd ever been on.  I think you could touch both sides from the aisle.  There were only three seats on each row. (I'm sure this is not the smallest plane ever but I don't think I want to fly on anything smaller!)

His first flight!  Probably should have used the flash!

We were then delayed on the runway do to a small rain storm on the runway.  So about 5:45 we were finally cleared for take off.  We took off and blew all over the place.  When we started to turn to go north a kid behind us told his dad he thought we were upside down.  I laughed because I thought the same thing!  Patrick did fine he loved the flight.  I thought it was awful!  It was very rough.  I had to just close my eyes and try to sleep.  We got to see the city flying in and it was beautiful.  We landed and got our luggage.  We couldn't find our shuttle so I called the hotel and the shuttle wasn't scheduled.  (We were under the impression that the person that made room reservations scheduled the shuttle for us...they didn't.) So we had to take a cab.  The driver had no idea where we were going...neither did we!  He had to call the hotel to get directions!  It's kind of funny now...not so much at the time! 

The room is really nice and the hotel is fairly new (which is why the cab driver couldn't find it!)  We are trying to just enjoy ourselves but we can't help but wonder what will go wrong next!  Ha!  We went to the breakfast here at the hotel this morning and it was so good.  I had biscuits and gravy (and was very excited about it!). 

We sure do miss this baby!  She is being well taken care of by Aunt Elizabeth.

Thanks Liz for taking good care of her and adding to your daily commute by taking her to daycare.  She and I really appreciate it!