Downtown Chicago 2008

We made it safely to my mom's house last night after dropping Luke off to my aunt's new house last night. The kids are sad that Luke is gone and are now begging for a new dog to replace him. We were able to take their minds off of missing Luke by taking them downtown for the day. We had a lot of fun seeing the sights and are now back at my mom's until we leave for home tomorrow. We ended up taking over a hundred pictures, but I didn't think anyone would want to sit through that many - now matter how good looking we are! Ha! So here are some of my favorites...

.

Just outside of the train station. Same place, same picture, every year.

We took a carriage ride around the city. Here are my mom and Ashley.

Ryan thought Festus, the horse who pulled our carriage was pretty cool.

After our carriage ride, we walked over to the Daley Plaza to see the pretty tree outside.

We then made our way over to Macy's food court for lunch where we spent a fortune to eat. Then it was time to head on up nine levels of escalators to see the Macy's Christmas tree. But first we stopped off at FAO Scwartz so Ryan could look around and beg for toys. In fact, he's still smiling here because he thinks he's going to be able to talk us into buying something.

By the time we made it all the way up to the tree, he knew our "No's" were for real.


He was able to get over it, though.

The day was winding down but we still had some time left and none of us had been to Millenium Park yet, so we went to check it out.

The Bean is just plain awesome. We could have spent hours there having fun with our reflections.

Ryan holds up the bean.

Ryan really wanted to go ice skating, but seeing as he's never attempted that OR rollerblading/rollerskating before, I pretty much told him we'd take him to our local rink to teach him. which means I've got some pretty painful falls to look forward to in the near future.

While waiting for the our train to board, we were a little freaked out my this abandoned paper sack. I took a picture in case the train station was no more by the time we got back to my mom's.

I think it's time to see if my brother's got any beer around here...