Welcome to the pictures of the McLoughlin Family Trip to Chicago 2017! This is the trip where my husband had training all week in Elk Grove Village so the kids and I stayed by the O'Hare airport and took the train downtown daily! Today started with making sure my kids got into the
free LEGO monthly minibuild, which is always a frantic time since it's hard to get into these days. So after doing that and dropping off my husband, it was time to head to Des Plaines for some Weight Watchers weigh-in and run action.
 |
| This is for my mom, who flips out over White After Labor Day. I'm not in love with the white pants but I ALWAYS buy black, so I got red and white this time. White gets dirty easy, as I knew they would, so forget that. I'm over these pants already. |
 |
| Our station: Rosemont. |
 |
| Headed to downtown Chicago on the train; it's dark so we are in a tunnel here. |
 |
| Eva and Mommy. |
 |
| A cool road sculpture Callie wanted a picture of. |
 |
| At the bus stop is where we find ourselves again. |
 |
| The view from the museum to across the street. |
 |
| Love it already ... Legos! |
 |
| Joel took this panoramic of the museum. |
 |
| Coming down into the museum, this is what you see. |
 |
| We always seem to get to the city at lunchtime. |
 |
| Boys at one table, girls at another. Cooties. |
 |
| Feelin' cool. 5 Ventra cards (Joel carries his own) and one Marriott room key. |
 |
| Eva sez this looks neato. |
 |
| Mommy sez hot dang! |
 |
| More hot dang. |
 |
| We hit the Brick by Brick exhibit and spent an hour in there ... could have easily spent longer. This museum is huge and it would take days to go through it all. This is a LEGO Fallingwater. |
 |
| LEGO Fallingwater |
 |
| LEGO Golden Gate Bridge |
 |
| LEGO Golden Gate Bridge and Callie |
 |
| LEGO One World Trade Center |
 |
| For real I don't remember what this was. Leave me a comment if you know. |
 |
| Super cool thing where the kids build something out of blocks and then it shakes every couple of minutes and they see if their structure stands. |
 |
| LEGO St. Louis arch |
 |
| LEGO International Space Station. So flipping cool. |
 |
| Can you lift yourself? |
 |
| LEGO Pyramids. |
 |
| LEGO Colosseum. |
 |
| LEGO roller coaster |
 |
| LEGO Museum of Science and Industry |
 |
| LEGO Sleeping Beauty's castle |
 |
| Building things to race. |
 |
| Michael was over here for a looong time. It's like a LEGO trough of fun. Unbelievable. |
 |
| Then the other kids got in on it. We need this in our house. |
 |
| I even made something. I think it's a covered bus stop, two-tiered. |
 |
| My view from the floor, where I had to collapse from tired. |
 |
| The Rotunda. |
 |
| This cool wheel of sand that shows how the tides work with the movement of the Earth. |
 |
| How tornadoes work |
 |
| One of those cool things like they had in Houston where the pendulum swings and every so often it will knock down a piece of metal ... one every minute maybe? |
 |
| They were mesmerized. Another thing we need in our house. |
 |
| Heading up to the second level of JUST this one small section of the museum ... there was so much more we never got to see even though we also went back Friday afternoon. |
 |
| This cool wind tunnel thing ... 80 mph winds |
 |
| Scared to be in the wind tunnel. |
 |
| Bus stop ... heading uptown somehow because Mommy has a bright idea. |
 |
| My bus baby; still pretty cold in Chicago. |
 |
| Comfortable on public transportation. My kids travel well :-) |
 |
| I love this picture of my big boys. Joel is saying something to make Michael crack up. |
 |
| My precious pink girls. |
 |
| I saw these buildings out of the side of the bus and freaked out and had to get a photo. Apartments on top, parking garage on the bottom sections. Round like Capitol Records. What are these called? Marina City Condos ... the price on a 425-square-foot place is as much as my HOUSE. Oh, but that view! |
 |
| Sammy checks out Chicago. Hey, that would be a good book title! |
 |
| Our first view of the Chicago River AMAZING! Not green anymore from the St. Patrick's Day parade the Saturday before but still amazing. All I could think of was the scene from My Best Friend's Wedding on the boat! Someday we'll come back in warmer weather and ride the boat. |
 |
| I heard about this place a million years ago ... Ralph Lauren's daughter owns several of them and I always knew I had to take my kids here. What a neat place! Dylan's Candy Bar! |
 |
| Oh my. |
 |
| Vintage section. |
 |
| I envision myself coming down this white staircase one day in a bubblegum pink 1960s ball gown holding all the different kinds of Dylan's chocolate candy bars! |
 |
| Callie always goes for the macarons. Just one "O" by the way. Macaroons are the ones with coconut. Again, thank you to Tutu. |
 |
| Silly Joel, Trix are for kids. |
 |
| A yard of bubblegum, no joke, and a stuffed Peep for Eva, courtesy of Tutu. I bought a ton of the Dylan's chocolate bars and they are REALLY YUMMY and in all sorts of flavors! |
 |
| I gave up on trying to figure out the bus and train systems, even with the CTA app, so I just started asking Chicagoans how to get places. A manager at Dylan's told us to head to Nordstrom across the street and then go THROUGH the store to get to the train station because that was the only way to get there. |
 |
| So we went through the store ... traipsed through the store to get outside on the other side of the row of buildings and to the train station. |
 |
| Made it back to the hotel with two full bags of candy |
 |
| Dinner was spaghetti ... no meat sauce for Callie. |
Check out
Day Three, when we went to Shedd Aquarium!
