Friday, February 03, 2012

The Day After

The day after Christmas, with Paul back at work and the kids on break from school, I suddenly decided to road-trip it to my sisters house in Chicago.
Like I literally decided at about 9:30am Monday morning.
By noon, we were on the road.
(You DON'T want to know what my house looked like...although you could ask our friend Kevin.)

It was one of my better decisions : )
That night the kids were happily playing with their cousin Madden

AND their Grandma!
My parents spent Christmas with my sister and we got there in time to spend the last day-and-a-half with them. I think they enjoyed the surprise :)


While we were there we..
ended up on a train ride at the mall, when Legoland turned out to be full to capacity.


Avery seriously talked about that train ride for weeks.


Took the kids to see "Chipwrecked"
The big kids loved it, Madden loved his treats, Avery loved going to the potty every 10 minutes, and the adults...endured.


The major accomplishment of the trip was finally making it to the top of Sears Tower, after a failed previous attempt. It's long been a dream of Noah's to stand on the Skydeck. It was a crazy day (waking up way too early, Tiff's almost broken ankle, the crazy bum who threatened to beat us, lineslineslines, crowds, $$)
But just look at that face!! Totally worth it : ) Made me so happy.


Actually, it was scarier than I thought. I'm not afraid of heights and my legs were shaking the entire time. I had to drag Avery out there and she wouldn't stand up.




Alex kept wondering when we were finally going to get there (after lots of different lines, and a couple different elevators). When I told her this was it she gave me one of her looks and said, "Mom, you are kidding me."
And not in a good way.
She ended up loving it : )



I think these two liked the train ride in and out of the city best of all.


It wasn't a super long trip but we enjoyed every minute!
Lazy mornings...

good food,
lounging around,


and staying up late! As in half the night - that's what we had to do to get our kid -free sister time in : ) Best part of the day.

Thanks a million Tiff and Randy, for letting us crash your place at the last minute and cause chaos for 3.5 days.
Potty-training toddler and all.
Good thing I brought Cherry Bombs, right Tiff??


6 comments:

John said...

One of the best Christmas surprises ever was you driving to Chicago.
Love you, Dad

Tiffany said...

even if you hadn't brought cherry bombs, it still would have been the best idea ever! The cherry bombs were just the icing on the cake ;)
I laughed out loud at some of this...I almost forgot about my twisted ankle!!! But you forgot to mention we are all now tv stars in Japan!

Sarah said...

I love that you just packed up and drove to Chicago. Love it. It looks like it was such a great trip! The pictures of you guys on the sky deck make me a little queasy just looking at them! I can't believe you got everyone out there, it looks like it was completely worth all the effort :)

JoAnna said...

FUN!!

Lexie said...

What a great trip, I want to try the sky deck, it looks amazing!

Andrea McEntire said...

What fun weekend getaway! I'm glad that you guys got to spend some quality time with the fam, especially since you won't have the chance here in a few months. I loved Alex's reaction-so Alex. And Noah's gleeful face is priceless.