Chicago (Part I)

Be forewarned. This post is nothing but a long travelogue. If you're not into that kind of thing, then stop while you can.

Saturday May 3rd, 2008
We left on our flight Saturday morning to Chicago. As Alison already mentioned, Ada was just horrible on the flight. She was good on takeoff and landing but during the middle of the flight she threw a fit like no other. She screamed for a good 45 minutes - 1 hour straight and there was nothing that we could do to calm her down. She would flail her arms and legs, arch her back, try and push us away and just show us how little she wanted to be held (and we only had 2 seats between the three of us). At one point even a steward on the flight came and took her from our arms and stood with her in the very back of the plane. Nothing seemed to help. Chances are good that we did this to ourselves though. Ada sleeps great but she will only sleep when she is in her own seat or bed. She simply won't allow herself to fall asleep in our arms. When Ada originally started getting fussy on the flight, we gave her a bit of Benadryl trying to get her to fall asleep. This obviously made her tired, but like I mentioned earlier, she won't sleep in our arms so she became inconsolable. It was the longest 3 hour flight of our lives. The nice thing was that nobody got angry at us. As we were trying to console her everybody just looked at us with sympathetic eyes. We were embarrassed enough as it was.

We arrived in Chicago 20 minutes early and as we pulled into the terminal the captain made sure to mention that "you always remember when we're late, this time remember that we were early." They proceeded to have problems getting the door open and we ended up deplaning about 20 minutes after we pulled in. Cancel out that early arrival.

Angie and Hyrum (Alison's sister and her husband) were there (gratefully) to pick us up at the airport and we had an uneventful ride into town (and Ada fell asleep almost immediately once she was in the car). We picked up sandwiches at an Italian place in town and headed back to their apartment. They live in a building right on Lake Michigan between Navy Pier and Grant Park. Their apartment is a penthouse on the 54th floor (while to Utahns that is an amazing height, in Chicago their building seemed even a little squatty). When you first walk into their apartment you can't really be prepared for the incredible view. The first time that we saw it both Alison and I were a little dizzy because the whole outside wall is made of windows. In the following picture, their building is the black one on the far left and their apartment is one-half of the top floor of the circular turret (the picture was taken on Navy Pier).

Sunday May 4th, 2008
Today we went to church with the Marstons. Their building is about a 20 minute drive from their apartment. The ward was pretty good sized with a bunch of younger couples and lots of missionaries. Ada loved the nursery (as she always does). We went on a walk along the boardwalk that afternoon which was beautiful.

Monday May 5th, 2008
We spent most of this trip catering to Ada's schedule. We would do something small during the morning and then come back to the apartment and put Ada down for a nap while Alison and I napped or read. Today the Chicago Children's Museum was free for kids so we decided to take advantage of that. Of course it was crowded and we had to pay for the adults, but we saved $9 by fighting the crowds. It was a good museum and Ada had fun playing in places that were relatively uncrowded. The only time she would get angry was when she wanted to drive the pretend bus, ambulance or car and somebody was already in the driver's seat. Here's a slide show of her good times:

Tuesday May 6th, 2008
One slick thing about the Chicago Public Library System is that each branch has a couple of free passes to the various museums around town. You can check them out for a week and it's really hit and miss whether you will score one or not. Through the library Hyrum managed to score us a free pass to the Shedd Aquarium on the shores of Lake Michigan. We used this pass Tuesday morning. We took the El a few stops south and walked to the aquarium. This panoramic picture was taken looking from the edge of the aquarium looking northward (Ang and Hyrum's building is the second from the right).

We don't have really any good pictures from the aquarium. Here's one with Ada and the turtles:

That night we won a drawing for the chance to buy cheap tickets to Wicked (see my post about this here). Pregnant ladies are always lucky and we were happy to have use of Alison's luck during this drawing and throughout the trip.

Wednesday May 7th, 2008
We didn't really have anything planned for today so we walked around the downtown loop, ate lunch in some government food court (where the governor was giving a presentation for Asian-American Appreciation Month) and then rode the train up to Wrigleyville where we took pictures in front of Wrigley Field.



That night we had the obligatory (and delicious) Chicago style pizza at Giordano's (or something). It was FANTASTIC. I love pizza. We were also planning on going to the White Sox game that night but as we were getting ready to leave the pizza place we saw that there was a big rain delay. We were glad that we didn't try and go to the game that night because it was delayed for almost 90 minutes.
Tune in soon for part II!