Family Vacation 2011

As I mentioned in the last post, we've been on a family trip this summer!  Bear with me... this will be a looooong post.  We were gone 12 days...

First we hit up St. Louis.   While Jim finished up his work week there, Jack, Emma, and I went to the famous City Museum. It sounded like SUCH a fun place, and the three of us were super excited.  Jack had a blast.  Emma had major issues.

In case you're unfamiliar with this place, I could sufficiently describe it as "a good place to lose your kid".  I talked to another friend recently, and he described it as a place where he thought to himself, "We could die here," more than once.  It's an equally good description. 

If I go further into detail, I would sum up the City Museum as big factory building of mazes.  Intricate (and sometimes very dark) passageways wind all around the large, multilevel building.  Passageways will sometimes lead you to huge slides that land somewhere else in the building entirely OR spots through which no adult on Earth can pass OR very, very, very high places without much to hold onto.  (Yes, I fell once.  What?) Anyway, it was the heights with unstable and see-through footings that scared Emma. Whoa!  It was a scream fest. 

Pictures like this one make me feel like sort of a bad mother.  She's frozen in fear here.  Although it's hard to get perspective, the ground is far below.  And the way OUT and DOWN to the ground is really tough to identify.  Mazes of bars.  Everywhere.  This sort of scenario was pretty descriptive of all four hours we spent there.  I'm not sure why I stayed so long.  I just kept thinking, "there's got to be some part of this she'll like".  There wasn't.

St. Louis City Museum.  It's not for this kid.

It was a rocky start to the vacation, but it got better. Next, was Racine, Wisconsin where Jim participated in a half Ironman.  This destination was chosen because Wisconsin is supposed to feature 70-80 degree daytime temperatures at this time of year.  During our stay, temps hung out around 95 degrees.  It was a major heat wave just in time for Jim's big event, and the weather was insufferable.  But Jim completed his race, and we were proud.  He's an insane person rockstar.

Here are a few shots from the race:

Morning of... looking focused

Putting on a wetsuit is quite a task

Preparing for swim start

Rounding corner out of swim to bike transition

Big Finish!

Next was our culminating destination... Chicago!!!  I'd never been before, and I was excited!  On our first day there, we learned an important lesson... it is CRITICAL on the pocketbook to use Chicago's public transportation system instead of your own vehicle.  The parking fees are a killer.  So on day number two, we took a crash course on navigating the city by train and bus.  It was a little confusing at first, but after a day of some goof-ups, we got it down.  Here's my family posing in what I like to call "bus mode". 

Days 2-5 in Chicago were spent at museums and Chicago attractions such as:

1. Shedd Aquarium

2.  Rainforest Cafe

3.  Navy Pier

Huge, huge, huge ferris wheel

Jack and the ferris wheel view

Emma on the carousel

Taking a speedboat fireworks cruise that evening

View of the nighttime skyline from the speedboat

4.  Adler Planetarium

5.  And of course, Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower)

 Willis Tower features the "Skydeck" attraction which is basically a set of four retractable glass "boxes" that protrude out from the observation floor of the building.  If you look closely at the picture above, you can see them well.  When you walk out into these glass boxes, you truly get a feel for the enormous drop below your feet.  My father-in-law, I'm sure, is wanting to know if I walked out into the glass boxes.  I'm proud to say that I did!  I did!  And even when I was sure I wouldn't, it was no sweat.

Here are some cool pictures of us being really, really brave.

Miscellaneous blooper photos that didn't make the cut...

Emma at her finest.

Us on a train.  But that's not the point...  what makes me laugh about this picture is Creepy Mr. Green back there on the right.  Something about his reflection makes him look as if he's peering in rather than sitting just a few seats down. We turned the camera around to look at our shot and couldn't stop laughing at the that-just-doesn't-look-right factor.

But then again, it was approaching midnight and there's a chance we could've been a little bit slaphappy.  Just a little bit.

Taking a big city trip is tiring! 

Can you tell?

We had a great time and are glad to be home!