and finally.............CHICAGO!

o.k. so i'm sure all 5 of you who actually read this blog of mine are delighted that there is finally another post. and one that has been promised for some time. but it's already been a rough june, so there's my excuse. but i'll put a whole 'nother blog about june being rough if it indeed does turn out that way.

ANYWAY.......below are a few of my favorites from chicago. there are SO SO many others, but i just picked 13. for those of you who don't know much about our trip, here's a quick run-down:

may 20th - 5:44 p.m. -tommy, suzanne, mary peyton board amtrak in jackson headed for chicago

7:37 p.m. - stella jumps on the train with us in greenwood to go with us to chicago. contrary to what some people thought, she did not go to babysit. if anything, tommy did the babysitting and stella and i shopped!

may 21st - 8:35 a.m. - arrive in chicago!

may 24th - 8:00 p.m. - depart chicago

may 25th - 9:10 a.m. - stella jumps off the train in greenwood

11:00 a.m. - tommy, suzanne, mary peyton get off the train in jackson.

we have done this train trip before (i've gone twice before) so we knew what we were getting in to. but we love it. such a neat, different vacation! mary peyton loved the "choo choo train". hopefully we can take a trip to new orleans to the zoo & aquarium sometime before too long! anybody up for a weekend trip?!?!?!?

this was the view out of our hotel window. the tall building is the john hancock building.

i wasted NO TIME getting to a jamba juice. it is the most incredible smoothie place EVER. don't even think about comparing it to smoothie king or some other sub-standard place. this is FOR REAL!!! i even got stella hooked! and needless to say, we went to jamba juice once or twice a day while we were there - and mary peyton got her share, too!!!



we took mary peyton to the american girl doll store. we didn't get her much for her birthday because i wanted to get her a bitty baby while we were at the american girl store. well, you see what she really wanted. and please know that a royal fit was pitched when we didn't buy this pricy stroller. oh well.....she'll get over it. the little stroller i got at a garage sale for $0.50 will do just fine, thank you.



oh my gosh....this is stella, mary peyton (before she threw passy away - another post in itself!!!!), and mr. lego man. when we took wilson to chicago with us on the train 3 years ago, i took his picture with this same lego man. we just thought this was funny. however, i don't remember the bird and egg that he currently has. hmmmmm...



me and stella at the top of the john hancock building. it was so awesome to go up this again! wilson and i went up 3 years ago - tommy did, too. but for those of you who don't know my husband well, he isn't much for heights. in fact stella texted him from the top calling him a scaredy cat (he took mary peyton back to the hotel for a nap - how convenient). the view from the top of this thing is incredible. maybe one day i'll go up the sears tower.....

mary peyton was in SUCH a good mood at the hard rock cafe that i had to take advantage of the situation and get a good picture! is she not precious!!!!!!!

this is at the chicago children's museum, which is on the navy pier. there is SO much to do on the navy pier and the museum is great. mary peyton had such a good time - and slid down this little slide more times than i can count.

stella and tommy at the chicago children's museum. yes, they are children. glad i was there to serve as the adult!! haha

if you read what i've been putting under the pictures, you'll know that there was NO WAY tommy was going up the ferris wheel with me. so stella and i paid our money and hopped on. once we started up and got a little apprehensive about how high we really were going, she said, "i've always wanted to ride a ferris wheel. wait....this is supposed to be romantic?" i don't know about romantic, but it was fun looking down at mary peyton and tommy - they looked like ants!!

stella and i went down to the old marshall fields store (macy's has bought it now). on the way, we saw the newscasters doing a broadcast, so we stopped to watch - after grabbing a jamba juice!!! the chicago sign was behind us, so we made like tourists and snapped a pic!

what trip to chicago would be complete (at least for tommy) without a trip to ESPN Zone. it really was awesome. we even got mary peyton a shirt that says "yes i'm a woman...yes i know the game...yes i watch espn.". yep - a girl after her daddy's heart!



doing some last minute shopping before getting on the train. i was in one store, stella was in another. i came out and this is what i found. guess we wore them out, huh?

stella and wilson when we got to greenwood.

we had SUCH a great time. the weather was perfect. for the most part mary peyton was good - she was a little crabby the first day...we all were! we'd been on the train all night and were just tired! but we got to see some things we had not seen before and make new memories!

thanks, stella, for going with us "old people" and hanging out! hopefully we can plan another trip soon!