our family news: My kind of town...

Our first stop in Chicago was the Museum of Science and Industry. It is enormous. Our favorite exhibits were this one about farming which had a full size harvester that the kids could get in and pretend to drive and...

...this one. This is an exhibit that was put together by Swiss Tourism and hightlights all the wonderful things there are to see in Switzerland. There is a small metal ball that travels on tracks and activates different things. Tanner and Ella were completely fascinated. We could have spent hours just watching that ball.

We had lunch at one of our favorite Chicago-style hot dog places, Portillos. It reminds me of the soup-nazi episodes on Seinfeld as there seems to be a lot of pressure to order and to do so quickly. Neither Marc nor I ended up with what we really wanted! We then went to the Lego store, which for Tanner may have been the highlight of the trip. This is a man made completely of legos that Ella is sitting on. Amazing!

After the Lego store, we decided to try to beat the worst of the traffic and head back to the hotel. We went home by way of our old house and showed Tanner the hospital that he was born in and where I worked. I think that was more fun for Marc and I than for Tanner! We drove through a little rain on our way there and didn't think much of it. When we tried to go back to our hotel, we found that the storm had been much worse there and that there were power lines down for about a mile right in front of our hotel. The policemen told us to go to dinner and it should be cleaned up in a couple of hours. That was at 5:30 or so. Finally after dinner, driving around for an hour or so and talking to 4 or 5 policemen, we managed to find the road that ran behind our hotel and literally sneaked in the back door. (It was almost 10:00) The picture below is the scene outside our hotel. Yes, that is the utility pole on the road.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel and Marc and Ella went for a swim. Navy Pier and the Chicago Children's Museum were the agenda for the rest of the day. There was something for everyone. We even enjoyed a steel drum concert for a few minutes.