Well, the time has come for my kids to visit Grandma and Grandpa by themselves. Amidst the tears they left this afternoon for a week of fun and games with Grandma and some evenings of fishing with Grandpa.
On Friday, after a wonderful meal, thank you Jeremy for grilling the meat and Anouk for making the beans and organizing everything, we took the family to our newly discovered spot to view the city's 4th of July fireworks. It was another great show and we did not have to pay a dime. Wonderful !!
Yesterday we went galavanting off to Chicago to give the parents the great Chicago train experience. Dad is not fond of big cities and hates driving through them, so we thought it might be nice to show them how wonderful the transporation system is and how great Chicago is once you learn the loops.
Jeremy, Anouk, our girls, us, the Grandparents, and Uncle Josh enjoyed the nice uneventful train ride, followed by a wonderful lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in downtown Chicago--actually in the basement of the John Hancock Center.
We then took a bus to the Lincoln Park Zoo, a FREE zoo right in the park district along Lake Michigan. We could not have asked for better weather. The beaches were crowded with half naked bodies worshipping the sun. We found it to be a wonderful zoo and look forward to going back and seeing more of it sometime soon.
After that we went back to Michigan Avenue, also known as the Magnificent Mile. It has all the upscale shops like American Girl, Bloomingdales, Macy's, 5th Avenue, Apple, Niketown, etc... , and walked a short distance on it.
Finally to top off the day we ended up at Navy Pier and had lunch and enjoyed the cool breeze off the lake for a little while.
We then hopped back on our bus, to get to our train, to get to our van, to get home, and in the end, I think it was a success.