July Madness {Chicago: Sky Deck & Millennium Park}

We had extremely gracious friends who hosted all nine of us in the suburbs.  I mean, really gracious… taking on the Wolfe Pack, plus my parents.  We were blessed by them, big time.  They made us breakfast every morning, gave us great advice on how to best do things in the city, and most of all, it was just good to see them.  Christy and Becky were the first friends I made at Moody.  I love that 20 years later, we still can pick up where left off.  

So the first morning, we decided to take the train into the city.  It was a highlight for the kids.  Sometimes you don't know what they will think is really great.  Graham said the train was one of his favorite parts of the trip.  The train is one of those double decker commuter trains.  It was fun to watch them as they looked out the window and took in the big city for the first time.  

We were on the train for a good 90 minutes, so we did some planning.  Chris bought us all City Passes on his phone (these were GREAT, but I'll talk more about that later).  And we decided to go to the Sky Deck since the train spits you out closest to that location.   

Their first view of Willis Tower (it's hard for me to call it Willis Tower because it was the Sears Tower when I lived there).  If you look close, you can see the Sky Decks.  Perk #1 of the City Pass… you don't have to wait in line!  We got to walk right up to the elevator.

When we first got up to the top, Samuel was afraid to go close to the window.  He looks a little bit unhappy here, don't you think?  I guess you don't know if you're afraid of extreme heights until you get 100 floors up.

Taking it all in.

Nathan, on the other hand, is afraid of nothing.  He was eating up the whole experience.

Hmmm.  Who looks the most scared in this photo?  Actually, Asher looks a bit apprehensive himself.

A little pep talk from Grandma.

My five hovering out over the city.

Again, Nathan was fascinated.  I think he would have laid on the thing for hours watching the happenings of the city.

The boys had to do push-ups, of course.  Because they're boys.

And look who would not let his little brothers out do him? ;)

The rest of the day, we just walked around the city.  We stopped here to run… this plaza is crazy busy on a weekday, but not on a Sunday.  We were the only ones there.

We wandered over to Millennium Park.  It's pretty cool.  There was a little concert going on… it was really loud and the boys had fun dancing around.

I married a pretty handsome guy :)

We crossed the street and walked along Lake Michigan for a mile or two.  Then we discovered Jopie had a blister (somehow he was wearing Crocs instead of his tennis shoes that day) so we took a cab back to the train station.  Six people in the backseat.  The boys loved piling in.

It was a good first day.