My kind of town, Chicago is...

We finally made it back to Chicago! It's been four years since we've been there (for Jared's certification exams) and we've been wanting to go back ever since. For those of you who don't know, we lived in Chicago for six months back in 2002 when Jared went to Northwestern for his Orthotic schooling. We had the time of our lives living there right on Lake Shore Drive and visiting museums, eating out at all the great restaurants, and just enjoying big city life. Then we moved to Michigan to do a residency and had kids and just haven't made it back. Well, we finally got the chance with a work-related conference and so I lined up some great babysitters for the girls and we took off for three days! Here's Jared visiting his old stomping grounds. Do you think he planned to wear that?

The Wrigley Building across from our hotel. Isn't the city beautiful at night? We walked up and down the Magnificent Mile a couple times going to different places and it was fun to remember all our favorite stores and restaurants. We went to the Cheesecake Factory for dinner one night and Ghiradelli's for ice cream another night. We walked up to the Hancock Tower on Michigan Ave, over to Northwestern University and Navy Pier, down along the lake front, and back in along the Chicago River the first night.

I was really there, see? I wasn't just dreaming!

The next day I walked around for hours south of the river and came across this by the Art Museum. It's called the Bean and reflects the buildings and skyline and was just really different and cool. It wasn't there back in 2002, I'm pretty sure I would remember it!

I also did an Architectural boat tour which was really cool. I learned more things about all these skyscrapers in 90 min than I learned from 6 months wandering around and reading two guide books before. This was the one thing that I really wanted to do this trip because I didn't take the time to do it back then.

Here we are eating at our favorite restaurant, Giordano's Pizza, which lived up to the expectations we had built up in our minds the past four years. We could eat this everyday (we used to almost once a week) but good thing we don't now! I don't know what we're laughing at but doesn't that pizza look heavenly?

This was the first time we've been away from both kids overnight and I was a little nervous about how they would do but they (and the babysitter) did great, everyone survived and was alive when we got back. It was nice to not have to worry about the kid's schedules and all their stuff (strollers, diapers, clothes, food, tantrums in public, etc.) for just a few days and to visit some of our favorite places.

We did good representing UM while we were there, notice Jared's shirt and hat. And I had a UM umbrella which came in handy since it rained all day Friday and Saturday. It didn't put a damper on our mood, though, because we were in Chicago, baby, without the babies! It doesn't get much better than that!