A relatively successful trip....

This past weekend Kevin and I took a kind of vacation. We were going to head up to the suburbs to reunite with my college roomies, and I convinced Kevin to take two extra days off to go up and spend a night in Chicago. Kevin said that was fine, as long as I booked a good hotel room. Well, I decided to use Priceline because my sister has had luck with that in Chicago. Anyway, I was less lucky, but I'll get to that.
Thursday morning we were on our way. We had plans to stop in Bloomington-Normal to have lunch with my friend Laura and her family and to see her new house. It was a perfect lunch, and Gus got a chance to eat and play and be out of his carseat for a bit. Then we were on our way to the city, hoping to get there before rush hour. Unfortunately, we hit either an accident or construction (we never figured it out) and it took us an hour to go 2 miles at one point, which meant we hit the city right at 4pm. Nightmare. Anyway, we eventually made it to our hotel and got checked in.
Our hotel was in a nice neighborhood, called the Gold Coast. As fate would have it, it was a block away from where my cousin Amy lived for 5 years until a month ago....figures. It was a neat old building (built in 1926) but left much to be desired. Just pretty shabby overall. The added touch was that as soon as we checked in, I went to the bathroom and the toilet didn't flush. Awesome.
Regardless of our hotel and getting there a little late, we continued on with our (my) plans for the evening. We took the train downtown to Millenium Park. I love this place but Kevin was unimpressed.
Here's our only family photo from the trip.
Kevin being unimpressed by the bean
Regardless, I still love the bean! My favorite piece of public art, perhaps....
So we walked through Millenium Park, and discovered a walkway to the new Modern Wing at the Art Institute - my other planned stop for the evening.
We lucked out because the Art Institute is free after 5pm on Thursdays. So that was nice because it saved us $36, but it was crazy busy as you might expect. So we just saw a few things there and checked out the new building before we headed on to dinner. Here's Gus and his classic smile along with Dad at the Art Institute.
Waiting for the train to go to dinner

So, I love pizza. And I love Chicago style pizza. So I asked my friend Shannon for a recommendation, and her favorite was Gino's East. So that's where we headed for dinner. When we got close, we realized there was a giant line.....I had no idea this place was such an institution. Gus was starving, so while we waited in line I gave him a banana and made a giant mess. We finally got a table and ordered, and then Gus had a dirty diaper, which of course was on his clothes. So he got his clothes changed. Then I gave him his dinner, which he promptly threw up everywhere. It was a fun time. Despite all this drama, the pizza was AWESOME. We enjoyed it with a pitcher of Goose Island 312, so life was good. So back to the hotel we went.

This is Gus trying to bite my face at Gino's East....it's his new favorite thing to do.
Friday morning, we woke up and went to breakfast at a little cafe in Amy's old building. Good food! Then it was my plan to walk around the Gold Coast area to see some of the cool old houses, and then up through Lincoln Park and the zoo and maybe along the shore of the lake a bit. Kevin said he didn't really want to walk anywhere, and I said Gus and I would go by ourselves. So we meandered through the park. Half of the zoo was closed for construction and I wasn't overly impressed with what I did see, but hey, it was free. Then I went to the Conservatory which was pretty cool considering I like plants and all. Here is Gus and the conservatory:

This was right inside the main door of the conservatory - very nice!

After Gus and I walked, we went back and checked out of the hotel. Then we drove a few miles north to see my friend Shannon's relatively new condo - very nice place! After that, we went with Shannon to the Goose Island Clyborne Pub, basically the Goose Island equivalent of the Tap Room. Shannon and I both chose to try flights of beers, while Kevin got a 'Hefe-Hawks-win' - the name of their hefeweizen which was named in a contest. The beer was good, the food was good, everything was good.
Here is my flight. Yum!
After Goose Island, we decided to get the hell out of dodge. It was nearly 2 and we thought we'd beat the traffic. WRONG! It took us about an hour and a half to drive the 20 miles to Downers Grove where Katrina and Brad live. CRAZY!!!!
Unfortunately not all of my pictures have uploaded from my camera to my computer yet (we have this wireless photo card but for some reason only some uploaded and I'm too lazy to manually do it right now) but here is a picture of Gus playing with the truck Erikka gave him for his first birthday - it's his first birthday present ever!
But after we got to Katrina's Friday, we waited for Anna and Erikka to arrive and then we ordered pizza and sat around. Saturday we went to the Downer's Grove farmers market, and then it was Katrina's shower. It was by far the fanciest shower I've ever been to - at a restaurant with a 3 course meal! Hopefully one of the other girls will send me the picture of us all dressed up at the shower..... Kevin and Brad went to a microbrewery and drank for the 4 hours we were at the shower, and then that evening we grilled brats for dinner and sat around some more. Sunday we headed home after we got everything together in the morning - Kevin wanted to get some work done at home. But the chicken coop is finally almost done - it better be done in time for the chickens to be released at the coop warming party saturday!
So all in all, it was a good trip. I don't believe I'm ever going back to Chicago with Kevin again, so if anyone else wants to go, let me know ;) Gus was soooo good, and so flexible to having a modified schedule every day based on what we were doing. I'm so lucky to have such a good little boy!