Spring Break -- Chicago style

AJ and I decided to take the girls to Chicago for a day/night during our Spring break. And I decided to hand over the reigns and let AJ do a post about our trip (although I was responsible for the photos). He was quite excited to have the opportunity to be a GUEST blogger on my blog, but I keep having to remind him that he is just a "GUEST" so hands off -- start your own blog, honey :)!

“Look Lia…it’s the Serious tower,” said six-year-old Lily as we entered the outskirts of Chicago. “I want to see it too,” said three-year-old Lia looking out the wrong window.

And so it went on our impromptu Spring Break to the windy city.

First, a whirlwind tour of the museum of Science and Industry where the girls learned about everything from the essentials of milking a cow and robot manufacturing to how steam and jet engines work. Their favorite? The same as at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum (the one that’s 20 minutes from our house) – the “idea factory” section where they played in the indoor water trough with plastic shapes. They left soaked but happy.

Next, we headed to Chicago’s China Town area. Overcome with excitement after getting out of the car and starting our walk toward the main street, Lily screamed, “I’m Chinese,” at the top of her lungs drawing attention to the fact that her mother and I, are not. Rather amusing.

China Town is relatively small, but we had a good time looking in the nick knack shops and seeing a few ducks hanging in restaurant windows. We eventually picked a restaurant that had just opened earlier in the week – we were a bit skeptical. Turns out, the food was pretty good and Lily ate her body weight in chicken. Amazingly, Lia actually ate some chicken. Could be because she was hungry, could be because she was among her people and felt obligated.

We headed back to the hotel where we endured a long night of the girls refusing to sleep and Dawn freaking out at 4 a.m. and wanting to switch beds. When I went in and tried to sleep in Lia’s bed, things weren’t much better.

After a long night, we decided the girls were still cute enough to take to the American Girl Store, where we dropped a wad on two dolls. At first Lily wanted the blond haired, blue eyed version. Gotta tell ya, I wasn’t about to let that happen. She still harbors a fascination with the Nordic princess look, but I’m trying to keep reminding her that people who look like her are the most beautiful people in the world. So, I made sure they ended up with the Chinese-looking dolls.

We had already visited the Lego store and walked a bunch up and down Michigan.

We were exhausted and hopped in the car when we got back to the hotel and headed for home. About an hour from home, poor Lia lost her lunch…which really consisted of nothing more than multi-colored fish crackers. It was a beautiful end to a fun couple of days.