whobody loved chicago? (part 1)

As I have mentioned, we took a little trip to Chicago at the beginning of this week. We are very lucky to have friends and family that live in all sorts of cool places to visit (chicago, kansas city, st louis...(watch out wyse family...you are on our list)....milwaukee....madison...)....so we can take a vacation there AND visit our loved ones.  Two birds with one stone....so to speak.

The lucky recipient of our family vacation this summer was Jason's brother "Chicago Tom".  He lives in Chicago (obviously) and this is our 3rd trip to see him.  These trips have been a great way for us to get to know Tom and spend some time with him other than holiday meals!

We took off on Sunday morning with all intentions of going to church first, and then driving to Dubuque to visit Cora, and then driving to Chicago. Well, of course, Cruz fell asleep on the way to Guttenberg....so I made the executive decision to skip church and head right to Dubuque. I figured that we would be 'pushing it' with the Cruz-Ship enough throughout the trip that we didn't need to mess with his schedule already!

We visited with Tessa, Steve and Cora for a little bit, then headed on our way.  The kids were excellent on the trip (it is only a 4 hour drive) and they love to watch movies in the car.  We got to our hotel, and Cruz and I chilled in the room, while the rest of the family went swimming! Then Uncle Tom met us at our hotel and we headed to downtown Naperville for supper and a walk by the river (now, a tradition for this trip).

Supper was at Giordano's....and was excellent. This is our 2nd time there....and we loved it. The kids even ate great...they love pizza.  We also ordered calamari for an appetizer...2 of our children wouldn't even try it...but one of our children LOVED it!!! Guess who?

Yep...Nash.  I said I wanted to take a picture of him eating calamari...so he kept posing like this... My apologies for the "see-food".

After supper, we walked a couple of blocks down to the river.  The kids LOVE this....although it was hot, Cruz was fine too!  This picture above was my attempt at  getting a picture of all 4...pretty tough to do, by the way.

Lola really LOVES vacation...and she LOVES Uncle Tom.

This is pretty much how the whole river is... a sidewalk, next to the river. Although it made me VERY anxious...the kids loved to walk along the river and check out the ducks and fish.  I just followed along with the stroller....and Cruz...well, he slept!

Of course....Lola always has to PUSH it....I kept saying to not get too close to the edge....but THIS was how she stood the whole time!

Keaton was e.x.c.e.l.l.e.n.t for the whole vacation. He is Mr. Helpful...and Mr. Responsible....and Mr. Happy...the whole time.

Another attempt at a picture of all 4.... I would try to get them to look at the camera... Nash would always say "CHEESE!!!!" but be looking somewhere else the whole time!

Then, of course, "Nashy want to hold Baby Cruzy!"....so we let him...and Keaton had to get behind him so he didn't fall backwards. Cruz is BIG!  We had a great first night!