Whew, What A Week!

This past week we had my family visiting with us. My mom and 2 of my sisters Amy and Cassie came for their first visit to Chicago, a.k.a. chi-town, the windy city, the second city, chicagoland. You can't help but love this city! There's so much to see and do! I of course had a blast taking them around to see all the big sites, and it was a great excuse to be off work for a whole week! They got here on the 4th and we had a very American evening-- we went to a White Sox game, ate hot dogs, and watched fireworks. All we needed to top off the evening was some apple pie! The fireworks there were actually REALLY good, and since we were in the stadium the music playing sounded great! I'd even do it again next year. The next day we did all the downtown stuff-- Sears Tower, the "el", Chicago River, Michigan Ave, Millenium Park, the "bean," we saw Wicked, and even had time to squeeze in the Taste of Chicago and the Art Museum! It was an exhausting day! Friday and Saturday we went to Nauvoo and Carthage. We saw the opening night of the Nauvoo pageant, it was great! It was quite hot there though, and the intense humidity is kinda hard to handle for folks from dry AZ! The rest of the time they were here we went to lake and the beach, the Lincoln Park Zoo, the Nature Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry, and ate Chicago-style stuffed crust pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs. We tried to pack in as much as we could and had so much fun!! There are still so many things we didn't have a chance to do and see, so my mom is already planning what she wants to do during her next trip here! Perhaps we can schedule time to see Oprah. :) This was a great trip for my family becasue they don't travel too much. They loved Chicago, and I think it was an eye-opening experience for them! I still couldn't convince them to move here. :) So come visit Chicago so you too can see just what a great and beautiful city it is! It's even fun in the winter. ;)