Mommathon

I HIGHLY recommend having your car detailed. My car has not been really truly super cleaned in five years and my gracious in-laws paid for me to have my car detailed as a birthday present. With kids and crackers and pretzels and raisins along with just the everyday stuff that trashes a car, if was nice to have it cleaned. It is like having a new car and it is SO shiny both inside and out!

Highly overrated

We got LOTS of chocolate at the Hershey store. If you want some please come and get it. The boys filled a bucket FULL.

We have been to several children’s museums and this one was the best by far! It was three stories of fun, fun, fun!



Family Art Class

This is where we had lunch. When kids order a pizza, they get to make it.

Navy Pier

We had dinner here. It was super yummy. I think they are owned by the Cheesecake Factory people. The menu was very similar and the inside of the restaurant seemed very similar, too.

We couldn’t take a lot of pictures of the animals here, so I had to take pictures of the signs instead. The neatest thing we saw here was a dolphin show. Colm about fell out of his seat when all five of the dolphins jumped out of the water at the same time. It was fun watching Colm watch the dolphins.

The boys got snakes painted on their arms.


Dinner…I loved it…they had cups with lids!

We took a carriage ride around the city. This was one of Colm’s favorite activities. It was a nice tour and we even got to see where Oprah lives.

We had this yummy place right across from our hotel. The first time we ate there, I had scrambled eggs with bacon, tomatoes, fresh spinach and blue cheese mixed in. Yummers!

We then headed off to the zoo.



This bear cracked me up! Look at its tongue. I don’t know if it was just really hot or what! The sign said she had just had jaw surgery, so maybe she just couldn’t keep her mouth shut.

This place was not originally on our agenda. I didn’t even know it existed, but my aunt, who used to live in Chicago, told me about it. Luckily, it is right next to the zoo. The boys liked this place better than the zoo, so I am glad we went.

Liam in a beaver dam
They were having a special exhibit about robots which was the hit of the day for all THREE of the boys in our family.


On the way to dinner, the boys posed next to this cool mailbox.


We had dinner here. It was a DISASTER! It was a really nice restaurant, both of the boys spilled their drinks, Liam was crying…ugh! I will say, however, that it was probably the best Italian food I have had in a long time…too bad I didn’t get to enjoy it.

We’re back! Chicago was quite an adventure…from a cranky, sleep-deprived three year old to busses breaking down because of the heat…but we made it and managed to enjoy ourselves at the same time. Here are some pics from our first day…

We dropped off our stuff at our hoteland headed off to the Sears Tower. We must have looked like lost tourists because as we were standing outside our hotel trying to figure out where to go, a very nice man who was headed out of town gave us his bus passes that were still good for another four days. We found the bus stop and we were on our way. We were still a little unsure about where we needed to get off though. We must have looked lost again, because this very nice woman sitting next to me on the bus told us exactly what we needed to do. I asked her another question about the busses. She didn’t know so she asked the stranger sitting next to her who was also very helpful. Very nice people, those Chicagoans.

View from Sears Tower

Going on the elevator makes your ears pop

We had a yummy dinner here. One complaint I have about eating with children in Chicago. Very few places we went had cups for kids with lids. I can’t even tell you how many drinks we spilled.

After dinner, we headed over to Michigan Avenue to see Garmin’s only retail store. It opened last fall and we heard a lot about it from those who went to the grand opening, so it was fun to see it in person.

Some kids hide behind their mother’s legs, some kids go hide in another room. Not my kids. They react to new people by acting like a couple of crazed monkeys. So, today, Mrs. Doolittle, Colm’s teacher, came to visit. Oh my! They were crazy, especially when she first got here. Things did settle down after a while, enough for her to read them a book. She assured me she has three boys and completely understands, but still couldn’t they just act normal for a while? I held onto the door and laughed to myself for a second after she left. Please, dear God, don’t let her think this is how my children act on a regular normal day.

Well, we thought we knew where Liam was tonight-in bed. He wasn’t. He was laying on the floor as flat as a pancake as quiet as could be on the landing above our family room watching TV. Yep! He decided he wasn’t tired, but knew he was supposed to be in bed, so he snuck a little extra TV time in. So, he watched an hour long Nova documentary on dinosaurs and an hour of Star Trek. The funniest part was how he got caught. I went upstairs to go get the cat out of our bedroom and there he was. The look on his face was priceless. Busted!

The boys took an art class this month through Gymboree that is just like the one Colm took last fall, only it is for siblings. The boys had a great time and it was a good way for them to get to do something together before they head their separate ways for school in a few short weeks.





Liam as Darth Sidious-these are actually little magician’s capes that he has fashioned into this Star Wars getup.

Sean and I are trying to figure out what to do about carseats and traveling. I know you don’t need them for the airplane, but what about when we get there? We don’t plan on renting a car, but what about when we get in a taxi? We can’t drag carseats with us all over the city, but we also need to be safe. What to do? I found this website where you can rent all kinds of stuff for kids and babies when you travel, so maybe they can help us.