Chris's birthday trip!

For Chris's birthday this year I got him tickets to the North Carolina/Valparaiso basketball game which was played in Chicago this past Saturday! Chris is a huge Tarheel fan so this was very exciting to him. And, of course I had other motives.....spending a weekend in Chicago!!! We had such a wonderful time! Gigi and Papa (Chris's parents) came here to stay with Jack while we went to Chicago. It's only about 3 hours from here but we had decided we would take the megabus so that we wouldn't have to drive and pay to park in Chicago.

So, Friday morning Chris's dad dropped us off downtown at the bus stop in the middle of the morning fog on Indianapolis.
Well, we stood there and stood there with all the other passengers and the fog continued to lift...
But, guess what? Our bus NEVER showed up! Did we get an alert by our phone like we were supposed to? No! Finally about 10 minutes after we were supposed to leave, someone finally got through to megabus and they said our bus had been cancelled due to weather. Our options were to wait around for the 11:45 bus or get a refund. So, we opted for a refund and Chris's dad came back to pick us up and in about 30 minutes we were on our way driving to Chicago!
The drive was gorgeous with all the snow (the roads were just fine) and we had fun just talking and hanging out in the car. We got to our hotel at about the same time we would have gotten there if we had been on the bus and then taken public transportation to the hotel. We had to pay $26 to park for 24 hours and then another $12 to park at the game before heading home. But, at least we made it! And, it was so much fun!

After we got all checked in we braved the cold and the snow (which just means that all the side walks were very slushy and wet) and set out to explore this city that neither one of us had ever been to! We walked to Navy Pier and then once we got there I made Chris walk all the way to the end of the pier so we could look out over the half frozen Lake Michigan! It was pretty desserted and lots of Christmas music was playing so it was just kind of fun. Here we are at the end of the pier! We walked back on the inside part of the pier!!!
We took a free trolley back towards town and went and found a yummy pizza place for an early dinner! We very much enjoyed our chicago pizza and the warmth of the restaurant. Then, we headed to Daley Plaza for their annual Christmas market which is modeled after the Christmas markets in Germany. It was great and they had this huge tree in the middle of the plaza which was gorgeous.
Then, from there we headed over to Macy's (which used to be the famous Marshall Field department store) just to "window shop." We did go inside and ended up on the 5th floor where they have an F.A.O. Schwartz toy store. To our surprise, everything was 50% off. So, we thought this would be a great place to get a little something for Jack. I was looking at things that were pretty small when we came across a Lionel Train Set with Thomas the Train. Now, if you don't know us very well........Chris's dad is very passionate about trains and has a huge train lay out in the basement of his house with all the lionel stuff. That passion has been very strongly handed down to Jack. So, we couldn't resist the half price on the lionel train lay out even though it's not really a toy that Jack can play with by himself now. We know it will provide much joy for years to come. Here is Papa playing with it as soon as we got it set up at home. Jack is absolutely enthralled with the new train. He is always wanting to "make it go." We'll have to put it away before Christmas when he's getting his wooden play train set. Ha! I also hope he doesn't expect this big of a gift every time mommy and daddy go on a trip now.

After all that, we ended up back at our hotel at like 7:30 or 8. And, we decided that we weren't that old yet.........so we headed back out to go to a late movie. All in all we had such a great time together and just really enjoyed our trip. Yes, we missed Jack like crazy but it was so refreshing just to be together just the two of us. We are so thankful to Gigi and Papa for their time of keeping Jack. I think they all had a blast too!!!!!

Saturday mostly revolved around the game, but we have some interesting stories about that so I'll blog about the game later......Stay tuned!