chicago: day 2

On the second day we started with a ride on the Ferris wheel.  Well, actually we started by walking around a bit because we were up too early.

Then we went to the children's museum.  Once again, it was nice to have two people as the boys often wanted to do different things.

Joshua started out in the fire truck.  Isaac joined him for a bit.  (This did have a cute sign for the parents that said something like, "You're still at the fire truck?  Relax, it's good for kids to have the repetition.  If you don't get any farther today, that's fine."

Isaac started by climbing a ship's mast.  He did it several times throughout the day.

Then we went to the water area.

There were pipes to play with.

Ropes to pull and levers to push.

 
And there were walls to "paint" on.

Isaac and I went to the tinkery next.  There were a bunch of supplies and he got to make something that rolled (and didn't slide).  Joshua was not interested, so he and Cheryl explored some other rooms.

Isaac did a great job.  I wasn't sure it would work because the wheels weren't very sturdy or straight.  But he did an appropriate number of in process tests and it did end up working.  He was rather excited.  He also made a smokestack and thing on the front with beads and washers.  I'm wondering if some of the extra weight helped it work just a bit better.

Joshua finally went up the small part of the ship's mast.  After getting to the top they got to run down some ramps.

There was some dinosaur bone digging.  I think the dirt was recycled shoes.

Near the end we were at the play city.  The boys loved it; I didn't, but they were happy and content which is always a plus.  Cheryl and I got fed a lot of food (I get fed a lot of food at home).

Cheryl took several car rides,

a bus ride (while eating food),

 and another car ride.

The catapults were back out and Isaac had mentioned he wanted to do those.  It was almost time to go, so we did that for just a few minutes.

On the way out we got a picture of Joshua in his fire engine t-shirt by the fire engine.  He may have spilled all over his original shirt.

We stopped at the Lego store to buy Isaac his special 5 year old gift from Cheryl (and Larry).  He got a Lego train track.  I think he would have liked it a lot, but it probably wasn't what I would have picked out for him.  Then we saw the Lego boost - some programming and some robots and Legos, all put together.  He got that instead and has been loving it.  It has been the perfect choice.

We made it to the train back home with plenty of time to spare, but it didn't feel that way.  Traffic was busy because it was 5:45pm.  We stood in a line around a corner and thought we were going to have to go through a security check and that made us nervous (although everyone in the line was on the same train.)  It turns out they just hadn't opened the doors yet, but we couldn't see.

We ate a dinner of snacks on the train.  The boys loved it and no one went hungry. We had a lot of luggage on the way back.  We really only had one more bag, but for some reason it felt like a lot more.  I wasn't sure how we'd get all the luggage and a sleeping Joshua off quickly, and so I didn't take the screens away from them like I normally do a little bit after bedtime.  It worked; they were awake and walking when we got off the train.  I did, however, change their alarms so they didn't wake up so early the next morning. :)

Friday

This morning we ended up going to an indoor playground with friends.  We had been planning on doing something with them, it was just a change in venue.  The boys were super excited.  Isaac and his friend did a pretty good job of keeping Joshua with them, but Joshua also did a better job of keeping up.  They played hard for a while, and then it got rather busy.

This afternoon Charter came to do some work to...fix some signal loss...I think.  Anyway, the guy took a look at our wires and said, "This is the easiest job I've had in a while."  That being said, my children were very inquisitive but he kindly explained everything and seemed happy to do it.  (It probably helped that it was an easy job.)  It was cool to see inside one of those boxes in the yard.  He tried to open the other one because apparently it has lots more wires, but it was locked.

Chicago: day 1, part b

I got some of Cheryl's photos and wanted to document them here too.

train

At the robots

In the caboose

At the younger kids' area:

Joshua's creation.  He made pretty much all of what you see.

Thursday: water balloons

This morning I asked Isaac what he wanted to do and he said water balloons.  Not what I was expecting, but since we had some we did it.  Joshua was happy to be part of the making (he put them in the basket) but once he got his pants wet he stopped participating.

It should be noted that the pants got wet after a rain storm.  The boys ran inside when it started raining, and I had to urge them back out...we were going to get wet anyway.  Once the rain let up we continued with the water balloons.

Today's tantrum was that I wouldn't take a nap with Joshua on the floor of my bedroom.

Wednesday: quilt show

Today Cheryl and I went to the large nearby quilt show.   It was nice to see the quilts and the quilting. As expected, my favorite quilts tended to be solids quilts.

  (Color Play by Karlie Grable)

There were a lot of quilts with really neat quilting too.

There were a lot of fancy applique quilts.  Most of them, while amazing, were too fancy for my tastes.  However, I really liked this one of a door.  I liked how they did the bricks.

 (Papa's Door by Pamela Pandolfi)

 (Barbara's Circle by Beth Nuter and Clem Buzick)

We also did a bit of shopping.  I was looking for medium greys for a quilt that I probably won't make now.  I'm not going to make it because it was going to be for Joshua's new bed.  However, I also found a fabric pack with robots and rockets and circuits...and I knew that Joshua would like that so much better.  (I showed it to him at home and he did love it.)

Tuesday: a day

Today was a rather normal day, with lots of cute (and annoying) things.

Joshua threw a temper tantrum over wearing the shirt that he picked out.  It didn't have a rocket on it.  Luckily, I had one nearby.

Isaac worked hard on his new Legos and got his robot to work.  He loved to make it spin.  and spin.  and spin.

Joshua took a nap.  He falls asleep in random places in his bedroom.

Isaac was helping me change the batteries on the robot (probably from too much spinning) and suddenly said, "I'm going to do some push-ups."  He went to the floor and did about five of them, then mentioned how they made him rather tired.  I'm not really sure what inspired him to do the push-ups.

At bedtime Isaac said his favorite thing about the day was having a sleepover with Joshua (which hadn't actually occurred yet.)  Isaac proceeded to go right to sleep after I left the room.  He may have been talking about last night, when they stayed up for an hour talking.  I went in at 9pm and said they should be quiet for about five minutes to see if they fall asleep.  Whispering ensued and I realized I had just been lawyered.

Chicago day 1

The boys and I spent two days with Cheryl in Chicago.  We went by train and the boys were excited, especially Joshua.

We went to the Museum of Science and Industry first.  I said we were going to see Robots, and so Joshua was all about that.  It was a timed entry though, so we "had" to do some other things first.  Isaac loves mazes, so we went to the mirror maze first.

We did the robots after that.  Joshua said it was his favorite part.

There were a lot of intense stares while watching robots do cool things.

Isaac really wanted to do the magnet cubes, so we headed over there.  (It was nice to have two adults.)  Each cube preforms a different function: battery, wheels, sensor, spinner, etc.  After a bit of work he finally got one that moved and spiun at the same time.

We then had a long period of time where I don't have any pictures.  I really thought I had taken some, but maybe I was just too caught up in what we were doing.  The main things that we did were looking at trains, the coal mine (which Isaac said was his favorite), and the IDEAS exhibit.  The IDEAS was just for younger kids and they loved the place.  There were balls and water.  Joshua made a big robot/path from the heavy foam building blocks that you see in museums and probably spent about 30 minutes on it.

Near the end Isaac and I took a quick look at the circus portion and I loved the falling light dots.

We also took a quick stop at the farm while trying to figure out where to go next.  It closed at 4pm.  (The hours of everything perplexed me.  Everything opens at 10am, which seems rather late.  Kids are up early!)  Joshua got up on the tractor, but was too tired to get on the cow.  Who can blame him?  We were up early and had had a full day.

We ended up going to the Cheesecake Factory (yum) and then back to the hotel.  We took a short swim in the pool and then went to bed.  Joshua didn't fall asleep right away (probably because of the nap in the taxi).  Isaac just curled up in the bottom corner of the bed with the sheets over him and fell asleep.  Joshua was determined to sleep where I was and so I ended up switching sides of the bed a few times...moving him didn't work for more than five minutes.