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. :)