Millennium falcons

The first four days of our vacation were quite active, with a plenty of walking and plenty of humidity. With Wife working in Milwaukee on Sunday, I was somewhat planning a lower-key afternoon for Day 5 of our vacation. And for the most part, that was achieved.

Rain poured down all morning (Chicago has just been shelled overnight and into the morning with rain the past few days, but the sun eventually has come out every day by mid-afternoon), so that kept us mostly inside and mellow. The boys played games and watched TV, and my dad made chocolate chip pancakes. The sun finally came out, and we headed downtown to explore Millennium Park. The highlight for the boys was the Crown Fountain -- two 50-foot glass-block video screens that feature people's faces, and every few minutes, the face purses its lips and water sprays out from the wall. The boys loved getting soaked, and just standing by the fountain (but not getting wet) provided the adults with some cool relief. Afterward, we walked to another fountain: Buckingham Fountain in Grant Park. There we took pictures and ate ice cream.

After arriving back at my dad's house (and after Wife got back from Milwaukee), the boys played more games with their family, and we also went to the park for a little while. I went for a short walk tonight to cap off the "relaxing" day before writing this post. Wife is in Milwaukee on Monday as well, so another "relaxing" day might be in store for us. And yikes, vacation is a third over ...

(Slug Bug update: Eldest 16, Littlest 12, me 10, Wife 9. And this story: Littlest took a free copy of a used car sales catalog [similar to a real estate guide you might find in a "take one" box on a corer] and said it was his magazine because he needed to get more slug bugs. Classic!)

Click here for Day 6.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer, Day 8

Today was Memorial Day, and as far as Memorial Days go, this one seemed somewhat anticlimactic. The sun came out after three less-than-stellar days, perhaps preventing the weekend from being a total bust. I worked late last night but was awake earlier than I wanted to be this morning. I fell back asleep and woke up around 10:30 to a thumping sound outside. Michael, Lori and my father-in-law got the rest of the sand in the base of the new basketball hoop, and Michael and his friend from across the street were shooting around. This was Lori's parents' last day in Utah, so we treated them to The Cheesecake Factory at the new City Creek mall downtown. I had the macaroni and cheese burger and most of a piece of Oreo cheesecake (no matter how much I pushed on my sons -- they wanted to share Lori's banana cream cheesecake). The boys and I wandered City Creek a little and came home. The afternoon wasn't much more eventful. Michael and I took Popcorn to the park for about
Read more

Vacation finale

Image
As expected, the last three days of vacation were much less eventful than the first 12. This happens every year -- we get back from Wisconsin for at least one day before leaving for Utah, and it's just wind-down time. And that's OK -- going nonstop for two weeks isn't easy, especially with kids. And vacation is supposed to be a time to relax, and for the past three days, that's what we did. The past few days weren't that relaxing, however. Monday, we met my mom, who is in Chicago this week, for lunch and then to Old Orchard Mall. That night, we met some friends at the new Superdawg (my favorite Chicago hot dog restaurant) in Wheeling. Tuesday, after pondering going downtown, we ended up just seeing the Smurfs movie with my dad. Last night, we went to dinner at a nice little Italian restaurant here in Edgebrook. Wednesday was mostly devoted to getting ready for our return trip Thursday morning. The heat and thunderstorms finally subsided -- this might have been the m
Read more

The Little Red Machine

Image
After blogging about Eldest's baseball experience (as well as mine as an assistant coach), I decided to write about my five years playing organized baseball as a kid. Long ago (the mid-1990s), I wrote about two of these seasons, so I will dig those up and transcribe/edit/add/revise when I post on those two seasons. This post will be about my first season, in 1978 on the Reds. We had moved into our new house in 1977, and my new friends, especially Marc, loved baseball and collected baseball cards. Even before we had moved that spring, I was started to become interested in baseball, so my interest exploded that summer. I had played basketball for two seasons at Norwood Park, so my father signed me up for t-ball in the spring of 1978 and bought me a glove (mass-autographed by Mickey Rivers!). I was placed on the Reds. The team was coached by a couple teenagers, including the older brother of one of my teammates. I don't remember many of my other teammates, except we had a bi
Read more