Olson Family Four: Chicago, Part One.

Finally!

After months of house arrest (well, not really), we finally had a comfortable lapse in my medical appointments so we packed our bags and planned a short vacation to Chicago. We hadn't been for way too long - I think the last time we passed through all of those tolls (!!) I was a few weeks pregnant with Miss Amelia in 2009 -- so yes, WAY too long, especially when we considered how many fantastic friends we have to visit there!

We left early (like 5:30am early!) and headed south in the snow. The girls thought it was funny to ride in the car in their pajamas and Issac and I laughed when he announced that the weather resulted in the first time he had ever actually passed a car on an Illinois highway. Unfortunately, the weather foiled our earliest plans to meet up with some long-lost West Coast friends, but we managed to still enjoy a morning at the Shedd Aquarium in their absence. Highlights for the little ladies were the Beluga whales (one of Ingrid's favorite songs) and the sea turtles.

Even the ceiling is stellar in this place!

Evan, Amelia, and Ingrid's reflection all checking out the turtle.

Transfixed.

The penguin exhibit was under construction so the girls were relegated to pretending to be penguins instead. What a cool interactive kid-penguin-slide thing they have going on at the Shedd!

BabyIngrid, 16 months young.

As the beautiful snow continued in Chicago, we made our way to our hotel in the suburbs for the first two nights of our trip. We chose to stay in the suburbs because we would be closer to our friends. Also, the farther you get from the heart of Chicago, the larger your room and the smaller the pricetag. Shocking, right?

I would be lying if I said that Issac and I weren't terrified about how the whole "two adults + two small children in a hotel room" thing was going to shake out. I mean, really, these kids go to bed at like seven pm, so what were we going to do from 7:01pm until bedtime? Sit in the dark? Certainly not watch television or have an actual out loud conversation. We have been blessed with children who are overall quite wonderful sleepers. What they are not, however, are those children who will fall asleep anywhere - never have they fallen asleep on the couch, on the floor, at the table, etc. Even falling asleep in a carseat is quite rare. Give them a quiet room and they're set. Put another person in it, and they're not. 7:01pm bedtime didn't sound much like vacation to Issac and I, so our remedy for this was to have some wonderful friends nearby. Said wonderful friends have a few quiet rooms where we could put these little people to sleep and the continue enjoying one another's company for a few extra hours before hauling sleeping little people back to the hotel. In exchange for their kindness and hospitality, we offered up our hotel's warm indoor swimming pool the next morning in an effort to tire out all of our young children. We succeeded, but also tired ourselves out in the process.

Sunday (as in Superbowl Sunday!) our friends were kind enough to invite our small circus back again for another evening of debauchery. Their little man shared his toys with grace and the girls schmoozed our friends with coy smiles and snuggles. Clearly, they understood that the amount of swimming time they talked us into was directly correlated to their positive attitudes.