This weekend, because it was exceptionally cold most sane people stayed home. Not us! No we decided that it would be a good idea to take a trip to somewhere even colder. Actually, we had been planning our trip to the Windy City long before this cold snap, and we knew that changing our plans to stay home would mean that Paul would have to work Saturday.
So Friday night as soon as Paul got off work, we headed out of town. The trip to Chicago was relatively uneventful, and I actually drove the entire trip. We arrived at Amanda and Tony’s place at around 9:00 PM Chicago time. At this point our children were so tired they immediately settled down and went to sleep (and I have ocean front property in Arizona). After the children did settle down, we sat around and played Nintendo games on an emulator. One of the neatest features of the emulator was that we were able to rewind. Paul and Tony played Contra together, and because of the rewind feature, they were able to advance to levels we had never seen before. The disadvantage of the emulator is that I still have the Yoshi song in my head.
Saturday afternoon after a lovely brunch, we headed downtown (where it was really cold and windy) to the Children’s museum at Navy Pier. I believe our friends were quite bored by the museum, Scott commented that it was more geared to little children than he had expected. However, our children absolutely loved the museum. They even had little areas with cushions and mirrors and such just for babies who could not yet walk, which Isaac enjoyed immensely. I think the overall favorite exhibit was the construction zone which had supplies to put together simple wooden structures (boards, bolts etc.). Paul made a boat with the kids. I noted that he raised the bar for all the other daddies. Unfortunately we all became tired long before we had finished looking at the museum.
Sunday we went to church in Lawndale, where Paul and I had worked as summer missionaries in 2001. We attended Westlawn Gospel Chapel, where I had worked. It is a truly amazing church. The small mostly African American Congregation seems to be very focused on outreach both in their own community and abroad. The children behaved themselves for about the first hour of the service. Fortunately,there was a nursery. It was great to see people there again. After church we ate lunch at Lou Malnati’s, a local pizzeria with a great history (I’ll share it’s story if you care to hear it). The pizza was delicious (I have been missing that pizza for years).
On our way home we stopped in Granger to visit Loree and Derek. Baby Rachel is adorable! Loree fixed casserole for dinner, which my children did not eat (but which I liked very much). And she made us hot cocoa with marshmallows, leading us to discuss how many marshmallows could be fit into a cup. After dinner, Paul played a video game called Katamari. I think the game may have been designed by people smoking crack. The object was to roll around a large ball and get items to stick to it. Paul would have liked to play a lot longer, but we needed to go home.
At the start of the drive home it was very snow, but by the time we were 30 minutes into our drive the snow had subsided. The trip was very slow, but we only made missed one turn, and it only took us about two minutes out of our way. And now we are home!
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3 comments:
Thank you so much for coming up! We really enjoyed having you visit, getting to hang out together, and being able to catch up a little bit.
I hope that your children had fun visiting too, and that they were able to enjoy the museum without getting too worn out.
PS: I'm glad you enjoyed the food too. :-)
I agree with your opinion of the designers of Katamari! Where else does a pylon with cow spots classify as a cow?
Children immediately settling down and going to sleep? If my siblings ever went to bed the first time they were told there would be oceanfront property in Arizona! But I guess I was the same when I was their age. I just tried to be less obvious about staying up.
Building areas in museums are cool. In Akron, there is an "Inventure Place" where one of the highlights is an area with "junk" with which you can make your own "inventions" (ie cardboard boxes, magnets, paper, etc). It is nice that they had an area for children Isaac's age. I remember when I went to the Children's Museum in Indy during my senior year at Rose there was a similar area. It never ceases to amaze me what people will think of.
It's amazing how much fun good old Contra is. Charles and I beat it the last couple times we played, though of course we used the 30-lives cheat code. If anyone has beat it without the code, they have spent too much time playing Nintendo.
One of the greatest parts of Contra (and most infuriating) is how you can steal your partner's lives when you run out of your own. You can also kill your partner by moving the screen up when he is still at the bottom. Of course, all this means is that you are eliminating lives that you could steal later on, a point which always seems to fall on deaf ears. Darn you, Charles!
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