Anniversary...day 4

Wednesday night I had a conversation with my mom about how things were going back at the house. Everything was going fine except for one minor glitch. All the kids had been treated to Happy Meals for lunch on Tuesday and apparently the "toy" was a miniature beanie baby. Wanting to provide Grandma with the complete experience, the kids decided that the best beanie baby was the penguin. Ethan got one and Megan got one. Mathew fell to pieces and in a moment of compassion, Megan gave her "pengwahn" to Mat. So while the boys were at scouts, Mom took her back over to McDonalds, thinking that she cold ask for a penguin and get her one, as well. They were out. And did Megan throw a screaming fit? No. She hung her head down and silently cried into her hands...her heart was broken. There would be no Pengwahn for the nice girl. You can see how this would be problematic for Grandma, no? So she tells us the story and we are dang well going to find this girl a penguin! If we have to visit every McDonalds in Chicago.

Thursday morning we are lazily looking out our window on the 22nd floor and we spy a McDonalds a couple blocks away. We set out to walk over there and get our baby a penguin. Unfortunately we got a bit disoriented and did some type of scenic route. Finally we get there and Mark goes in to inquire (I'm embarrassed and I'm happy to leave this kind of thing to him). No penguin! Dangit.

We decide to walk back towards the hotel and find somewhere to have breakfast. We ended up at West Egg Cafe. We snagged a table outside and it ended up being one of my favorite parts of the trip. The food was just right and you can't beat breakfast under a tree on a busy city street, the sun shining down and a light breeze coming through. It fulfilled this girl's every romantic notion of "life in the big city" Yeehaw!

After we finished taking our sweet time at breakfast, we went back to the room to get my sunglasses and like the old people we are, laid down for a few minutes and fell asleep. The maid knocked on the door and gave us a wake up call. We put on our most walkinest shoes and we were off! We were walking to Wrigley Field for a Cubs game. And we only walks 3 blocks before we remembered that we would need to bring our tickets. And then we were off! Again.

Now, the walk from our hotel to Wrigley was about 5 miles. If you were me, you might think this is a bit excessive, but if you were Mark, it would sound like the best way to enjoy the morning before the game. At about mile 2, we were less than half way there and needed to pick up the pace, so we ditched the idea of holding hands the whole way and got down to business. We were flying past those poor pedestrians...we can speed walk with the best of them.

We arrived at Wrigley Field about 45 minutes before the game started, bought our Cubbies hats and found our seats. The sun was shining and it was a perfect day for the Cubs to win against the Cincinnati Reds.


My favorite part: the peanuts. They taste AWESOME at a baseball game sitting with the love of your life. Loved singing "Take me out to the ball game" in the seventh inning...Cubbies fans are the best at that. And I think it's hilarious that they throw the ball back onto the field if the home run was made by the opposing team. Like it has a fungus or something.



Oh, and they actually did win, which is a first for me. It seems to me that every game I've ever attended was a miserable loss for the team I was cheering for...perhaps the curse is over? After they win, everybody stands up and sings this song "Hey Chicago, whataya say, the Cubs are gonna win today!" Those Chicagoans...they're a committed (and musical) people.

I fell in love with Mark all over again as I watched him search for little plastic cubbies hats to wash out and bring home to our kids.

It was a perfect afternoon.


Also perfect because we didn't walk back...we took the "L". Mark was raised in Cincinnati, and doesn't feel the same sense of wonder that I do for public transportation....go figure.

Honestly, when we got off the train, I was pooped and my feet hurt. I was less than thrilled that we walked in the opposite direction of our hotel and wound up at the river. But, I had to admit that it was cool.


We didn't stay long as we were ready to take our shoes off. Back to the hotel to rest for a while...Iron Chef, anyone? I can think of few things as refreshing as a cooking show where the Asian host does dramatic kung fu backflips onto the set.

Soon we were ready to go back out and we headed over to the Sears Tower. If you ever go to Chicago and want to see some of the touristy type places, I highly recommend the CityPass. We walked right past 2 hours worth of lines and went right up to the top. I admit I felt guilty...but not guilty enough to not enjoy it. heh.


The cool thing to do on the observation deck is to step out into "The Ledge". It's a clear box that is supposedly safe and you can look down and see the streets below your feet.

No thank you.

Mark was happy to go out and take the picture.

I was nervously saying something about not wanting to die, and a guy standing by Mark said that if the box were to fall off, we would all be sucked out to our deaths anyway.

Uh huh. I'm ready to go down, if you don't mind.

On the way home we realized that a bag of peanuts, two jumbo hot dogs, 2 rootbeers, and a big salty pretzel weren't enough and we decided to get some late night chinese take out.

We used the ironing board to set up a table and enjoyed some kung pao and General Tsao's while we watched Deadliest Catch. Good times. Made better by rain on the window and two more Doubletree cookies.