We're back from Chicago. Vacation didn't go quite the way I had envisioned. But overall, a good time and a good vacation. Beth was not feeling well for the whole trip. I tried to reschedule our reservations, but it was too late to just push things back by a few days, so we went even though she felt terrible. We drove out there Monday morning, planning to get settled and hit to hotel pool (just me and the kids, not Beth) before heading to town on the L for the American Girl Doll store and Lego Store at the Water Tower Place and the Sears Tower. Tuesday we would ride the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier first thing, then see Sue at the Field Museum, and spend the rest of the day at the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium. Wednesday we would drive to the Science & Industry Museum and head home after sending the day there. We had bought City Passes for all of the museums in advance. Mistakes made / lessons learned: first, we were staying too far out from the Loop. The L ride from O'Hare (nearest our motel) to the city took almost an hour each way. Next time, we will take the South Shore into the city and stay closer to downtown. Second, we went to Navy Pier. The plan had been just to ride the ferris wheel (naturally, it was closed for maintenance all day when we went) and move on, but we spent way too much time and money there. It is a big overpriced money pit. Especially the maze, which was so scary (mostly just noisy and disorienting) that the kids freaked out and we had to bolt for the emergency exit after about 2 minutes, bye bye $30) And we got lunch at Bubba Gump Shrimp, which turned out to be the most expensive lunch I've ever had. Third, we planned too much and underestimated how long each museum would take. We thought that Sue would be the only thing the kids wanted to see at the Field Museum and we could do it quickly, then we could do the aquarium and planetarium both in the same day, but that didn't work: we went to the Field Museum after Navy pier and the kids wanted to stay and see the other stuff (mostly Missy; she wanted to look at everything, but Alex wasn't that interested in dioramas, except the Egypt stuff), by the time we left, the aquarium was closing in an hour so we called it a day and went home (scary guy on the L most of the way to O'Hare). The next day, we were in the aquarium all day and never made it to the planetarium, or, of course, the MSI. Fourth, we miscalculated how much we were spending on train fares and bought a pass too late to fully utilize it. However, we did make it to Vito & Nick's Pizzeria, which we saw on Diners Drive-ins and Dives once, before heading home. With 2 unused tickets in each City pass. Well, anyway, we're back, and I'm going to try to use the rest of my week off to get a few things done around the house. Today I called in a guy to come grind out the maple tree stump in the backyard, and it was gone in a flash. Now I just have to cart off the wood chips and fill in the hole, and maybe we can have grass there. I'm also going to try to finish off the retaining wall by the southeast corner of the house that's been unfinished for a couple years because I can't find the same bricks I was using. I may have to be creative.