The trip to Chicago started off well enough. We didn’t leave until after noon because Alex and Missy both had eye doctor appointments (Missy for the first time, since she had for the first time not done well enough on one at school, but the actual doctor found her vision to be just fine, so no glasses for her) and we needed to do some quick shopping at Wal-Mart. Anyway, we hit the road early afternoon, and since the air in the tires had been a bit low for a while I stopped just before getting on the toll road to top them off. Aaaaaaaand when I took the nozzle off the rear driver’s side tire, the valve stem blew out. Leading to rapid deflation. I was able to get the cap back on to slow it down long enough to move the van to a flat surface but it was flat flat within moments after that. Now I had never actually read the user’s manual for the van so I didn’t know how to even get the spare out, let alone whether there was any air in it. But I read my way through getting the tire down from its storage cubby and changing it out, and it had enough air to get back over to the air nozzles and press it back up to where I could drive on it. Then we asked my phone where the nearest Discount Tire was and headed there. Discount Tire was, for some reason, crazy busy and very shorthanded. So, it was a 3-hour wait to get the tire fixed and put back on. But while we were waiting, we did find a Great Clips next door and get haircuts for Alex and me, and there was a restaurant called Dickey’s BBQ Pit in the same strip mall, which turned out to be fantastic. We think of that as the reason why the tire blew there, so we could get some awesome BBQ. We got moving again around 6 or so and just headed to the motel, which was out near O’Hare. Friday we spent pretty much all day at the Field Museum. They have a big Jurassic World exhibition going on, which is basically just a bunch of animatronic dinosaurs with a Jurassic World-like theme to the exhibit (as you walk through, one of the “dinosaurs” get loose, yada yada). There is also a large exhibition of specimens, and the science of specimens, which was much more interesting than it sounds. Then the hall of animals, and gems and jewels, and we were about done by then. For dinner we met up with Auntie Irene and Jonathan and Karla at a brewery/pizzeria that they had found not too far from where they live, really good stuff there too, Jon and Karla thought it was probably going to become their place (they’re pretty new to Chicago). We did the obligatory trip to IKEA Saturday morning, bought a few things for the home but nothing major, and headed home.