Chicago

 What an amazing end to July!  It was so wonderful that it has taken me a week to get around to blogging about it.  A good vacation usually leads to lots of catch up afterwards.

We packed up the van and headed to Chicago almost two weeks ago.  The play was to spend Friday through Monday with the cousins before moving along to our rental house up in Michigan.  Our first Chicago outing was pretty spectacular - Maggie Daley Park in downtown.

It was the most amazing park I have ever seen - having the Chicago skyline as the backdrop didn't hurt matters. The kids didn't want to stop running around and I have to admit I was a bit worried about heat stroke!

 One of the play structures had a rope ladder.  Will struggled with it at first, but his look of pride when he made it to the top all on his own was priceless.

 Jack's physical therapist would have loved this place.  I think he got about 12 sessions of PT into the 90 minutes we were at the park.  He scaled this crazy steep hill like a little bear, made his way through the tower maze and then down the three story slide 100 times.

 Max and the cousins had a blast playing hide and seek and running all over the place.  I will admit that there were moments of panic when we couldn't find one of them, but everyone made it home in one piece.

Did I mention it was hot?  This water fountain structures were exactly what these five needed after all that play time.

 Another Chicago favorite is hte Museum of Science and Industry - Brian was all excvtied because our local science center membership worked there as well.  We saved over $100 by just showing our card.

The kids area was a big hit.  Jack squealed with excitement every time he stuck a ball in this air tube and watched it fly away.  Will and Paisley enjoyed learning a bit about air pressure together - she was a great teacher :)

 Of course we had to check out the trains.  Will cracks me up in his engineer hat.  It was a party favor at a birthday party years ago and it is by far his favorite hat in the whole wide world.

 We checked out a new area this visit that was all about weather.  This tsunami display was pretty amazing.  The kids were able to program the strength, speed, and frequency of the waves to see how they impacted different land formations.

We wrapped up our last full day with one more trek over to Maggie Daley Park - yes it really was that great!   We didn't even scratch the surface of all the cool stuff they had to see, so I'm sure another Chicago trip will be in our future.  After all, our science center pass also works at The Field Museum!