The Windy City

Five of us left for Chicago this morning.  Our first stop was the Magnificent Mile.  Cam and Meg were sure that we could live in the Crate and Barrel store.  I totally agreed with them on that one.  We also checked out the Disney Store and the Lego Store before heading to lunch.  Doug wanted to try Gino's East.  Everyone really liked it.  Brett and Cam even tried deep dish pizza.  We had fun looking at all of the famous people who had eaten in their restaurant.  As we walked out we really appreciated the fact that we got there right when it opened.  There was a line to get in and it was only noon Chicago time.

We walked about a mile from lunch to the Art Museum.  We stopped at Niketown and to take pictures along the way.  It was windy and a little chilly, but for late December the weather was great.  I was nervous walking across the river, but we made it just fine.  The Art Museum was also packed, but we were able to navigate through it well.  We picked up a brochure that gave us the top twelve items to see and we made sure we hit all of them.  By far Brett and I enjoyed the Impressionist paintings the best.  We had saved them for last and they were worth it.  Everyone was pretty tired when we finished our tour, but we all enjoyed it.  We hadn't been to this museum in at least four years.

From the Art Museum we walked to the Bean and Millenium Park.  The Bean makes for some fantastic photo opportunities.  We stopped at Garrett's Popcorn and Dylan's Candy Store on the way back to the van.  We didn't have as far to walk back which was nice as everyone's legs were sore from standing.  We enjoyed seeing the Christmas lights and marveled at the amount of people on the sidewalks.

Our trip home was pretty uneventful.  We did stop at Portillo's for dinner in Merrillville.  Everyone spent time relaxing this evening.  Cal had Jayce, Alex and Korey over and they all had a lot of fun playing pool and poker.  Meg has made great use of her new iPhone and spent quite a bit of time on it tonight snapchatting, trying trivia challenges and watching Simpsons videos.  Brett, Doug and I watched Enemy of the State as he had never seen it and we all love Will Smith.  It was a great day for all in the Heinisch family.