i *heart* chicago

... but I'll get to that in a minute. Right now I'm going to share my latest Shutterfly photo book page of our Paris pics...

details here

I know I spelled Trocadero wrong... I fixed it on the original... just too lazy to fix my web version.

Now on to Chicago... I worried about moving back to the city with kids. I just had no clue what it would be like. But honestly, it's been fabulous... what an amazing, vibrant place to be a kid! Yesterday we were meeting some members of our homeschool group at Millennium Park to do the activity in the Target Family Fun tent (Bubble Mania this week). However, once we got there we discovered the tent was closed due to the strong winds we had yesterday. Normally, something like that would be a crushing blow to our outing... but this is Chicago! They had a woman making balloon animals under the "bean", so that was our first stop. Then we decided to wander around Millennium Park. As we got closer and closer to Grant Park we could hear music... lots of it. We had totally forgotten that it was the Chicago Blues Festival this weekend and it had started yesterday!! We wandered through with the kids, listening to performances and collecting beads, necklaces and other freebies from the booths there. The kids had a great time. Then we headed off toward Buckingham fountain....
After Buckingham Fountain, we headed to Bennigan's for dinner. And after that... we went across the street to the Family Free Night at the Art Institute. Once inside we headed straight for the gallery with the armor for the Drawing in the Gallery activity. The kids got paper, a clipboard and chalks... plus instructions on how to use them. They then took a gallery chair and plopped themselves down in front of their favorite piece to start drawing. They loved it. I didn't get too many pictures because 1) it was a dark gallery and 2) Clara and Alex picked total opposite ends of the LONG gallery to work in so I did a whole bunch of running back and forth between the two of them.



After that, we went down to the children's gallery downstairs where we spent the rest of our evening. Just such an amazing experience. I'm just so thrilled to see my kids enjoying art and the art institute so much.... can't wait until the next one!

Okay... Alex is right behind me anxiously awaiting Spellingtime.com, so I should run!

Have a great weekend!

PS... Dolly... you really made my day... thanks! :-)