Chicago and Milwaukee

For my birthday Brandon and I took a trip without our kids to Chicago and Milwaukee!  A huge thank you to my mom who came out and stayed with our kids; taking them to field trips, basketball practices, and trip to the park.

Our tickets were crazy cheap, but they were also red-eyes.  We arrived to a rainy, windy cold Chicago Thursday morning at 5 am.  After picking up our rental car we drove to a Walmart and slept in the parking lot.  Luckily by the time we woke up the rain had stopped and it was a little less cold.  After buying some gloves we started our adventure....

The cloud bean thing at Millennium park, you know you always see pictures of it, but it is way cooler in person than I thought it would be.

We spent the majority of Thursday at the Art institute of Chicago.  Which was incredible, but I didn't take any pictures.  We also walked down miracle mile and ate deep dish pizza.

Friday we slept till 11:20.  ELEVEN.  It was glorious.  And then we spent the day in Milwaukee with my cousin and her sweet little family.  We went the grocery store and sampled all the cheese, had delicious frozen custard, and root beer, explored downtown a bit, visited with "The Bronze Fonz", had dinner on the water front, went to the Pabts mansion, and even happened onto someone's engagement moment.  Milwaukee is a beautiful city, but the company was the best part.  Rachel's little home, neighborhood, and family is pretty darn perfect.  I even got the chance to snap a couple Christmas card pictures for them.

Saturday, after breakfast, The VanWickles joined us for a little more time in Chicago before our flight home.  We walked down Navy pier, went up to the top of Hancock tower, and had Chicago dogs! Owen is a sweet heart.

(stolen from Rachel's facebook) 

It was such a wonderful trip and thank you to my mom and the VanWickles for making it so easy to get away.  :)  It was perfect.  (I swear we look colder than it actually was)