Windy City

 

On Thursday we drove to Chicago. I chose to title the blog post with a kinder nickname than the unfortunately accurate label of "murder capital" of the USA. The first time I visited Chicago was when I was in college in Ohio in the early 90's. Paul's first visit was when the two of us spent a couple of days here at the end of 2001. I returned again by myself to speak at a couple of professional conferences when I was a professor. The kids first visit to Chicago was in 2017. The kids and I had planned to return in the spring of 2020, but those plans were cancelled due to COVID. In 2021 Paul and the kids visited Chicago for their second time when the five of us spent a little time with my sister and her family during our lengthy road trip. During all of our previous visits, we never drove straight out here from our home. In 2017 we went to a museum in Cleveland, spent the night with one of my cousins, and then stopped at a science museum in Toledo on our route to Chicago. Now that the kids are older, I figured they could handle driving a longer stretch without stopping, but I still had planned for us to stop at Indiana Dunes National Park. When I found out that our neighbor couldn't watch Milo at the beginning of this vacation, we changed our plans because I had planned on us leaving our house around 6am to allow time to explore Indiana Dunes before arriving at my sister's home. The earliest we could drop Milo off was 7:30am, and all three kids lobbied that they would rather have more time with their cousins than stop at Indiana Dunes National Park. Including two tops (one at a rest stop just to use the bathroom and another at a gas station for gas and a bathroom break), it took us 9.5 hours to get from the kennel to their home in Chicago, and since they are in the Central time zone, by the clock it seemed like it took us 8.5 hours. Thankfully traffic wasn't an issue, and we got here safely. I drove the whole way. My back was fine for the first four hours, and after that I had a headache and backache. Nadia and Ian have been in a car that long without stopping when they've traveled with the Bible quizzing team, but as a family this was definitely a new record. Even with our big road trip in 2021 we didn't ever drive anywhere near 9.5 hours straight. I believe our previous record was 6 hours.

When we arrived here, I asked if anyone was up for a walk because I knew that would help my back recover from all those hours in the driver's seat. Thankfully, Paul, Wendy, and Adam were up for a walk before we had dinner. After dinner, Wendy worked on a challenging puzzle that some in her family have been working on while Paul, Ian, Adam, Drayton, and I played a game of Samurai Sword. Drayton and Adam were the only two who had ever played that game before. On Sunday evening Nadia also joined us for a second round of Samurai Sword. Ian, Nadia, and I were on the winning Ninja team that night. Other games that were played during our time at their home included Stratego (Adam beat Ian), chess (Paul beat Adam), Pandemic (Rachel, Wendy, and Nadia), and Spontuneous (Rachel won). We talked about playing Boggle and Code Names but didn't get around to playing either of them. Other activities included attending church on Friday night and Sunday morning, four kids went bouldering, going on a few hikes with Adam, and attending Grace's 10th birthday party at an indoor trampoline park. 

The two people I saw the least of during our time in Chicago were Nadia and Rachel. They were off by themselves the vast majority of our time. They baked lemon cupcakes for Grace's birthday party and also continued their tradition of creating a mystery dessert with unusual ingredients. This time it included a graham cracker crust, apples, Apple Jacks cereal (crushed up), golden Oreos (crushed up), and Cool Whip. We aren't allowed to know the ingredients until after we've eaten some of the dessert. This was their fourth time making a mystery dessert. They had a sleepover one night which translated to them going to bed around 2am and getting up before 6am to continue watching Enola Holmes on Netflix. 

Oliver primarily played with Grace with the exception of Saturday when she was at gymnastics for a couple of hours. While she was at gymnastics, Adam, Wendy, Ian, Oliver, Paul, and I went to one of the two National Park Service sites in Illinois - Pullman Memorial. Ian and Oliver earned a Junior Ranger badge and patch. We attended a guided tour of the site. We arrived in Chicago around 4:30pm on Thursday and left around 7:20am on Monday. My next post will be about our time in Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. Milo has been at the kennel since Thursday morning. Our neighbor is planning to pick him up tomorrow morning (Wednesday). We miss him, and we hope he's okay.