Christmastime in Chicago.....

.....was not as idealistic as I had pictured, but we still had a great time. We drove up the Sunday before Christmas and finished up a few shopping errands (very few), went to the Museum of Science and Industry on Monday, and to Macy's and ice skating on Tuesday. One of the perks (okay, the only perk) of Dar traveling so much is that he does earn hotel points at a pretty decent pace. So we were able to stay at the Hilton downtown for free! The hotel was very nice and had a pool, so we definitely enjoyed just hanging out there (with the minor complication that Jack does not sleep well away from home).

The reason I say the trip didn't quite fit the picture in my mind stems mostly from our Tuesday adventures. I have wanted to make it a tradition to eat at the Walnut Room in Macy's at Christmas time for a while, so imagine my surprise when we arrived at 11 only to find out that the wait for the PAGER was a good half hour, and that the people who currently had pagers wouldn't be dining for 3 hours! Oh my. We decided that was an experience we could fore go this year. But we still planned to head down to let the kids see Santa -- until we found out that was also a 2 1/2 hour wait. So we walked in the freezing, windy, wet snow down to the ice skating rink at Millenium Park. It was absolutely beautiful, and free to skate, but we of course don't own skates. So we had to wait an hour and a half to get skates! My level of clumsiness is quite high when pregnancy isn't involved, so Jack and I sat this year out, but Abe was determined he wanted to skate, so we waited. You can probably tell from this picture that he lasted all of ten minutes before the ice skating adventure was ended. And Jack was done with the cold long before we got into the warmth. He isn't looking too happy in this picture.





All I can say is that I am so thankful to be married to a guy who I can laugh my way through life with......