Vacation to Hades 2012

Day 1: Let's do this!! Wouldn't it be great to spend 4th of July in a big city with spectacular fireworks?? We thought so! So, we planned and headed out on our 3 city roadtrip the first week of July. Woo hoo!!

4 hours to Kansas City....not bad at all! Shopping & Cheeseburger in Paradise rounded out the day. What a great start to our adventure!

Day 2: Great Wolf Lodge complete with indoor AND outdoor waterpark. Scott headed out to the sun, & the girls and I hit the slides indoors. Fantastic at first....extremely painful to the eyes and throat after about 15 minutes...apparently it takes enormous amounts of chlorine to keep public waters clean...ugh. So, outside we went!

Come on, Pete......
We ended the night with delicious steak & seafood at Outback. YUM!!

Day 3: Off to Chicago! This is one city that I've always wanted to visit, so I was SUPER pumped!! The drive was loooong, but made easier with our arsenal of iphones, ipad, laptop computers, movies, books... And, we made it!!

 It was love at first sight for me. I truly am a city girl at heart. There's just something about the interesting people, restaurants on every corner, great shopping, a lake less than a mile away and so much to do that appeals to me. Granted you have to walk everywhere, but that was ok. Sun was going down...it was tolerable....time to find a great place to eat! (Always the priority)

So, we went to this little gem...also know as Grand Lux. Think Cheesecake Factory, but you get to sit on velvet thrones and you order dessert first because they're baked on the spot and take 30 minutes. Each meal feeds about 4 people, but of course we all order our own and finish every bite. Yep. We decided that night that that couldn't happen every night for the next 5 nights of vacation since none of us packed our "fat clothes". Moderation became the theme.

Day 4: One of my favorite things to do is plan and organize since it feeds my OCD tendencies, so I worked for weeks mapping out all of the best touristy places to visit and bought our tickets in advance. Turned out to be a pretty smart move :) This day started out tough for Holland because she had a stomachache which turned into a shaking episode. She was a trooper and got ready, went along, and powered through. So proud of her for that. We took a taxi and went to the Shedd Aquarium first.

It was as exciting as jellyfish and beluga whales gets. Next stop: Field Museum

What can you say...it's a museum. Time to eat! So, we took a taxi to the Rainforest Cafe.

And, Payton found a hat.

Day 5: 4th of July!! A national holiday! So, instead of there being thousands of people out and about in the city, there were TENS of THOUSANDS! But, I like that right? So, it was all good. On the agenda for the day was walking to Lincoln Park, strolling through the zoo, find a place for lunch on the way back, then head towards Navy Pier for dinner, a circus, fireworks, and a boat tour through the city. Sounds like a most awesome day, huh?? Except that it was 105 degrees with 1,000% humidity. And, people EVERYWHERE!! So, we all soon realized that yes, our clothes would be sweat-soaked all day long, yes, we would stop walking for any and every bit of shade we happened upon, yes, the people watching would be top notch, and no, we would not talk about the heat because it made everyone get loud and use their angry voices.
*I would insert pictures from the zoo here, but unfortunately (fortunately) I have none.
We knew there was a Chick-fil-a somewhere on our trek back to our hotel, and that's what kept us going. It was like an oasis in the city. Sweet tea, oh how I love thee. Then it was back to the hotel for the first round of showers for the day and to sit and savor the fact that we were not sweating for the first time all day. Up next - Navy Pier - and the sun will be setting...YES!!

Dinner at Harry Caray's. And Payton looks fabulous, as usual. So, I got tickets to the Shanghai Circus knowing it would be something the girls would really enjoy. Without knowing that it was OUTSIDE! Are you kidding me?? BUT, our seats were on the front row. No one to block our view, but neck-breaking trying to watch some of the stunts, and I actually started getting motion sickness watching one of the acts go round and round and round....still all in all, a good show. And, this is where the evening took a turn for the worse.... So, we leave the circus, head out to find quite the crowd gathered to watch the fireworks, but still get a decent spot where we can see all of the action over the water. The announcer gets on the loudspeaker, does the 5-4-3-2-1 countdown, we hear the big booms, and the entire crowd turns left and starts running because we're all facing the wrong direction!! By the time we follow them all, we're behind a tree able to see absolutely nothing. But, we can't leave because our awesome boat cruise around the city is after the fireworks are done. So, we start making our way through the sweaty, smelly sea of spectators -

making a human chain holding hands, darting in and out, breaking apart, and at this point Holland gets lost, drops her phone, gets kicked in the head, which sets off another panic attack...you'd think we'd just throw in the towel and head back to the hotel like any group of sane people would do, but we still have to take our awesome boat cruise around the city, so we again make our human chain and
traverse the tens of thousands of sweaty people going in the opposite direction, all the while getting yelled at, cussed at...I'd love to say that it was SO worth it, but we made it across to where the boats dock, waited until 9:45 which was when we were supposed to board, saw a boat coming in that had 4 decks, strobe lights, party people...got excited thinking this was well worth our time and money, noticed that it wasn't docking, asked a guy if it was ours, found out our little dinghy had just taken off without us, asked for a refund, got told "no" since it was part of our package deal, then made our way back to our hotel. Happy Flippin Fourth of July. Next year I'm sitting in a lawn chair holding a sparkler.

Day 6: We slept in. Laid around. Took showers. Watched TV. Finally mustered the energy and courage to head out into the inferno again and go shopping. It was actually overcast and somewhat pleasant. We found the BEST pizza place for lunch - Giordanos!

And, the coolest place to take pictures of the city - The John Hancock Observatory

We wandered around the city for the rest of the afternoon, highlight being the Ghiradelli store, then decided at 8 o'clock that it was time for supper, and this is what we had -

Grand Lux, we're so glad you don't reside in AR :) The girl in the striped dress and her friend (not pictured) were from Bentonville. It's true - such a small world!

Day 7: Our last stop on the Hades tour - St. Louis! Scott found the coolest hotel inside of Union Station. This is the view out our window -

And, this was inside the lobby -

So, we unloaded our stuff and crashed. Our fun-filled, go go go week was starting to get the best of us, so we pulled the curtains and watched Hunger Games. It was glorious. And, when the munchies struck again, we walked over to Landry's for fried onions and seafood. By this point, our stomachs expected nothing less. Why disappoint?

Day 8: It wasn't the easiest task getting everyone up and ready to face another 100+ degree day, but we knew it was our last, and we needed to make the most of it. We found a cool little cafe and had breakfast downtown, then drove over to the home of the Budweiser. There's a sign (warning) by the entrance that it is an "outside tour". Perfect. This vacation wouldn't be complete if we hadn't all sweated through our clothes every single day, so SIGN US UP!! There was A LOT of outdoor walking, but there actually was some air-conditioned relief every once in a while. The high point: the 50 degree room where the fermenting happens. I was hoping the explanation of this process would take hours, but it only took about 10 minutes :( The low point: when they explained that we'd be taking the elevators up to where the crushing/mixing happens, and it would be the absolute hottest part of the tour. I seriously expected the flames of hell when those doors opened. We jogged our way through catching what we could out of our peripheral vision and high-tailed it back down. No thanks.
I'm just glad we were able to get a family picture with a horse....

After that most enlightening experience, we went back to the hotel where Holland and I stayed for the afternoon watching Friends while Scott and Payton braved the heat once more for a Cardinals game. Such troopers -

Then we all met up at Hannegans for our final vacation dinner. And, it was excellent!!

There it is. Our unforgettable, sweatiest vacation ever. It's a good thing we love each other as much as we do and can always have a great time together no matter the circumstances. Next year we're going to Colorado. Or Alaska.