Chicago Part II

We're still on Day 1. After the Museum of Science and Industry, we headed to Navy Pier! At this point I was getting a little stressed because I wasn't sure if we were going to make it and be able to do everything we wanted to do on this day. Especially since we had just missed the bus that took us to Navy Pier, and we had to wait for almost an hour until the next one came!

These cool buildings were across the street from where we waited for the bus for an hour. The bottom part is for parking! See those little cars? I thought that was pretty crazy!

Anyway, the bus finally came and we were on our way to Navy Pier. Navy Pier is fun place with little rides, shops, museums, and boat rides. But the only ride open during the winter is the Ferris Wheel and there aren't any boats that go out, so everything turned out to be okay because we didn't need to spend as much time there as I had planned. We did ride the Ferris Wheel and walked around on the Pier (which was cold because of the wind!) and walked around the Stained Glass Museum.

The view from the Ferris Wheel

Trying to get a romantic kissing picture, but Nate isn't very good at kissing and taking a picture at the same time:)

On the Ferris Wheel with Nate's cheesy smile:)

Another view from the Ferris Wheel

Navy Pier!

Funny mirrors outside the fun house. So this is what we would look like if we had really short legs or really long legs!

Willis Tower, view from the street

 After Navy Pier, we had about 45 min to get to the Willis Tower! AKA the Sears Tower because we had to get there before 5:30 in order for our Go Chicago card to work. After running around the building a bit to find where we needed to go for the Skydeck, we made it to the ticket taker with 5 minutes to spare! Whew! Then we watched a movie explaining the history of the architecture of Chicago. After the huge fire, it became mandatory to build using steel. And skyscrapers naturally were born from that! And in 1973 this building was the tallest structure in the World (if you include the antenna thing on top) until they built Burj Dubai in 2010 which is an absolute giant in comparison.

After the movie, we stood in a long line, about 45 min to an hour, until we got to the elevator which only took one minute to take us from almost ground floor up to the 103rd floor, which isn't the top. And the nice thing about the Willis Tower versus the Empire State building is that you are inside, so it's not cold and windy. And they have these really awesome glass boxes that protrude out of the building so it's almost like you're standing on air!

The next few pictures are the view of Chicago from way up on the 103rd floor!

A lot of people were staying up there to see the sunset and such things, but we were exhausted and starving by this time. We had another line to wait in to go down the elevators, then it was on to Lou Malnati's for some delicious Chicago deep dish pizza!

Our first bites!

We went to Lou's because we got $5 off a large with our Go Chicago card and before we even got in, we were sure it was a good restaurant because it was packed! We had to wait for about 45 min to get seated and we pre-ordered it. So they cooked it half way, then when we finally got a table, they cooked it the rest of the way. That way we didn't have to wait too long for our pizza. And boy was it delish! The crust had that homemade taste to it and it was deep dish and buttered, the sauce was mashed up tomatoes so completely fresh, and TONS of cheese! So good! I hate to say this with all of my Italian friends out there, but this was the best pizza I have ever had! Italian pizza is good because it has such different varieties, but this was by far the best pepperoni pizza I've ever had! And since we got a large, we had enough leftovers for lunch the next day!

After that long day (leaving at 7 am and getting back after 11 pm) we were absolutely exhausted and just crashed. And that is the end of Part II. Part III will be coming shortly!

Chicago!

I never did get a good skyline picture

For Spring Break, we both desperately needed a vacation. And since Chicago is only 6 hours away and neither of us have ever been there, we thought it would be perfect! We found some pretty good deals for a hotel in the suburbs and a "Go Chicago" card which meant that on the day we activated the card, we could go to as many things as we could without paying (because we had already paid for the card). We got to our hotel in the evening on Thursday the 17th. We would've gotten there sooner except we had the car troubles I blogged about before, so we had to leave later. We had originally planned to go to the Art Museum because it is free Thursday night, but we got there too late, so we ended up watching the BYU vs Wafford game.

The next day was our "Go Chicago" day, so we started early so we could squeeze in as many places as we could! But first we had to figure out the public transportation! They certainly need more signs for visitors to find where to buy tickets! I was certainly grateful I served a mission in a place where I only used public transportation. It made it much easier to figure Chicago out. But where to find the tickets! That was the hard part. We finally figured it out and were soon on a bus heading to the Shedd Aquarium just a little after 9 (when it opened).

On the bus on the way to Shedd

The Shedd Aquarium was awesome! We were on a schedule so we didn't linger too long on anything, but we stayed there for a good 2 hours and basically saw everything. We even got to touch starfish! My absolute favorite thing though was the Anaconda!

This gigantic, beautiful, powerful snake was 2 feet away from me! Of course it was in a tank and I never saw his head, but I was excited! For those of you who don't know me very well, I absolutely love snakes! Of course, I would never touch one that was dangerous (such as this one) but I do want a tame one as a pet one day!

Seahorses. They were little and moving fast so it was hard to get a good picture

Nate's favorite were the Seahorses because he hasn't ever seen them before. And some were pretty brightly colored. Some were also sleeping like an opossum! Their tails were attached to a branch and they were hanging upside down. I liked the fact that the males were the ones who actually carried the babies in their tummies:)

A huge river fish. It was probably almost as long as me!

A Lobster

An Octopus

Nemo!

A huge Iguana! Posing just for us!

That's a shark, but it's hard to tell

Penguins!

Beluga Whales

After the Shedd, we ate our lovely lunch of peanut butter sandwiches while waiting for the bus to take us to the Museum of Science and Industry. We only had 2 hours here as well and you could've spent all day! So we didn't end up seeing all of it. But it was pretty cool! Lots of hands-on things!

The outside of the Science and Industry Museum

 It was kind of funny, we had to go down all of these stairs to get our "tickets" (show our Go Chicago car), then up all these stairs to get to the museum. Didn't seem very efficient, but whatever.

A giant old locomotive

A model of Chicago. The tall black one behind Nate is the Willis aka Sears Tower

A model of Seattle! The train went from Chicago to Seattle

A tornado! Inside the Science Museum!

I'm afraid that's all the pictures I took there. We were having too much fun playing so I didn't think of taking pictures very often!
And this is a long post already, so I will finish our adventures later. I'm only about 1/3 of the way done!

Monthly Update

Before I talk about our amazing trip to Chicago, I have some updates. I'm not sure of the order these things happened in because I have a terrible memory (that's what Nate is for) so I'm going to write about things as they come. And this is going to be boring because I don't have any pictures. I'm not good at carrying my camera around everywhere.

First, the bad news of our life. The rain here in Ohio is absolutely insane and our car certainly didn't like it. I think it prefers the dry Utah weather. So probably about 3 weeks ago, it rained for 2 days straight and in the morning I got in the car to go to work, and the car was struggling with getting going. Every time I had to stop for a light, it would struggle to go again, but it finally got better after I had driven a bit. So I was a bit worried, but it got better, so we decided not to worry about it. (By the way, I changed the air filter all by myself at this time! I just watched a YouTube video so I would know what it looked like, and then I went out there and did it! I was so proud of myself! But it was so easy!) Anyway, the rain wasn't too bad until about 2 weeks ago. It had been raining the day before and all night long and when I went to try the car in the morning, it wouldn't start! And I was supposed to go to someone's house to babysit their kids! (more on that later) So I had to call the mom and she came and picked me up. Luckily we could use their car for that whole weekend since we had to have a van to cart everyone around. By the time Saturday came, it had finally stopped raining so we tried the car and it worked! We were debating whether we should take it in or not, but we opted for buying a car cover and putting it on when there was rain. We figured $20 was a lot cheaper than whatever it would cost to fix it. So Monday and Tuesday it rains and rains again. We try our car Tuesday evening cause we were done babysitting and needed to go home, and...it doesn't work. By this time, all the car repair shops were closed so we didn't know what to do. We stayed at this family's house one more night (the parents weren't back yet and the kids were all at different families' houses, so we weren't infringing on them, luckily). The next morning we called the Honda dealer as soon as it was open so we could get our car towed there as soon as possible. We finally got it in and they had all sorts of things to fix so we wouldn't be getting our car until Thursday, which was the day we planned on leaving for Chicago. But they got it fixed and now we don't have any worries about rain anymore and we made it to Chicago! Just later than we had planned. And the family we were babysitting was sooo nice and let us use one of their cars until we got ours! So we were blessed that all of this happened when it did. I don't know what we would've done without any car at all. There are certainly some wonderful church members out there!

Now the good stuff. Like I mentioned above, during the car troubles we were babysitting a family of 4 girls from our ward while their parents went to Hawaii, ages 14 to 5. We stayed at their house, made dinner, drove them where they needed to go, and were like their parents for about 5 days. They were such good girls though it really was easy. However, I was still really tired after that. How do you moms do it? But we had fun.

We've gone to some dollar movies over the last month. Tangled and Yogi Bear. We went to Yogi Bear with the girls. We all enjoyed it!

We went to a free Akron Zips basketball game with church members who are from the Law school so that was really fun too. We were the only couple without kids!

And good news from my side! My little sister is getting married! She's marrying a great guy, so we're excited. And one of my older sisters is going to have another baby! Hooray! #10! And one of my best friends is going on a mission (yes, at 24. You are never too old as a sister) to Honduras! She'll be speaking Spanish and she's a nurse so it will also involve teaching health and sanitation.

Sorry about the long post, but other than the usual work for me and school for Nate, that's what's been going on in our life for the last month!

Our First Valentine's Day

Being our first Valentine's Day and therefore, being poor, we knew we had to keep things low key. So I was certainly surprised when I came home from work that day to see a large bouquet of purple flowers with chocolates and a wonderful note from my man!

He doesn't normally have the car, because he gets a ride with another guy who is also going to law school, so he had to order these and have them delivered! I was certainly surprised! And now we have a beautiful square vase! I know, I'm weird to be excited about the vase. The chocolate rose next to it was from one of the students in the class I was long-term subbing in. The kids were really sweet (on this day)! These kids come from really poor homes, but I still got that and 3 boxes of chocolates! They are good to their teachers.

Anyway, so all I got Nate was a bag of Reece's because he LOVES those. Then we went out to Denny's where they have some cheaper menu options (we only spent about $10, including the tip) and came home to watch a movie from the library. I can't remember which one it was now, but it was kind of a chick flick. But despite the money constraints, we had a great time together and enjoyed showing and expressing our love for each other!

Ohio Weather

(Not my picture, just off the internet, but this is what it looked like here)

So I had to blog about the crazy winter we have experienced this year in Ohio. Apparently this year has been worse than most, but let me tell ya, there have been more snowy (icy, rainy) days this winter than cloudy and sunny combined. It's been almost every day since the beginning of December! And the snowy days aren't too bad, we've had worse in Utah except for the fact that it's almost constant and takes forever to melt. But the ice storms! I've never experienced anything like it!

Imagine that instead of a couple of inches of snow coating everything, you have 1/2 in to 2 in of ICE covering everything! I mean everything! Every branch and trunk of every tree, your car, the power lines, the ground (on top of the old snow) it's insane! Branches were all over because they were too heavy and just broke off! Power was off in many places for days! (Luckily ours was just off for a couple of hours for one day). Which means no heat! We had a leak in our ceiling so I went outside to see if I could figure out where it was coming from and I could only go 2 steps out cause I was slipping and sliding everywhere! I couldn't even grab the tree cause it was covered in ice and slippery! And the next day when it was over and we needed to go to the store for a plunger (our toilet was clogged) it took a 1/2 hour to break all the ice on our car so we could get in. I mean, imagine 1 - 2 inches of ice covering your windows! You don't scrape like you do frost, but you pound until you can crack it to break a slab off. I mean, it was crazy! I've never experienced anything like it.

And then just a couple days ago, after a large snow storm, we got an entire night of thunder storms and rain. You can only imagine what that would do! Luckily we didn't have any flooding by our house, but one of the schools I subbed at was built right next to a large park. That park was a lake! Picture of flood (it wouldn't let me copy and paste) And it spilled out onto the playground, and the roads which had to be closed because they were rivers. It was crazy! Things are still trying to dry out from that experience.