It’s been awhile since Aaron and I have been on an airplane for a ‘real’ vacation. That must have been why we were so crazy in thinking we should take our entire family on a trip across the country! Ha ha, but… anything to keep our girls and Nana happy right? We had a crazy itinerary in the hopes to one: keep the price down, and two: give Aaron a reason to visit his mother-in-law. 
We purchased one-way, red-eye tickets to Chicago on a Friday night, spent that Saturday in Chicago so that Aaron could watch his beloved Cubbies play (and WIN!), rode the Amtrak that night for 11 hours, landed in Buffalo, NY so that we could spend Sunday in Niagara Falls, then completed the trip with a 3hour drive down to Nana’s place (also Aunt Adrienne’s) in Elmira, NY. We finally reached our true destination Sunday evening at 11pm! I know all this may sound crazy, but the kids traveled AMAZINGLY! Our biggest complaint was getting sweaty from the heat and humidity and not being able to shower for several days. Gross. The following week we got to see Mike and Song’s family (Aaron’s brother from Virginia), we spent time with Nana, Zz and Jay, we visited my Aunt Adrienne’s family at their Lake House, and we squeezed in a day trip to NYC (a post all of it’s own). We had a great time! Sadly, after such a great visit, we had a flight-home from HELL complete with delays, a persistent screaming baby (and yes, Allie was *that* kid), grumpy and tired parents (from the lack of sleep during our crazy drive/trip to NYC), and to top it off, we still had to drive home from Seattle! But… all in all, it was a GREAT trip and if you erase the last bits from memory, it was an AWESOME vacation thanks to Nana, Zz, Jay, the Becks and Brewers. We LOVE you all!
***Now… on to the pictures!***
Flight out from Seattle Friday night (Aug 5th).
The girls were perfect on the drive up and both took good naps. (Thank you Uncle Mike for taking us to the airport!) We were scheduled to leave at 11:45pm, but got delayed until 12:30am. No worries though. Malia fell asleep almost immediately on the plane and I had gotten Allie to sleep before boarding. She doesn’t like to be held while sleeping, so after some fussing, she ended up on the floor of the plane (I know… gross) but still slept like a log.
We were sad that Malia missed the sunrise over the clouds. It was beautiful. However, it would have been more beautiful if we could have at least slept even just a couple hours on that plane ride. But, thank you to the loud mouth gibber gabbers in the row in front of us for giving us a sleepless day in Chicago.
We landed around 7am in the middle of a hot, humid, torrential down-pour. Perfect. Not what the weather channel had predicted, but, what was I to expect? They are NEVER right. Aaron was like “wouldn’t it be lame if we flew all the way over here for a Cubs game and it gets cancelled because of the rain?” Uh… that would have been awful! Don’t worry though, the weather eventually cleared up.
We took the subway down-town for a 30min ride and stopped to drop off our luggage at the Amtrak station so that we didn’t have to tote it around with us all day. Then we walked over to the Willis Tower for a view of Chicago. Our view wasn’t as spectacular as I had imagined since it was missing the sun, but it was still fun. I would have had more pictures of us “arriving” in Chicago, but Aaron didn’t want me to look like a tourist straight out of the airport… some of those peeps were a little sketchy!
The Willis Tower (formerly know as the Sears Tower) is the tallest building in the western hemisphere and the third tallest in the world. We were 1,353 feet in the air (103 floors up) in this glass box that extended out 4.3 feet from Skydeck. Malia LOVED it!
That was fun.
We made our way to the Subway again so that we could head up to the 12:05pm Cubs game. Aaron wanted to get their early because the first something-thousand were going to receive free Cubs shirts. Here’s a picture of the “L” train, (for elevated), we kept taking.
We bought an all-day “fun” pass for the subway because a lot of what we wanted to see and do was kind of spread out. But eww… the elevators (which we couldn’t avoid since we had the stroller), the sub, the everything in Chicago always smelled like urine!
For Aaron, this was a child-hood dream come true. I honestly can say that I think he was more happy here than he was at our wedding, or even at the hospital where our children were born!
(Aaron bought me this hat years ago… it’s my first time wearing it!)
Aaron’s most favorite player: Ryne Sandberg.
Proudly wearing one of our three free Cubs shirts.
Can I just say how good the girls were at the game! It was miserably humid! Malia cried for a little while “I so hot!” However, once the sweat soaked through our clothes (and I mean literally soaked), I suppose you could say we didn’t care anymore. Everyone else around us smelled too.
First pitch of the game!
What??? How nice it was to see the Cubbies actually WIN!
We were only seats away from the infamous seat that cost the Cubs a chance at the World Series. Click here for details.
Aaron was so sad when Malia fell asleep right before the traditional “Take me out to the ball game” song during the 7th inning. He had been working on it with her for weeks!
But we still got an adorable video later. If only she hadn’t been so groggy… it could have been even cuter!
What an experience. That was FUN!
Afterward we worked our way back into the heart of down-town (our train was scheduled to depart at 9:30pm) and sort of just killed time exploring the city and its beautiful architecture.
(The picture above was the John Hancock building.)
(That line on my forehead was permanently etched in for a day thanks to the humidity and my stupid hat…)
Allie was such a good happy baby… sweaty and messy… but so happy!
Well, after an exciting and exhausting (remember, we didn’t get any sleep the night before) glimpse of Chicago we headed for the Amtrak station where we waited in a stinky, stuffed full of people, non air-conditioned ‘terminal’ until it was time to board. And yes… the train was delayed too. So… read on for the next part of our adventure!
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