Chicago Bound Girls

Welcome to Illinois! We were all pretty excited by this point to see that we had actually reached the correct state. I had a crazy week (5 days) of traveling. Some for work over in Mandan, ND and some for play with my girls from college in Chicago, IL. I left at 5 am last Wednesday and headed to Mandan. It was precisely 7.5 hours on the road and a very scary bathroom in Tappen, ND. But I made it. Worked until 10 pm that night and up early and back to the Curves in the morning. We had a nice lunch and then I was MN bound by 2 pm. I made it safely to my college roommates house (Carrie) and enjoyed visiting until 2 am. But 9 am Friday morning us four MN girls were all headed to Chicago for a weekend together. We had an Atlas, a GPS and me who questioned if I94 from Mandan to St. Paul really had to go through St. Cloud?! So when we reached the right state line we were pretty happy.

Mahrya and Carrie as we are just heading out of MN. Mahrya drove her car and we all had intentions of helping her drive if she needed to. Well she drove the whole time both ways!

Anne and Becky in the back seat...that way I could sneak little naps and maybe nobody would notice.

Friday night we got into the heart of Chicago, drove through the rain, toll booths and landed in mid rush hour. That dramatically slowed down our time of travel. Carrie took control of my iPod and picked out great old songs and we all tried to pass the time by singing and trying to remember the words...I'm talking, Salt-n-Pepa, Ace of Base, John Mellancamp...old stuff!

We got to Kari's apartment after a near death experience with Mahrya hopping 3 lanes of traffic, parked the car, hauled our stuff in and looked like we showed up for a month. We found a spot in the lobby to park our butts. When Kari arrived we all headed up to her apartment, freshened up and went out to get us some Chicago food. We chose a steak house and all ordered a great cut of meat. Each item on the menu is individually priced so we all ordered sides to share-asparagus spears, sweet potatoes, fries, augratin potatoes....yummmm. Oh and a bottle of wine. It was fabulous to just hang out, visit and relax with no time line. After dinner we got back to Kari's and we (the 4 from MN) were wiped. So we sat around for 45 minutes laughing in hysterics at YouTube videos. I have never had the time to sit and watch YouTube but thoroughly enjoyed crying from laughing so hard at funny things on line. I am going to say if you YouTube Ellens Hawaiian chair you too will laugh.

Saturday morning we started out with our Starbucks and shopped most of the day. We ate a Chicago style pizza and caught up on all the lost years. We did manage to take in a few landmarks of Chicago. Like the Sears Tower and the El trains.

Kari had this great pink hat on all weekend and almost the rest of us ended up buying some sort of hat to wear. Mahrya in her new cream hat...she got one in brown too

Carrie and Anne on a corner in Chicago

We went to Millennium Park and saw the "bean"...it was fun to try to take our picture via the reflection it gave off. Carrie succeeded but every shot I took I had the camera right at my crotch and looked like I was trying to really shoot something with it. We looked over and saw 6 "older" ladies (50's, 60's) trying to take their picture so we swapped them cameras. We thought it was funny to see that at any age we will most likely still be taking girls trips together.

Kari was always the front seat cabby talker. Where the other 4 of us crammed in the back. No cab ride cost us more than $15...anywhere we went.

That night we headed to Navy Pier to hangout, shop, look around and legally drink while walking on the sidewalks. It was great. Cold but great. We did the ferriswheel and a Haunted House that was so scary that I literally almost peed my pants.

Super funny to us that Anne was so scared of the ferriswheel that this picture doesn't quite justify how truly panicked she was.

We went to a bar and played darts and then to a comedy show Saturday night also...the next morning we all got ready and went out for a nice breakfast together and parted ways around noon. We 4 rolled into the cities at 8 pm and I hit the road to come home to see my boys. I got in at 12:30 am just in time to hear Emmitt crying for momma in his crib. I picked him right up and got the best hug from him, rocked him to sleep and then woke up Parker to do the same. When I whispered to Parker that momma was home, he smiled, rolled his eyes and fell back to sleep. I called in staff to work for me Monday and knew that it was going to be a great day just hanging out with the boys...and it was.

Don't tell my husband but the girls and I all discussed somewhere next winter (March) somewhere far away and warm. So far it's either Mexico or Florida...beachy and with nothing to do...mmmmm, warm