our last day

Our last day in Chicago was one of our most eventful and luck filled. We started off the day by piling onto the bus to go shopping downtown! We strolled the magnificent mile and could have stayed all day. We didn't even get to a small fraction of the stores! I really want to go back and go to the ghiradelli ice cream shop. There was way too much to see and the weather could NOT have been more perfect. Rain was forecasted for everyday that we were there- but the only times we got rained on was late in the evenings while we were headed back to the hotel!

We were with skyline high school (my neighbor's sister is in the choir) but wanted to shop longer while they headed early to the Cubs game, so we decided we'd take the "L"/subway to Wrigley Field. The L is NOT stroller friendly. We had to pick up our strollers and carry them down all the dingy stairs and down the dank train corridors. I think that the L man felt bad for us (perhaps we looked despondent and motherly?!) and he told us we didn't have to pay for our ride!! The trains were all jammed with Cubs fans so we had to wait awhile but eventually got on one.

Once we got to the game we searched for tickets to scalp. The game had been sold out and we were going to try to get them there. Apparently Cubs tickets are a hot commodity. The cheapest tickets we could find were thirty dollars a piece (we needed tickets for the two of us AND our rugrats) so we quickly succumbed to the news that we were not going to be going inside the world famous Wrigley Field. We wandered around the outside of Wrigley field (apparently looking more despondent and motherly than ever) and some man approached us with four tickets that he just wanted to GIVE us at NO charge! FREE. ZIPPO. ZILCH! We were beyond ecstatic. We grabbed the tickets and scurried in! The tickets ended up being just a few rows from Lindsay's family!! out of the 41,000 other seats in wrigley field- we got the tickets next to her mom and sis!!! it was outrageous and wonderful.
We enjoyed some great hot-dogs and a near blowout game! The cubs pummeled the pirates 13-1. I had never been to a Major League Baseball game. It was CRAZY and so much fun. If you look closely at the seating behind me in the above picture you can see people sitting on the roofs of buildings and house surrounding the stadium! People sell tickets from their roofs!!! Zeb loved the game- but was getting pretty pooped. We took the L back to our hotel and little Z crashed as soon as we exited the riotous stadium.

Once at the hotel we went swimming to tire the kids out for the ride home. Zeb used his new walmart special floaty (only three bucks!) and loved the swimming to death. We only had one near drowing! A little girl in the pool with us flipped him over and he went head first over the edge of the floaty. He came up sputtering but never cried :)

The ride home wasn't bad at all (only four hours) minus the last thirty minutes (as aforementioned in "day one's" post). Chicago is definitely a future vacation destination.