Connor's First Road Trip

Well, we survived our first road trip with Connor! Actually, there wasn't much to survive b/c our kiddo was such a trooper the entire time and the 3 of us had a great time. We had been looking forward to our first vacation together as a family of 3, and we enjoyed our time together so much! We left for Chicago on Wednesday morning, September 16 and drove home on Saturday the 19th. We knew Connor would be just fine in the city, but of course, we were both wondering how the car ride would go. Connor has never been a lover of the car, but thankfully he's been getting better with it and will actually fall asleep in his car seat at times, so we figured overall it should go well. And it sure did. It took us 11 hours to get to Chicago & Connor cried/fussed for probably 40 minutes max. He was so good! Why did it take us 11 hours? Well, we learned that when you travel with a baby you can never have your own agenda - Connor definitely called the shots, but that was ok with us. We stopped for lunch after 2 hours in the car, got Connor fed, then a little while later he messed his diaper so we had to make a stop for that, then a little while later it was time for him to eat again. Then we detoured to a suburb outside of Chicago to check out a restaurant that was suggested to us for dinner - Portillo's Hot Dogs. And then after a little more driving and a few missed turns in the city we finally arrived to our hotel!

The next 2 pictures were taken at Portillo's Hot Dogs. While we were in Chicago we thought it would be fun to check out some of the local cuisine, and Chicago is known for their delicious hot dogs so we thought this would be a great place to check out. I ate my first chili dog & was pleasantly surprised & satisified! And Bryce had some hot dog with "the works" on it, but I can't recall the name of it. And to top it all off we ordered a size of cheesy fries to go along with it. yum!

We had 2 full days to spend in the city. It was hard to decide what to do and what not to do b/c we definitely couldn't fit in everything we wanted to do in only 2 days. So we spent the day on Thursday walking down Michigan Ave and checking out a few of the shops and spent some time in Millennium park too. The city is so big and there's so much action going on around you - it's a really cool place.

The next 2 pictures below were taken at Millennium Park. It's a park filled with a bunch of art including "the Bean" shown below which is the huge mirror thing that reflects the skyline of the city. It's pretty neat to see. Connor enjoyed checking it out as well.

And this is another picture from Millennium Park. There are 2 of these things (for lack of a better word!) facing each other and the faces on these fountains change every so often. The faces are of 1,000 different Chicago residents & every once in a while water will shoot out of their mouths as well. We saw it during the day, but I'm sure it's even cooler to see at night.

Then for lunch that day we ate at Pizzeria Due and had some Chicago-style pizza. Again, a great choice.

This is a picture of the city at night taken at Navy Pier.

On Friday, we walked down to Navy Pier to check out the attractions there. We thought there'd be more to do than there was, but it was still fun to see and the weather was gorgeous so it was nice to be outside.

While at Navy Pier we signed up for an Architecture Boat Tour and rode in the boat below! It's a huge speedboat that took us for a joyride on the lake before slowing down and taking us down the Chicago River to show us the neat architecture that fills the city skyline.

This is the Hancock Tower in the center. We never made it to the observation deck in there, but that's something we'll try to do next time we go to Chicago.

Then on Friday night, we ate some more Chicago-style pizza at Giordano's and both of us thought this pizza was better than the pizza we had the day before. So delicious!

And for dessert - Ghirardelli :) Bryce & I shared a Caramel/Fudge Sundae!

Unfortunately, on Saturday we had to pack the car back up and start heading home. As I said before, Connor determined our schedule, but thankfully it didn't take us 11 hours to get home. One of the stops we made was to feed Connor. We pulled off the highway and found a library parking lot to feed him at. This was the park at the library so we got out to play for a little while before feeding Connor and continuing on with the drive home!

It was really encouraging for us to see how well Connor did on this trip, because now we know that we can take him anywhere and we will all survive and have a great time! We are just so blessed to have such a great baby!