Doowwwwntoowwwn...Things will be great when you're Doowwwntoowwn...

Let me just start out by saying--THIS is our city.

Jealous? I thought so.

Until last week, I never understood why Ferris Beuller couldn't resist ditching school to take advantage of a beautiful clear day in Chicago. I, being a California girl, always thought "What's the big deal about a warm sunny day?" Apparently Chicago folk know how to appreciate good weather when it comes, since the winters are brutal. I really feel for those students (i.e. my husband) who will have to stay in class on gorgeous days like this. Fortunately, we found some friends who wanted to take advantage of the last weekend before school started to have some fun in the city. Here we are boarding the Metra train, which is just a hop-skip-and-a-jump from our apartment.

This is the view from the Shedd Aquarium, which we did not enter on this particular day, but we passed it on our way to the Adler Planetarium.

These are our wonderful new friends: Lincoln, Carina, Carson and Brooklyn. Lincoln is a first-year MBA student with Matt and they live about twenty feet above us. And yep, you guessed it -- our baby monitor reception reaches up to their apartment. Oh, the possibilities!

These three sweet little blondes stick together pretty well. Four-year-old Brooklyn is already Josh's second mother (or girlfriend, if you ask him :). Here they're looking at a model of the Mars Rover in the Planetarium.

"The Bean" or "Cloud Gate" is even more entertaining than it looks! It's really fun to walk underneath (notice the crowd of people under there) and see yourself from weird angles in about eight different places. It's also really great for experiments with the camera.

While walking through Millennium Park to get to the fountain play area, we passed some... interesting... Chinese art. It appears to be two sumo wrestlers hanging onto a massive demonic Sharp-Tooth hog dangling from a creepy toy-car-like crane. Doesn't matter how long I stare -- I just don't get it.

The next day we headed back downtown again, with more friends this time. Meet Mark, Amber, and their kids Avery and Aiden. Before we hit the town, we got some yummy Chicago-style deep dish pizza at Connie's (recommended to us by a very enthusiastic food-lovin' worker at Target).

The kids were real troopers that day. They played together so well. Even with all the stops and delays that are inevitable when you take a big group into the city.

Watching the big boats pass on the river. I've heard there's a pretty awesome architecture tour you can take on these boats.

What can I say? It's LOVE!

His little whispies just make me sigh with adoration...

If you haven't heard of the Magnificent Mile, it's a loooooong street of stores on Michigan Avenue. All kinds. Great fun for window shopping. Maybe a little pricey when you're living on student loans.

Yes, it was a little tricky keeping all six adults, five kids, and three big strollers together on the crowded sidewalks. But we still had a great time!

Our last stop of the day was the Lego store! There were little tables for the kids to build on and Josh had a fun time even without putting all the tiny Lego pieces in his mouth! The coolest part for me was definitely the life-size Lego sculptures, like this man on the bench next to Matt. There was also a giant black and yellow spider that looked way too real at first glance. Crazy cool.

After missing too many naps in one week, this little trooper zonked out as soon as we started the car to drive home. Thanks for a great time downtown, new friends!