CHICAGO!

Back in June, Brad went to a medical conference in Chicago; he got to go last year, as well. This year, however, I got to go with him! We were only there for a mere 48 hours ~ literally ~ and with Brad needing to attend some meetings and awful weather while we were there, to be honest, we didn't do much ~ but what we were able to do definitely made us feel like we had "been" there and were able to get a small taste of the city.

We window shopped up and down "The Miracle Mile," and we took a double-decker tour the morning before we had to leave. We ate some amazing deep dish pizza, and we went to the top of the Hancock Building, which was right across the street from where we were staying. I must say, Chicago is a beautiful city. There was some sort of regatta going on, so there were sailboats covering the lake. Several pictures are below; although we didn't go up into the Sears Tower, we did get some pretty neat pictures of it, including the mailbox-shaped entry down below.

Personally, I had two favorite parts of our trip. One was getting to see a very special, dear friend of mine while we were there. We were so lucky we got to see Dugan and his girlfriend, Kristina, since it was all so last minute! (He saw my update on Facebook that we were there and contacted me immediately.) We went to dinner at a fabulous restaurant, followed by drinks on a rooftop terrace. So beautiful and such fun!! It was wonderful to see Dugan!! The other thing we did that I really loved was to walk to Navy Pier. We people-watched, enjoyed the gorgeous (although hot!) weather that we had for the moment, and sat at the end of the pier while we listened to music and ate ice cream cones.

We really had a nice trip. Thanks to Gigi and Dede for keeping the girls. Brad and I really enjoyed our little escape for a couple of nights, and the girls had a blast with y'all!