The Hatz Family: Trip to Chicago!!

We had such a fun weekend!! We took a short vacation to Chicago with my parents, Auntie Jo and the Meyer family. The plan was to go to the Shedd Acquarium so in honor of that my mom had the big kids do a couple of fun projects.

Crab Hands (Hand Crabs?)

Jelly Fish!

The girls and the kids took the train into Chicago from Princeton, IL while the boys drove into downtown.

Patiently waiting for the train

The train was fun but I guess we didn't realize that with all the stops our ride was going to be 2 hours long! I think I would have brought more toys for them to play with but everything went pretty well. Carter and Addison loved walking up to the dining car to get drinks and Carter even had to use the restroom on the train :). Isla liked looking out the windows and walking back and forth from our seats to Grandma. Luckily the train wasn't too full that it didn't seem to bother anyone. She also fell asleep with about a half hour left of the trip. Auntie Jo is a pro at getting her to fall asleep while being held. Isla has never been a cuddler, even as an infant, and prefers to fall asleep on her own so I have never been able to get her down that way. Lucky for us, Auntie Jo was there!

My babes on the train!

Once we got downtown and the boys finally found their way to the train station it was off to the Shedd Aquarium. Driving in downtown Chicago = not fun. We originally missed our exit to the Shedd and had to get back on the interstate and loop back around, which added about 25 minutes to our trip. Addison said at one point, “we are never going to get to the aquarium!” We did kinda feel that way at one point but we finally made it. We spent the day at the Shedd and honestly I don’t know if I would go back and do it again anytime soon. We did purchase our tickets online so we didn’t have to wait in the ticket line, which was nice but it was SO expensive. If you buy just the general admission ticket you can’t add on any of the extra, aka all the fun, exhibits. So we went with the package that included the dolphin show, jellyfish exhibit, kid’s zone, 4D movie (which we didn’t do) and the Stingray experience. And it was so crowded. I know that it is summer and we went on a Friday but there were a couple of summer camp groups there so it was nuts. Also, it was annoying that even though the Shedd ‘suggests’ not bringing anything bigger than an umbrella stroller people we walking around these huge double jogging strollers, which just made it difficult for everyone.

Part of the reason we didn’t really get our money’s worth was because Carter was terrified! I know! I couldn’t believe it either. He LOVES everything about the ocean and one of his favorite shows is Octonauts and he is always telling us trivia about the creatures of the sea so I thought for sure he would love it. The first incident happened when Matt lifted him up to get a closer look at a huge spider crab and Carter practically jumped out of his skin. We moved on and Carter didn’t want to touch the big fresh water fish…can’t say that I blame him there! But I was most surprised that he was scared of the sea lions. They are so cute but when came up out of the water to take a breath and Carter jumped on to me and immediately asked to leave. So crazy! We did enjoy the dolphin show although it is more informational than just watching the dolphins do a bunch of tricks, which obviously would have been more kid-friendly.

BFFs waiting for the Dolphin Show!

After the dolphin show, we ended up right next to one of the Gift Shops. We were planning on making the kids wait until the end to pick out a gift but after seating through waiting for the dolphin show to start and the entire dolphin show we thought we would just go ahead and let them pick something out. Now before we even left for Chicago Carter asked my mom if she thought the aquarium would have a gift shop and he already knew that he wanted a Hammerhead Shark lovey ~ because ‘hammer heads are his favorite.’ I really didn’t think that they would have a hammerhead shark because they don’t have any at the aquarium and I looked at the Shedd gift shop online before we left ;). Well, wouldn’t you know they had one! Carter was in heaven and it made his day. He even talked my mom into getting him a baby Dolphin, which he named Baby Dolphy, of course! Isla got a cute pink sea otter lovey.

Carter with Sharky and Baby Dolphy

We went outside to the Stingray experience, which is really neat. But Carter wouldn’t even put his hand in the water to touch the stingray. Isla would have and she splashed in the water a little bit. But she was too little to reach down far enough to touch one and all I could imagine was her falling into the pool of stingrays. Even though I am terrified of fish, I don’t mind the sting rays and petted a few myself! Then it was time to explore the Kid’s zone which was underneath where the dolphin show was held. So we got to see the beluga whales under the water, which was really cool and Carter’s favorite part of the aquarium. They also had penguins to look at and a little penguin play area for the kids to play on. It was a little small but a nice place for them to run their energy out.

By this time, we were getting Isla to sleep so she missed the jellyfish exhibit, which was really cool! I had no idea there were that many different kinds of jelly fish. And she missed Carter’s other favorite part the sharks! The last exhibit we went through was the rainforest. It was really neat and they had a little baby crocodile (alligator?) that was chilling out with his head just above the water. I mentioned it since it was kind of hidden and my mom lifted Addison and Carter up to see. We didn’t tell them what they were looking for just to look…Addison saw the croc right away and said it was cute. Carter and a hard time finding it and then we told him to look straight ahead and he was almost eye to eye with it. Carter let out a big scream and then proceeded to cry. I hate to say this but it was a little funny that he got so startled but we knew by the crying it meant that he was tired and it was time to leave. It was around 3:30.

Originally, we had planned to spend most of the day in downtown and head out to our hotel in Naperville later in the evening. But it was so hot! It was 97 degrees but downtown it felt like over a hundred! We knew that we weren’t walking anywhere downtown so we decided to just go ahead and head out to Naperville. Luckily both the kiddos passed out on the way because it took us an hour and a half to go the 28 miles to Naperville. I do NOT know how people do that every day. I certainly could not handle the traffic of a big city. We knew that there was no way that we were going to get the kids to sit down for dinner after being in the car so we asked the hotel what the best Chicago-style pizza was and ordered some for delivery! We swam before our pizza arrived and it was nice to let the kids just play. We ordered Giordano's and it was so good!

The next day we relaxed in the morning before heading to the DuPage Children’s Museum. After the rush of the aquarium on Friday it was great to give the kids time to explore. We got there when it opened so it wasn’t busy at all. They had a lot of hands on activities for the kids and a train room on the 2nd floor. Carter was in heaven and jumped for one thing to the next. We definitely had to divide and conquer because Isla is definitely not as fast walking and, of course, had her own ideas of what was fun at the museum. Both Carter and Isla loved the bubbles and water station.

Carter also loved the trains and playing in the big jungle gym and boat. Isla loved the wind tunnel and the music room. That girl loves to be loud and could have banged on the drums all day ;). Both Gus and Isla fell asleep at the museum while we let the big kids play for a little bit longer until we headed out for lunch.

Sleepy Babies

I don’t remember but someone recommended a Mexican restaurant in downtown Naperville for lunch. So off we went to Front Street Cantina. Downtown Naperville is so cute, lots of little shops and restaurant but of course not a lot of parking. The restaurant was so good and they had us in a little section by ourselves so the kiddos didn’t bother anyone. The waiter recommended the tacos campos and they were amazing!! The kids were pretty well-behaved at lunch and we had a great time sitting and relaxing before heading home. Of course we had to stop at the Aurora Outlet mall on the way home. Matt found his favorite deal at Oakley $10 t-shirts and I found a cute pair of workout shoes at Under Armour. Both Carter and Isla got some cute stuff at Gap Kids. All in all it was a great weekend!!