Whew....How Exhausting!

Well folks, sorry for the delay on some of our postings...it's been a crazy couple of weeks.  Two weeks ago, Grammy P and Jim were in, and then this past weekend we were in Chicago for our "Great IKEA Shopping Trip".  Was it great? At times.  Was there shopping?  Oh yeah...lots of it.

So let's kick it off.  We picked up the boys early from school on Friday and high-tailed it up to Chicago (Itasca actually).  After some research, I found this great place called All Aboard Diner that is filled with none other than tons and tons of train memorabilia (and trains of course).  But the absolute coolest thing about it....well...just watch the video below:



So the train actually delivers your food!  Sweet!!!

Here's our ice cream!

Ethan was so mesmerized that I had to feed him...he just kept yelling "choo-choo", "Daddy choo-choo!!".   Really great stuff.  I guess there are a few of these type restaurants in Chicago, Trip Advisor says this was the best.

After a quick swim Friday night, it was off to bed and to dream about our next big day.

The boys slept great and before breakfast they got some much needed play time in after that 5 hour drive up on Friday!

E's loving coloring right now.

And of course, Mr.  Monster Truck still loves monster trucks.

Our big plans for Saturday was to take the boys to Legoland Discovery Center in Schaumburg.  While a little be pricey, it didn't disappoint too much.  The creations that they had were amazing!

The line was out the door 20 minutes before it opened! Yikes!

A little closer look at the monster giraffe made entirely out of Duplo Bricks.

e = mc(squared) Dude.

Loved this part of the place, the mini-Chicago area.  This past weekend was a special Lego Club weekend in which the theme was the new Lego sets called Alien Invasion.  So if you look closely, you'll see thousands of aliens invading and causing havoc in Chicago!!!  The blue guys are like Alien Policemen...you'll see them closer below.  Enjoy the pics!

Loving it!

Lots of light up stuff.  Check out the aliens on top of the bus!

The baseball field had real lights to light up the game.  Very cool. 

Replica of the Wrigley Building and marching aliens looking for trouble. 

Looking at Navy Pier.  The aliens had attacked a FedEx truck and overturned a CTA bus!!

Another shot of the pier.

The Fam, that's an Aidan in 7th Heaven if you don't recognize that smile.

Emmy pointed this out and I thought it was cool as heck.  The Alien Police guys coming out of Lake Michigan, the half submerged guys have no legs!!

Alien Police going down the rip line!

Looking back down the street, you can see the Chicago Theater. 

Not to many aliens at the construction site (I guess aliens don't like work) but I did enjoy the four dudes taking a break on the top level. 

They had controls that allowed the kids to move the cranes around.

It was next onto the jungle room and there were some really amazing creations in here as well!

Me, Aid and Indy.

Aid made me get a pic of this lizard. 

Great Monkeys!

I wanna Hippopotamus!

Lemurs and an Explorer.

Explorer-man.

Whoa Aid, watch out for that spider!!!

E DON'T PET THAT ALLIGATOR!!!!

One of Aid's favorite, Batman!

Prez. 'bama. 

Bob and Aid

Into the Factory...it's really no big deal how they make Legos BTW.

After the Factory Tour, we headed into the best part of the venue: The 4D theater.  We'd never done a 4D theater before but I'll tell you, they are cool!   This particular movie (which was both the boys first "movie" theater experience) was all about Lego City and the task of retrieving a special package for some professor guy.  In any case, 4 separate Lego people had to go and get it and we were right there with them..in 3D.  SO what's the 4th D?  Well, during some points in the movie water was being sprayed....so guess who else got sprayed?  US!!  There was wind for action driving scenes and real snow for an ice scene.  SO COOL!

Aid's ready for the show!

They had several building tables, but it was getting close to lunch so we only spent a few minutes building.

Somebody's watching!

So that's it, what a cool place.  Very happy we did it.

As many of you know, we really push the limits at the FFA.  Saturday afternoon, we decided to take the Metra into downtown just to give the boys a train ride and to walk around d-town and get Garrett's popcorn (yes, we took a train 30 miles into the city just for ridiculously expensive popcorn).  In any case, the weather was crap so I only got a few pics.

Train riders.

THAT is a big building! (Willis Tower aka Sears Tower)

Here's the bean in Millennium Park, can you find us?  I have a light blue shirt on.

How bout now?

Headin' back to Itasca in the rain :(

So that's it for the fun part of the trip. Sunday morning we had planned on getting up, getting a rental truck, taking it to Bolingbrook's IKEA and loading up on furniture and flooring to take back to St. Louis.  The good news is that it did happen.  The bad news was we were about 6 hours behind because Budget Rental Trucks did not have my double confirmed reservation of a 10' truck.  And there were no trucks available in all of Chicago because it was college move-in weekend.  I will tell you, it was awful. No one rent from Budget.  Ever.  Fortunately, U-Haul did have a truck and it made it back here without issue, with all our stuff that I now have more that a bagillion things to put together.  Oh well....look for pictures soon!

Thanks for reading!  Have a great night!

Ty, Emmy, Aidan and Ethan