I Just Got Back from the Windy City, the Windy City, the Windy City!!!

Wow! That was fun! Jim had to take a two-day certification exam in Chicago and we (Carrie, Jeff, and I) tagged along with him. If you live within a day's drive of Chicago, GO! We had a ball.

For little kids (I'd say up to about age 7) the Chicago Children's Museum on Navy Pier is the way to go. Carrie and I went while Jim was testing. We stayed for 5 and 1/2 hours and had a blast. We constructed a chair, learned about safety, painted 4 different projects at a painting workshop, die-cut and assembled a horse, took pictures, learned about manufacturing, and had a wonderful time! She wanted to go back again.

Jeff was in the art museum a lot. He watched Carrie in the evening so that Jim and I could spend a few hours there. It was unbelievable! Their collection is just amazing. Even better was the fact that the museum was free during February. An enormous Winslow Homer (one of my faves) exhibit was there starting on Saturday so we didn't see it. Jeff, however, did. He was there without us on Thursday and didn't know it was a special exhibit. He just walked in not realizing that it was a special 'members only' preview. He was wondering why people were looking at him funny!

Here's just a sampling of some of the more famous pieces that are there:

American Gothic by Grant Wood - I have to link instead of showing it as most of these won't cut and paste.

Self-Portrait by Vincent van Gogh - fascinating to see this stuff 'up close and personal'.

Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler by Pablo Picasso - I'm not a big Picasso or cubism fan but I've got to say, seeing the real thing was pretty awesome.

I particularly enjoyed the paintings by Monet, Vuillard, and Pissarro. A few by Whistler intrigued me as well. I want to go back again when Jim and I can relax and take our time there. He had just finished a 3-hour exam and we had already been walking a good portion of the afternoon so we didn't take all the time we really needed. One thing is certain. The museum will never hire us as tour guides. We like what we like, and hate what we hate, and we laughed as much as anything at some of the stuff in there that they call 'art'. It was fun to make up our own sarcastic captions and descriptions for the occasional pieces of garbage hanging along side the good stuff. I suppose it's all in the eye of the beholder but I've seen my 1st grader turn out some better stuff than some of the modern stuff I saw. Really!

On the way to the art museum we walked through Millenium Park. There was a rather large, uh, sculpture, (I guess) housing the stage of an ampitheatre. Carrie looked up at it and said, 'Mom, look! A water tower fell over and crashed!". I laughed so hard. That's EXACTLY what it looked like! Right next to it is the oversized kidney bean/skateboard helmet sculpture (yeah, I'm POSITIVE that's not the real title) that was actually pretty neat because it reflects the whole skyline. The crown fountain was pretty fantastic, too. I'd love to see it all in the summertime, when the park is having free concerts, the fountains are spewing, and the gardens are blooming.

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I had fun. I guess I should have left it at that because now I'm rambling!

Oh....and of course I let my dearest take me to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch to fuel all of our walking...and no, I didn't have any cheesecake. I also didn't lose any weight.