The Second City: Chicago

Alan and I went to Chicago last weekend and met up with some of our sweet friends, Laura and Mike! Saturday was rainy so we went to Shedd Aquarium and decided to make a day of it!

 We paid a little extra to skip the line... best decision ever!

 Because of the rain we spent a lot of time there that day, maybe too much time?!

 It was pretty impressive though!

 One of the special exhibits was Jellies- we could've watched them all day

 We went to the Aquatic Show

A trip to Chicago wouldn't be complete with out Chicago-style pizza so we went to Lou Malnati's, thank you Lauren for the recommendation, we loved it!

 The next day was beautiful so we ventured down to Navy Pier

 stained-glass exhibit

 So thankful for a pretty day!

We decided to go up on the Ferris Wheel!

Such a great view!

 Loving this day :)

 One thing we've wanted to do for a while in Chicago is go on an architecture cruise, so we did!

 famous bridge (it's broken and stays like this all the time, interesting)

 This was probably one of our favorite parts of the trip!

 Love this city!

And of course we had to get a picture at the "Bean" :)

Leadership Forum

This past weekend I went to Chicago for the U.S. Cellular annual Leadership Forum. It is a conference where we receive feedback on a survey that all of our direct reports take to let us know how things have been going over the past year. I am so thankful to work for a company that cares so much about its employees and how we can become better as an organization year after year! The weekend was pretty full so I didn't really get sight-see but I did manage to get some Garrett Popcorn for Alan as I was leaving which is one of his all-time Chicago faves! :)

Wheaton and the Windy City

I had to go to Chicago this week for work...

Katie wanted to go to Chicago to visit Wheaton...

So we decided to go together and make a road-trip out of it!

I will say that things did not go exactly as we planned, but all-in-all, we had a great time. Our adventure began at 5am on Wednesday morning when we flew out of Knoxville with a connecting flight in Charlotte. We got to Charlotte only to find out that our flight to Chicago had been cancelled due to some bad weather in the Windy City. This definitely threw a wrench in our plans as we scrambled to re-schedule meetings at Wheaton that were suppose to take place later that day and also tried to see what our possibilities of getting to Chicago were because my conference started that night at 5pm. Katie got her meetings re-scheduled for Thursday and we got a flight at 11:50am which put us in Chicago with time to take a quick trip to Wheaton and for me to also make my work meeting, whew! Wheaton has a beautiful campus!

Katie is considering going there in the fall to get a Masters in Biblical Studies. This would be a part-time program for the next 3 years which is a big deal! We didn't have as much time as we wanted to explore due to our flight delay, but the campus isn't that big so we were able to see a good portion of it.

On Thursday, I went to my conference during the day and Katie went back to Wheaton for her meetings and an "official" campus tour. That afternoon we took the train into the city. This was something that Katie and I were both a little nervous about doing but pleasantly surprised with how easy it was! We also took the train up to Wrigleyville where we met some girls that Katie may live with and saw their cute apartment. This is the outside:

We then went downtown where we had dinner at Gino's East (the best deep dish pizza in Chicago!) and then back to our hotel for a good night's sleep. Check out the great view from our room at the Hyatt Regency...thank you Priceline!

Friday morning we hit the ground running with our first stop at Navy Pier. It was a little cold but not rainy so we were super thankful for clear skies!

I will say that not much can contend with the Chicago skyline from Navy Pier

Our next stop was Millennium Park. There were flowers blooming everywhere!

Of course, I had to take Katie to the "Bean" :)

Katie seemed a bit confused over what all the fuss of this "Bean" was about, but once she saw it up close, I think was a little more impressed.

We then met up with a high-school friend of mine, Brittany, who went to Wheaton and still lives in Chicago and it was great to re-connect with her and listen to her advice and experiences in the city. Our trip was not as long as we would have liked, but having Katie there and exploring the city with her definitely made my work trip more fun and I think she enjoyed seeing Chicago for the first time too!

Blue Men & White Sox

I spent all of last week in Chicago at a U.S. Cellular training workshop. Alan joined me up there on Thursday night, waited for my seminar to finish on Friday morning, and we then headed downtown! We stayed at the Palmer House which is a beautiful historic hotel in the Loop (thank you Priceline for a great deal!) It was in the perfect location!

Here we are in the hotel lobby

Friday afternoon we set out to explore the city. We began at Millennium Park which was just a block from our hotel and then headed up Michigan Avenue for some shopping!

The infamous "bean"

It was very foggy downtown

We stumbled across Gino's East a few doors down from Neiman Marcus and decided to have some deep dish pizza for dinner. Yum!

We got there just as the line was starting to get long...perfect timing!

view of the Chicago river walking back to our hotel

Later that night we took the train up-town to the Briar Street Theater to see the

Blue Man Group. They were so entertaining, we loved the show!

of course I asked for a picture with one of them afterwards

Saturday morning we slept in, got breakfast at a bakery around the corner and took the train south to Comiskey Park to see a White Sox game. Alan bought a hat (for his collection) but refused to wear it during the game, haha! The White Sox won and Alan claims we witnessed the "Catch of the Year" You can watch it HERE and cast your vote in the comment box below.

the stadium was really nice, but we are still biased towards Busch

It was surprising cool all day so we kept our jackets on most of the time

After the game, we went to Navy Pier. Here is a view downtown right at the sun was beginning to set.

We ate dinner at Harry Caray's Tavern. The food was good but seeing all the cool sports memorabilia was great!

had to get this shot :)

After dinner, we had to make Alan's trip to Chicago complete by getting Garrett Popcorn. If you have never had the Chicago Mix-you are missing out! Just ask Alan. He ate it all in about 0.2 seconds.

Garrett Popcorn = happy Alan

Here was the view of downtown as we headed back that night

We stopped by the Chicago Theater on the way back

We love this city!

Sunday we had beautiful weather for our drive back to Saint Louis and I was loving shedding layers of coats, sweatshirts, etc. as it got warmer the closer we got. Such a fun weekend :)