A Family Get-A-Way

It's been raining a ton here. I mean, a TON! A few days ago our basement flooded. It's taken in water before but never like this. It was kind of emotional because we had just remodeled a large portion of it, including the classroom and we couldn't keep up with the water. Were still pulling up the floor and about to tear into one of the new walls but all in all the damage seems to be pretty minimal and we should be back into the classroom within the next couple of weeks, for now, were holding class at the dinner table. 

Before the basement flooded we reserved a hotel room in Chicago and bought city passes for all of us to see some of the Chicago sights. I didn't think that Justin would still want to go with the basement not being fully taken care of and rain still in the future forecast but he welcomed the get-a-way and truthfully, so did I!

Chicago was colder than the QCA but we walked most places, we had a few complaints but I told them to toughen up (yes, I, meaning me. I told them to toughen up -walking was my idea.)!

We had breakfast at Yolk every morning. It was delightful! Loved it! And I personally don't eat anything for breakfast other than my cup of coffee and I don't think that you can't count that at eating something. Yolk's menu was amazing and I filled myself each day! Oh, how I miss them and man oh, man, do we need a Yolk here!

It's kind of funny that the Millennium Park had flowers all through it, but it also had snow.

Our first stop was Shedd Aquarium. One large fish museum!

The Shedd is filled with tank after tank of every kind of fish imaginable! Fresh water fish. Salt water fish. Whales. Sharks. Dolphins. Piranha's. Eels. Jelly fish and much, much more!

We then headed over to the Field Museum where we were able to see a lot of amazing things but voted most popular, in our family, was Sue, the T-Rex.

Our next in Chicago we walked about a mile from where we were staying and went to what was once called the Sears Tower but is now known as the Willis Tower.

I have never been inside. The view is amazing!

There are these viewing windows that you can actually stand in! They are called the Sky Decks. I was pretty nervous to stand on or in one, especially while holding Vada and with my children in it with me. It took a lot of faith.

Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was nervous. Check out Kiliegh's face. My sweet girl.

I wonder what Vada thought about all of this, if she even noticed the land far beneath her? Once her and Kiliegh got back into the sky deck together, this was Vada's reaction, this face... Which tell me that she's got to be kind of freakin' right? Awhh, she makes me laugh, either way!

We also went to the Museum of Science and Industry. It was one big play house for all of us. We all kind of fit into the category of geekers and I love it! Learning, reading, breaking things apart and then putting them back together again, these are what we seem to find interesting. So this museum had stuff for all of us and was probably our favorite out of all of our stops.

The elements table was by far my favorite thing in the whole museum  I want the app for this, although one hasn't been made yet. 

You take those little black pucks and place them on a element and once you've combined the correct elements to make anything, it shows you a video-like clip on the left hand side of the table. I think in the picture below Kiliegh made water but I cant quite tell.

In this picture we made iron sulfate and our picture was of an ancient book with a little lesson about ink being from the middle ages. I'm telling you, I had absolutely NO interest in learning the elements table again but I would totally do it if I could play around with this as an app! It was really cool!

We got in even more exercise.

Went coal mining.

And on a Navy ship tour. (Love you Brother!)

The girls did all kinds of mini science experiments.

The last experiment was one that hit home for Kiliegh and one that she knew all of the answers to as well! The girls talked about and learned more on electricity and conductors. Here they used pencil led or graphite as their conductor  The "scientist" colored on a piece of paper using only a pencil and the girls touched the wired that were connected to the battery powered light, to the paper and the light came on. This showed that the graphite could carry electricity.

If you remember, just a few days ago we were helping Kiliegh study for an up coming science test. We had read through the chapter and all of the sections and then did all of the mini science experiments. Well, Kiliegh is at her biological dad's this week for visitation but she called yesterday very excited to tell us that she got an 'A' on that test! We were all cheering here for her, even Vada! Kiliegh was laughing and you could tell she was so proud of herself! We were proud of her as well, she worked very hard at learning and retaining the material.