come over!

one of the nice things about living in chicago is that we're never wanting for visitors. we're close enough for friends to hop on over for the weekend. it's pretty quiet when there's snow on the ground, but when the summer sunshine shows up... the people do too.

a couple of weeks ago, my oldest friend brought her mom and daughter for a visit. jennifer and i grew up next door to one another... friends since we were a year old. i never imagined that we'd be raising little girls together someday.

they arrived on our doorstep with arms overflowing - homemade lasagna, chocolate chip banana cookies, and connie's famous orange jello. we had a lovely evening together! 

the girls are only a few months apart...

but the swings make them look worlds apart.

  millie can't wait until she's actually big enough to sit in the swings!

maybe alyssa didn't like the orange jello as much as i did?

hopefully the first of many pictures together...

amelia had a couple of days to play by herself before poppa and olivia arrived on the train. we picked them up from the station downtown and started our whirlwind of fun. i quickly remembered why we "invested" in our stroller... the key piece of baby equipment for survival in the city. a fun time was had by all.

who needs to swim when you can splash?  millenium park was overflowing with kids, eagerly waiting for the fountain to start spitting water. 

olivia: 

auntie.... who put the bean in the park? why is it silver? why are there people under it? who made it? how did it get here? what is it for? how come i can see myself in it? why do i look so funny? who's bean is it? why are you taking a picture of it? what if it falls on top of me?

me:

i don't know olivia.  

with a little bit of help from some fellow tourists, we descended several flights of stairs (with TWO strollers) and boarded a water taxi to navy pier. our $4 ticket was much more reasonable than the $100 water taxi that jason and i got suckered into when we went to italy. who knew that there were water taxis in chicago?

not me.

olivia was clearly impressed with the view of the city from the ferris wheel... in my opinion, it was not quite as fun as the "upside down" version at the ionia free fair... but pretty great.

by this point in the day, millie had reached her sunshine capacity... we left her hat somewhere in the stroller far below, so we had to improvise.

the great folks at navy pier had the foresight to put a nice cold beer guy next to the ramp leading to the rides... big smiles all around.