Staycation- Day 1

I am SO excited to share about our family staycation that we had this last weekend!  What's a staycation?  Well with the bad economy and tough times people are trying to spend less money, and the latest trend is taking your family vacation in your own city.  Luckily for us we are blessed to live near the beautiful city of Chicago!  Another blessing is our dear friends, Jake and Shari-members of the Usual Suspects, moved downtown last year and have a 15th floor studio apartment smack in the middle of all Chicago's hottest tourist attractions.  And the greatest blessing is they allowed us to stay at their place for 4 days and 3 nights while they were away!  Now since we had Chicago as a backdrop we went a bit picture crazy, really does that surprise you?  So I'll share a day of our trip a day to spare your retinas from   overloading. : )

Day 1, Thursday:

In order to save even more on expenses I spent Wednesday evening planning out every meal while we were away.  I packed two coolers full of food!  Here is our car all packed up (not including the pack and play that was on the floor in front of the girls)- yes we were only gone 3 nights:

The Hubs had to work that day so about 3:15 I left our house to go get him, then I realized I forgot the pack and play and had to turn around, so then at 3:25 we finally left the house.  We had prepared ourselves for LOTS of traffic since we weren't leaving until 3:45, like two hours worth, but we were pleasantly surprised to make it down by 4:45!!

We did stop and pick up McDonald's -the only meal I didn't pack- because we needed to eat in the car in order to complete our plans for the evening.  So we got to Jake and Shari's place, unpacked, and then made our way Navy Pier.  Here's the view from their place, nice huh?!
On Navy Pier there is a nice children's museum, and Thursday nights are FREE!  So we made good time walking over there so we walked around the pier a bit and just enjoyed the ambiance.  The kids enjoyed themselves too. : )

The children's museum was GREAT but crowded but the girlies didn't mind. : )  

I think the water room was their favorite!

Afterwards we enjoyed just taking in the city lights and enjoying a nice, warm stroll back to the apartment.  

Once "home" we got ready for bed and tucked the girlies in their creative rooms and said good night.  And since they don't have a TV, the hubs and I enjoyed snuggling while watching a movie.  A fun first day!  Stay tuned for Day 2 tomorrow!