Anniversary, adventure, friends, & food in the Windy City

[Show picture list]

Last week we spent a day in downtown Chicago enjoying our tenth anniversary. We stayed at an incredible hotel thanks to Priceline, and really got to experience what it would be like to live downtown for a day. Sirens all during the night and odd sounds that we couldn’t necessarily identify were new to us being from the burbs, but what fun it was. We really felt like we lived downtown because if you read the post on our 10th anniversary adventure, you know at this point we are stranded downtown without a vehicle. We posted our anniversary adventure story to the blog before we went to bed downtown, and by the time we woke up, we had heard from one of our longtime friends who read our post via Facebook & also happened to live in Schaumburg a few blocks away from where our car was stranded.

Knowing that our friend Cami had our back once we needed to vacate the city, we walked a mile or so downtown to the Field Museum.  On the way, our concierge at the hotel gave us a coupon for a free chocolate chip cookie pizza if we went to Lou Malnati’s, and that sealed the deal for lunch.  I had recently had Gino’s East the last few times I was around Chicago, and it was good…  It just wasn’t Lou’s. Deep Dish pizza comes with a ton of love at Lou’s, and by love I mean cheese.  Tons & tons of cheesy goodness…  We only ordered the small because we wanted to be able to enjoy our free cookie afterwards, but a manly small it was.  When it came time for dessert, I thought we’d be looking at a little free cookie with a dab of ice cream on top, but what came to our table next was out of this world.  I’m sure that this pictures above do it no justice, but this was one ooey gooey delight.  Vanilla Bean ice cream nestled right on top of a just almost done cookie pizza where the center was still doughy and the edges were crisp and delicious.  I’d easily pay someone $10 right now as I write this to bring me one just like it.

I was like a kid when it came time to see all the dinosaurs at the Field Museum.  I haven’t been in a museum with dinosaur bones since I was a kid, and boy did this take me back right away.  Melissa couldn’t stop laughing at how much I was grinning.  I never cease to be amazed at the creativity of God in all of creation.  I think Melissa said it best while we were roaming the museum.  “Imagine if it were up to us to create all of the variations of animals that we see here.  There would be maybe 10% of what exists and that would be on our best day.”  I couldn’t agree more.  The creativity of all we saw was staggering.  We do serve a God that is incredibly creative.

Once we finished up at the Field, I was excited to be able to take a cab to the train station.  I haven’t been in a cab for at least 10 years, and apparently things have changed a bit.   First, they have tv’s in the back of cabs now? You can even order on demand shows to watch during your ride? Really? How long is your cab ride that you need to order an on demand show to watch while you ride? Second, cabs take credit cards now. I had no idea.  I did especially like when we read online that cabbies will like to tell you that their credit card machine is broken so they don’t have to pay the service charge on your fare. Melissa read that and told me about it, and no lie 4 minutes into the ride he said that exact thing. Thank you iPhone and Wikipedia.

We took the Metra back to Schaumberg to meet our friend Cami.  Melissa and I had just Redboxed the movie “Source Code” which was filmed on the Metra, so I kept looking out for Jake Gyllenhall but never found him.  Cami and Levi found us at the Metra station, and we were amazed that we hadn’t seen each other for about 8 years. Time seems to fly post college it seems.  Cami dropped us off at the dealership, and we picked up our truck with a new water pump, new rear hatch release, and an oil change.  The Saturn purred like a kitten following this repair, so back to the suburban life for us.

We finished our anniversary with a trip to the Weber Grill restaurant.  A few years earlier we had met our friends Mike and Laurel down in Chicago and tried Weber Grill for the first time, and we loved it!  (We loved it so much that we went back for breakfast the following morning.)  Their buttery mashed potatoes & marinated skirt steak is my dish of choice, and I wasn’t disappointed.  This trip for sure wasn’t what we had planned, but it was a memorable anniversary that i’m sure we’ll never forget.  To my beautiful bride:  I love you honey, and I look forward to many, many, many more adventures with you.  Thank you for believing in me & holding me up when I can’t do it myself.  Here’s to another 40+