More with the Stanley Family

Saturday night we stayed downtown at the Park Hyatt on Michigan Avenue. My brother, Todd, and his family were in town this week and he was kind enough to share one of his hotel nights with us. We had a very nice room with an awesome view of Water Tower place right on our patio. The room had a tv in the very large bathroom so last night when the kids went to bed Brett wanted to watch tv but didn't want to wake the kids. He moved the chair from the room in to the bathroom and watched tv in the bathroom. Classy, huh? This morning when the rooster, I mean Cade, woke up at 6:00 am sharp Brett sent Cade in the bathroom to watch tv so the rest of us could sleep and then Cade ended up watching a movie with Maddi on the computer.
Cade, Maison, and Maddi are watching all the people below at Water Tower and enjoyed saying hello and waving to passers by. We were on the 3rd floor, so it was close enough down for people to see the kids and say hello. They were having a blast.
We found a park one block from the hotel. Pretty funny since Todd, Breezy and the kids had stayed there all week and totally could have used a park to let the kids burn off some energy and we found the park hours before they flew out of town. Oh well, now we know where a park is. It was such a nice sunny spring day. Look closely and you'll see Maddi, Cade, Maison, Blake and Case going down the slide all together. The kids had such a great time playing together this week.
When we were leaving the park and walking back toward the hotel we realized the building right in front of the park was a fire station. The firemen saw us walking by and invited us in to try on gear and check out the fire truck. The fire station was built in 1904 and it was really cool to see the firetruck photos on the wall from the last 100+ years. Cade was thrilled to put on the firemen gear. I had heard sirens all night long and they confirmed that they had 4 calls last night. I said I heard one at 1:20 am and he looked in the log and sure enough there was a call at 1:22 am. He said they were all drunk calls, no fires last night.

After the fire station we walked a long way to eat one more meal of pizza to get Todd his fill of deep dish Chicago pizza. When we finally got to Lou Malnati's we found it didn't open until 12:00 and Todd and the gang had to catch a plane at 2:00 so we walked back toward the hotel and ate at Pizzeria Due. Then Brett took the Stanley Family to the airport. We were so sad to see them go. We had so much fun with Todd, Breezy, Maison, Blake and Case this week and didn't want to see them go!
While Brett took them to the airport me and the kids stayed downtown. We went to the Lego store to get a piece separator because we forgot to get one the other day when we were there. We found this "copper cowboy" out on Michigan and the kids wanted a picture with him.

Then we went to Lincoln Park Zoo to enjoy our 65 degree sunny day. It was BEAUTIFUL outside and the zoo was great. All of the animals were active (I think they were loving the first warm day in a while) and entertaining. The lion even roared 4 or 5 times for us. Pretty scary if you ask me. The primates were hilarious with putting bags over their heads, tackling each other, chasing each other, and a male was even making himself happy (if you know what I mean...)! Then we headed back to the hotel to get our car (I was quite proud of myself for driving downtown and I didn't even get lost once or go down the wrong way on a one way street) and headed home to ride bikes and play on the swing set. Tomorrow it's back to life as we know it without Maison. It will be very quiet and easy, but we sure will miss her!