Winter WonderFest

This past Saturday I went to Navy Pier with my sister-in-law Colleen, my great nephew Zaine and my great niece Hannah. Colleen, Zaine and Hannah took the train from Crystal Lake and disembarked at the Edison Park station where I picked them up in my car. From there we began our journey downtown to Navy Pier to the LaSalle Bank sponsored Winter WonderFest. The decorations were gorgeous and there were lights and trees galore. We had a coupon for $4.00 off the $14.00 entrance fee for each and every ticket that we purchased. Zaine was too tall for some of the activies and Hannah was just under the height limit. This will probably be the only year that we will go since next year they will both be too tall for the majority of the attractions. I took many rolls of film so that I can send pictures to my sister Cindy, as Zaine and Hannah are her grandchildren and I know that she would have liked to have taken them herself but the miles between here and Oceanside California are the hinderence. We ate lunch at Reba's restaurant at Navy Pier and stayed until just after 2:00pm when I convinced everyone that we should go see the Christmas tree at Daley Plaza and the windows at Macy's. Boy, was I a dorkwad!!! There were a gazillion people out and about and all that we truly saw was the giant tree at Daley Plaza. There were throngs of people at all of the Kris Kringle stands on Daley Plaza and not a parking garage in sight. So on we ventured to Macy's thinking that surely there would be a garage in that area. NOPE! We couldn't even see the windows because of the hordes of people on the sidewalk. So on to Michigan Avenue. We made our left hand turn onto Michigan Avenue at Millenium Park. It took us over 45 minutes to travel North on Michigan to Water Tower Place. There were shoppers everywhere. Traffic was crazy and driving stick shift in the stop and go traffic was quite nasty for me. We did make it up to Water Tower Place, parked in the underground parking lot, visited the 7 floors of shops and the kids got "souvenirs" from Accent Chicago. That store was blazing hot and I couldn't wait to get out of it. I don't like to shop if it is too hot in the store and I wanted out the minute that we entered but I promised the kids that they could have a "souvenir" and so I stood and sweated as they made their decisions. We departed Water Tower Place about 5:00pm and made our trek back to my hood and everyone stopped at my house for a few minutes to see Gidget the puppy before moving on to Wendy's for a quick dinner and then to the train for the final leg of Colleen, Zaine and Hannah's field trip. I was back home about 7:30pm and just vegged out the remainder of the evening because this girl is getting old and a day of kids and walking around just tuckered me out. I dropped off the film on Sunday morning when I went grocery shopping and it will be interesting to see how the pictures turned out.