Little Italy, Maggie Daley and Field Museum

For Steve, who says he reads my blog but then asks me questions that are clearly answered in the blog. This is your test. Despite all that, Jamie is a lucky girl and we are excited for the wedding next month! Don't worry, we will leave the kids at home. **update: Steve called. He says he read the blog "a lot the first week. Maybe less later on." Haha! We still love him!
In 2005 or so, our friend Steve was interning at Ford Motor Co. (He drives Chevys!) in Detroit and we made a trip up to see him. On the way back Curtis and I went through Chicago and I remember driving through Little Italy. After our trip to Italy in April, I really wanted to stop by again! It had changed a lot I thought but we found a fun little place to eat some pasta!  We almost stopped at a place called "Tuscany" but didn't because we remembered that Tuscany has terrible bread!
The place we ate was exactly like Italy in the way they did act like we were all long lost friends.  Abe was SO happy to have ice! Europe doesn't use ice and he kept asking for it and so when he got ice he flipped out. He asked the waitress for more and she took him with her to the kitchen and let him make his own drink. It was fun!
At the end of the meal they gave us a tiny glass and the waitress said something like this is "antiseptic" or something like that and I thought "ok... I hate germs..." so when she made the toast I downed it. Um, it was booze. I do not drink ever and as soon as it went down and burned like I had drank gasoline! I just waited politely til she left the table and I went to the bathroom and I couldn't help myself but every last drop came right back up! Haha. I have no sense of smell so I didn't see it coming but Curtis just pretended to drink his and poured it in his water when no one was looking. He said the glass gave it away, but I was clueless. We are funny.
Today we hit up Maggie Daley Park with Curtis and my new friend Sarah and her kiddos! It was fun. I think it is like "The Gathering Place" in Tulsa is supposed to be like when it is finished. I am excited.
Next we walked to the Field Museum. I had told the kids that the museum had the largest and most complete T-Rex in the world and they said "Sue??" Yep, they knew the name of the most complete T-Rex. That cracked me up and they're lucky they did or else I would NEVER have agreed to pay the outlandish price to get in. It was $89 total!! Ack! I was bored silly most of the time but I did want to see the Terracotta Warriors and the photography exhibit of Women of Vision, but of course, those cost extra!! They had corny scenes set up of what different areas of the world and all I could think is if we didn't waste $89 on this place we could save up and just go to those places. They had a rose rock and it made me think of my Granny and I love to do that.
They don't know the actual gender of the T-Rex it said so I kept singing "life ain't easy for a boy named Sue" and no one else thought it was funny. Replacing boy with "dino" didn't draw laughs either. I have tried to be interested in dinosaurs.  I find them as exciting as Beckett's favorite game as a small child: fence.
The one cool part is they had the palentologists on exhibit! The signs on their exhibit cracked me up.
I continue to love Chicago and have loved our trip so much. Tomorrow we head to Inola by rental car! Crossing my finger the car will have a DVD player!