Chicago Trip

This weekend we drove to Gurnee, Illinois (a little north of Chicago) to celebrate Isaac's brother's wedding. We left on Thursday morning, stopping for three times on the way: gas/bathroom, lunch/climbing on rocks, and the Racine, WI zoo on the shores of Lake Michigan. The girls did pretty well, although Amelie took a lot of energy to entertain. Elizabeth spent her time finding license plates and coloring their states on a map (we found about 30 states and 3 provinces!).

We arrived at the hotel in time to swim before bed, then crashed. The next day, the rest of Isaac's immediate family had arrived in the same hotel, and we enjoyed playing some games and swimming with them before tackling wedding stuff like the bachelor party, rehearsal, and rehearsal dinner.

Saturday was entirely taken up by the wedding, which I'll write about in another post. On Sunday morning, we drove to the Milwaukee Zoo, which was fantastic. (Our membership at the Minnesota Zoo allowed us to check out these other zoos for free!) We loved the peacocks running around freely at both zoos, as well as animals that we don't get to see in Minnesota: elephants, rhinoceroses, many different monkey/ape species, jellyfish and octopi, and tons of other cool stuff.

It was very cold and rainy during our zoo time, but the girls didn't seem to mind. Elizabeth was most excited about the elephants, and they lived up to her expectations by playing with balls, thundering all around their cages, and trumpeting loudly.

Amelie mostly enjoyed being out of her carseat for a while. She watched some animals, but spent the majority of her time clawing Isaac's neck and playing with his ears.

A great time was had by all!