Spring break was great! It was very, very nice to do something besides work! We went to Chicago and visted Nels' family in Valparaiso.

We drove up to Valpo on Saturday. We went with Nels' family to the Bass Pro Shop. I'm not really into the whole camping, fishing thing, but this store was pretty fun. Anna-Lisa (Nels' youngest sister) and I practiced our fancy shooting skills at the stores shooting gallery. It was a lot of fun and Anna-Lisa beat my score every time! We went to Red Robin afterwards. Although they are known for their burgers none of us ordered a burger like we usually do. I ordered a hawaiian chicken sandwich and Nels got Fish! But we did enjoy the bottomless fries.

Monday and Tuesday we went to Chicago and instead of driving we took the train back and forth. It was a lot less stressful than driving. On the train Nels and I read Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. I love reading books with Nels and it helped the train ride to go by faster.

Our first stop in Chicago was the Field Museum. It was our lucky day too, because every second Monday, Target sponsors free admission to the museum. So we got in for FREE. Of course we saw Sue the world's largest, most complete and most famous T. rex. It's hard to miss since it's the first thing you see when you walk in. Other exhibits we went to were Ancient Egypt and Ancient Americas. An odd exhibit was all about soil. Throughout the whole exhibit I kept making a face and saying "ewwww!" Here's a couple of pictures:

Sue the dinosaur--the head alone weighed 600 lbs.! The whole thing weighed 5 tons!

We had fun walking, reading, and learning together. Inside the Field museum was a Corner Bakery. I love this place! They took our order and then about ten minutes later they came to our table with a chocolate cake and sugar cookie. They said that they were sorry, but our order was going to take about 5 minutes longer so they gave us these desserts for free. Who care's if it spoils the healthy lunch we paid for, we gobbled up the chocolate cake and it was GOOD.

Tuesday we spent the afternoon walking up and down Michigan Avenue in Chicago. This is where all of the shops are like Nordstrom, Levi's, GAP and hundreds more. It's fun to just window shop like at Tiffany & Co and Saks Fifth Avenue. Ha! We didn't even try to go into those places. Maybe someday and maybe not. For now we were content looking in the Apple Store and my other favorite stores below. Ghirardelli's and the Hershey Store are wonderful. Ghirardelli's always gives free samples and Hershey's was giving samples too. I just like looking at all that candy! We did end up buying these awesome ice cream bowls. Nels got the Reese's and mine is the Hershey's. We tried them out yesterday with a lot of ice cream and they worked great! I can finally say that I have eaten the Chicago Deep Dish pizza from the renowned Gino's East. We ordered a small supreme which was 4 slices and about 3 inches deep and we ate it all! So good! We forgot to bring white out or some other marker so that we could write on the walls. All we had was a pen. But we managed to find a very small white space to write our initials. Aw!So last but not least, we went and saw the musical Wicked! Wow! We both thoroughly enjoyed the music, the story, everything. They wouldn't let us take pictures before, during or after the play so the only one I got was the sign outside. The link above takes you to some photos. But we would highly recommend seeing it.

We are slowly returning to normal life and are greatly anticipating the spring with warmer weather!