Spring Break...was that this year?!

Our April was absolutely nuts!!! It feels like Spring Break was about a year ago, but really, it was 1 month ago!

The day after Ava's birthday, we left early in the morning for a short road trip to Chicago. Remember how we have that amazing museum pass that gets our family into museums around the USA? There are a very large number of museums we could get into without paying even a dime around the Chicago area. And....we do love that area...Andy (and I!) have favorite restaurants that we miss now that his family doesn't live in the suburbs, we love going to Ikea, and this time, we drove past some of Andy's childhood memories--it was fun to tell the girls stories of the years past.

The above picture is of the girls after we ate at PF Changs. Funny story: we went out on a limb this trip and decided to find restaurants that were allergy friendly for Ellie. We found that PF Changs has TONS of dairy free selections....and you know, she didn't like any of the items we ordered! It was fun though, to just order for her and not bring her separate food in. PF Changs was hooked onto the Woodfield Mall and we had given the girls each some money to spend on whatever they wanted. Oh the choices! They each blew almost all their money at the Disney store and then the rest at a candy store! We looked for a book store, but there wasn't one in the mall. We decided that for US, we prefer the Mall of America when we are mall shopping with the children, but we had fun nonetheless.
The next morning, we went to The Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. 2 years ago, we also went there over spring break--it's one of our favorite places to go with the kids! They all had fun with the different exhibits, and if you click on the above collage, you can see just how much fun Colin had on the slide!
It was time to leave the museum, don't you think? Colin and I stayed OUT of the butterfly exhibit as he is afraid of them. However, when I released him from the stroller, he promptly climbed under a bench and would not move! Hmmmm....low on sleep on day 2? Not a good sign.
After lunch (Portillos, downtown...yum yum), we went to the Museum of Science and Industry...again...our pass got us right in! Amazing. We saw fun exhibits about weather, trains, planes, the human body, chicks being born...it was really fun....and really busy. (Was it spring break nationally?!?!?!) It will be fun to return when the kids are a little older and have more of an attention span. As you can see, we did manage to get Colin to take a short nap. And the middle photo in the above collage is the girls riding the escalator. They LOVED escalators on our Chicago trip. In fact, Ava was a little afraid of them at first. But when she got the hang of it, she said "Mom, I don't need your help...I *am* 5 now you know!"
Colin spent a lot of time riding in on and around carts and strollers. We did let him escape periodically and he loved every minute of our museum adventures. His time in Ikea was a bit rough, but that was day 3 and he was past exhausted.
On our way home, we stopped at the Jelly Belly Factory. Fun fun....little train tour and then free samples of Jelly Bellies! We even discovered new favorite flavors like chocolate pudding!
We got home late Friday afternoon and still had the entire beautiful weekend left of spring break. It was perfect timing for the big girls to enjoy their new scooters, for Colin to bathe himself in sidewalk chalk and for Ava to enjoy her new jeep.

It was a fun week off of school, and we had wonderful family time...something much needed after all the traveling Andy has been doing!