We took Matthew on his first official family vacation to Chicago. We visited Shedd Aquarium and Brookfield Zoo while we were there. Shedd Aquarium was a big waste of time. It was their "free" admission weekend, so we were there with about 5,000 other people. After driving in traffic for an hour to reach the aquarium and standing in line for 45 minutes (we were in the very short line because we had a stroller, the other line was at least a two hour wait) we finally got into the aquarium only to find out that the "free" admission was only for the freshwater fish and the other areas were extra. So $45 later (luckily Matthew was free because of his age) we were on an elevator and ready to embark on the aquarium. There were so many people there that we could not see any of the attractions on the main floor. We went to a few of the "pay" areas that were far less congested and saw some pretty cool things, like saw fish, sharks, jellyfish, exotic saltwater fish and sting rays. We also fought through the crowd to get to the dolphin arena only to find out that the dolphin shows were canceled for the time being. We did visit the underwater viewing so Matthew could see the dolphins and manatees swim and he was very intrigued with them as well as the penguins. After a much easier trip back tot he burbs, we relaxed and had a nice dinner at Cheesecake Factory. The plus of Shedd Aquarium was watching the massive storm roll into downtown Chicago just a few miles north of us. This same storm produced tornadoes in the burbs about an hour before. It was an amazing site to watch and luckily we didn't get a drop of rain on us!
On Saturday we took Matthew to Brookfield Zoo which was a much nicer experience. We walked around the 215 acre zoo for four hours seeing all kinds of great animals. Matthew was very interested in many, often saying "wow" and everything they did! They had a special exhibit called Dinosaurs Alive, which features life size anamatronic dinosaurs. This was a little scary for Matthew, so he stayed his distance. Once we got back to the hotel we spent an hour in the pool to cool off and Matthew loved that! We swam around with him, threw him back and forth between us and even taught him how to kick his legs while on his back. We capped off our day with a late lunch to the Rainforest Cafe.
All in all we had a great time. Matthew did a great job of sleeping on his "big boy" bed in the hotel (a toddler aerobed) and slept all three nights without any problems or fuss. Though I do feel bad for our hotel neighbors because Matthew gets very excited when he wakes up and a few mornings at 8:00 am he decided to run around and scream at the top of his lungs just for the fun of it. He enjoyed watching the cars on the highway outside our hotel window and watching the big airplanes take off and land from Ohare. He kept saying "cars" and "trucks" while watching out the window. We were very lucky to be able to take Matthew on this trip with everything going on in our lives right now, but we had been planning for it for a year, so we were well saved up. Enjoy the pictures at our usual site.
