Keepin' up with the Jones': the windy city!

lainie is ready for shopping!

so i am a little behind in keeping my blog current-to-date...i'm going to work on that this week, but just in are the pictures from our trip to chicago to visit nichole on the tail-end of our spring break. lainie, my mom and i flew up on thursday after easter and stayed through the weekend! we had lots of fun and ate very well-one thing nichole takes very seriously is eating in chicago...we are not allowed to go to any chain restaurants nor too many touristy places!-it also drives her crazy when i wanted to stop and take pictures along michigan ave.....it may make her look like a tourist! hahahaha! thursday was quite an adventure...we arrived at about 9:30 in the morning and were ready for brunch...so we parked in a loading zone outside of nichole's apartment (she now lives in the gold coast neighborhood...very nice!) and ran our bags upstairs-we came back down in 5-10 minutes to find that her car had been towed. we took a cab to brunch at this fabulous restaurant called the bongo room then ventured under the city to find nichole's car at an impound lot (who knew you could go under chicago...and apparantely that is where many homeless people camp out....lainie was really learning some life lessons!) it started snowing so we just drove around to different shops in different neighborhoods that day(i told my mom we should've stayed on our plane....it was heading to miami!)

friday we woke up and had breakfast and headed to the american girl store...lainie wouldn't let us miss this tourist attraction...we picked up a new friend her name is ivy ling...she is the historic asian doll...friends to julie albright(70's girl) that we picked up on our last visit to chicago! this made lainie's day and onto the hershey store...i forgot to tell you that on monday before we went to chicago lainie had a visit to the orthodontist to have an appliance put in her mouth (an expander) to fix her cross-bite, so she was kind of on a soft food diet and hadn't really eaten much since monday...she got a hankerin' for mcdonalds(let me tell you how thrilled my organic vegetarian sister who refuses chain restaurants was when i told her we were making a stop at the golden arches!)

laine was thrilled ! nichole obliged, she would rather have lainie indulge than hear her whine-remember she's not around kiddos much these days! we then walked for miles and shopped up and down michigan ave. in the early evening we got a hold of casey and met her for snacks and drinks at ditka's. lainie was too excited that we got to take a minivan cab there!