Since Erin is in 8th grade, the tradition at her school is that the 8th grade class take a class trip. All three girls went to Chicago for it's sights, sounds, and education. So this time I was picked to be a chaperone. What a great time we had. We started off at 5:30 a.m. (yikes) and met at school. During the school year, there were a lot of opportunities for fund raising, which we did a lot of. There were train shows, soup suppers, trivia night, etc. We earned enough money to pay for the entire trip plus a chartered bus.
We started our trip off by packing 18 sleepy kids and adults on this bus, only to be lectured by the driver about not destroying "his" bus. Really? He obviously didn't know he was driving the best bunch of kids you could ever meet. They all behaved really great, and never did any of us have to discipline them.
After riding/sleeping/talking/listening to music/watching movies etc. for 6 long hours, we arrived at our first destination -- Wrigley Field. Since all of us were Cardinal fans, we couldn't help but "rub it in" when the opportunity presented itself. The tour of Wrigley was really interesting and we learned alot about it's origin, owners, players, etc. Here are some pictures of what we saw:
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| In front of "our" bus at Wrigley |
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| Picture of the field |
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| Erin in front of the sign |
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| Erin, her classmates and chaperone posing on a really cold day |
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| Erin -- You can see the score board that is kept by men. No electronic scorekeeping |
After we left Wrigley, we visited Navy Pier and went on a speed boat ride/tour on Lake Michigan. It was so cold and windy, (they don't call it the Windy City for nothing), but we had a great time. We also got a chance to look at the shops and Erin bought Cody a camo bear from Build A Bear. It was a lot of fun. Just take a look:
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| The Navy Pier Entrance |
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| Our Speed boat. The tour guide was really a lot of fun. He had fun picking on us |
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| The "gang" with the skyline in back. We also met a really nice dog |
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| Mr. M and the kids |
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| Chicago Skyline |
Then we finally left and headed back to dinner at Genos'. Usually I don't care for this pizza, but since no one had eaten anything since early in the morning, and we had been running all day, I think we all could have eaten anything that was put in front of us. I have never experienced a bunch of kids eat so much food so fast in a long time. This may just rival our family the time we went to Disney and ate at Perkins, but that is another story. At Geno's you get to write on anything that you can. Everyone had fun doing this and leaving their memory:
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| Erin leaving her legacy at Geno's |
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We then travelled to Oak Park Illinois and stayed at Concordia University. We stayed in the dorm call Martha/Mary. May of the kids thought is was fun, but we had to share a bathroom, and actually it gave them a little dose of college life. I have no pictures of the campus, because I was too tired to take them. We had about an hour of rest and then off to the Blue Man Group show. It was really really good, and would warrant a trip to Chicago just to see them. Here is the only picture we were allowed to take:
After this we went back to the University and off to bed. It was a very long and exciting day, but stay tuned for day 2...
