Chicago Day Trip

On Saturday, we went on a little outing to Chicago to see Sue the T. Rex. at the Field Museum. Jack decided over a month ago that he was going to take Spencer to see Sue for Spencer's birthday party since Spencer had never seen Sue before. (Jack, David and I have seen Sue two separate times while Spencer was in conferences, but it was a couple of years ago before Jack was obsessed with dinosaurs) Anyway, it was very selfless on Jack's part to give Spencer an opportunity to see Sue ;) Jack had been anticipating and prepping for Spencer's "birthday party" for weeks - he checked out Sue books at the library, he watched a Sue documentary on Netflix, and he picked out what Spencer and David were going to wear to see Sue days in advance (see their dinosaur shirts? ;)  
 
Side note: the only thing more boring than reading nonfiction dinosaur, turtle, shark, and reptile books is reading nonfiction books about one excavated dinosaur fossil named Sue. Fun fact: It is estimated that Sue died at the age of 29 years old. Spencer just turned 29, and Jack made sure to point out that both Spencer and Sue were 29 years old for Spencer's 29th birthday party! haha
Jack woke up at 4 freaking 45 am on Saturday morning because he was sooooo excited to head to Chicago. I'm pretty sure he was more excited for this day than Christmas :) We got to the Field Museum around 10 am and headed straight for Sue and to see the other dinosaur fossils.

Sue and Jack pretending to be a dinosaur:

Sue's real head is too heavy to display in the lobby so the real head in a display upstairs.
 
 When we went to through the dinosaur fossil exhibit, Jack skipped, smiled, and had his hands in a T. Rex claw position almost the entire time. He was very thorough in his touring - we couldn't skip one display or sign. David lost interest because Jack's pace was too slow ;)
Funny quotes from my dino nerd ;)
- "MOM, I SEE MEGALODON TEETH!!!!" (Prehistoric shark teeth) Then I read the sign and saw that he was correct :)
 
 
 
- "Mom, is that a compsognathus?" And I'm like, "???????" Sure enough, it was :)
- "MOM!!!!! DAD!!!!  DAVID!!!!!! I FOUND THE ARCHELONS!!!! (prehistoric sea turtle)

Half way into the exhibit, David took a seat in the stroller. He was over it :)

 
Jack and David had saved their birthday money from my Grandma Wirthlin and I brought it with us to the museum because I had a feeling that they were going to want to spend it at the dinosaur store :) Jack chose a "cozy" dinosaur egg with four different baby dinosaur stuffed animals and David chose a scary T. Rex shirt. Thank you Great Grandma Wirthlin!

We toured a little longer (the museum is HUGE!!! We didn't even scratch the surface) then headed to the car to head to the next museum. We picked up some sushi to go at a restaurant nearby before heading south to the Museum of Science and Industry. We hadn't been to this museum before but it is another museum that we can get into for free with our local family museum membership so we decided to check it out.
Kai Sushi - yum!




mirror maze

 
By about 3:30, we were all SOOOO TIRED and ready to go. We stopped at Giordanos in Hyde Park to get some deep dish pizza before heading back home.

Museums are not really me or Spencer's thing - I think we both prefer doing something outside - but we both agreed that the dinosaur exhibit was our favorite part of the day.  It wasn't because of all of the dinosaur fossils, but because it's just so dang fun watching your kid have the time of their life :) Jack already decided that he wants to go see Sue again on his birthday. We all LOVE Chicago and we're glad that we live close enough that we can take some fun day trips every once and a while.