Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Shaumburg Day, Chicago, Day 3

193/365

After our extreme museum day downtown, the next day, we just wanted to sleep in.  Of course, I was up at 5 a.m. local time.  The only thing that saved me was that the rest of my family slept another two hours, and I got to just chill in the quiet.  That was a pretty nice start to the day.  We decided to have a nice morning swim, but Chris was acting up, so he got in trouble, and had to stay in the room while Daddy took the little boys for a morning swim after breakfast.


I started Chris on his flush, but the problem with staying in a hotel, and a child taking over the toilet for an hour...if we have to go to the bathroom, we've got to dash down to the lobby.  Chris was fine on the pot with the ipad so I ran down the hall, our room was in the first floor, to go potty, and I was able to snap a quick pic of Daddy and the littles playing in the pool.  When we arrived Tuesday night, the pool was way too cold for me to enjoy.  But I thought it might be warming up, it looked almost cozy.  

After we got the kids all dressed and ready for the day, we set out on our Schaumburg Day.  


Our first stop was Ikea.  
And yes, it really is that awesome.  
Initially, Eric didn't think he was going to like it.  He'd really enjoyed this website he found Ikea hacks, where they take things from Ikea and kick them up a notch.  But I guess he figured, if they need everything hacked to make it better, it must not be that good to begin with.  Well, that wasn't true.  I had heard wonderful things about the place, so when Eric was initially balking about Ikea, I told him, "How can you not like Ikea?  Why, that's practically Un-American...or at least Un-Scandanavian!"  We got a good laugh about that afterwards, because as it turns out Ikea rocks.  

They have child care!  They call the Small room.  Although it was an  a with some kind of circle, so I wasn't sure if it was small or smile.  Either way the boys were dying to go in there and play and watch tv.  It was free for an hour.  Um, OK.  I was already wishing we had this place in Indy and we hadn't even left the entryway!  Turns out they only build IKEAs where there are good strong waterways...um, not Indiana.  

Oh well, I'm off to go shopping now.  It was good that we were there on family vacation, because it meant we couldn't buy anything big.  Although, Boy Howdy, did I get some schemey ideas!   I've got ideas for decorating the kids rooms, new storage for the playroom, and even a really neat canvas picture of the ocean Eric thought would look pretty above our bed.  That's high praise, he never says that.  Yeah, I could have spent a boatload of money there.  But I didn't.  Now Jacob did pick out some plates and cups that were a cute adorable plastic...he grabbed them, so I figured that he wanted his brothers to have those.  


I may have gone a little bonkers on lunch though.  
They have a cute little Swedish cafeteria upstairs, so after Eric and I (and Jake) leisurely walked around a while, and it was time to grab the boys, we had lunch.  We got swedish meatballs, and I got a fish sampler.  


This was my meal.  A sampling of swedish fish delicacies, like dilled herring (which was sweet and scrumptious), a cheese pastry, salmon with a dill mustard and a horseradish sauce.  They asked which I wanted, so I had to choose both...you know, for science.  And swedish meatballs in gravy.  With lingonberry sauce.  Oh my word.  It was all so good.  I couldn't stand it.  When we got back downstairs, they had a swedish market area, and yes I did. I bought lingonberry sauce, a jar of dill herring, and the dill mustard.  So what if we have 5 different kinds of mustard in the fridge already?!  It was not enough. We needed one more.  

After our lunch, and shopping, we came back to the hotel and curled up for naps.  We all crashed.  All 5 of us.  And we napped for two hours.  No one moved.  We were toast.  Shopping is hard work, you know.  
When we woke up, we told the boys to get ready to go.  But they didn't want to.  They wanted to watch tv, or swim.  I said No, we have something special planned.  And we drove to the mall around the corner.  
As we pulled in, the boys saw a sign that said LEGO.  While we were getting out of the car, Chris asked if he could go to the Lego store. The Lego Discovery Center was our destination.  That's why we were there.  He thought we were just going to do more shopping.  I said Yes.  


This was their response after I told them we could go into the Lego store. 
Best possible reaction in a parking lot ever!


This was the front entry. 
What child wouldn't want to go in here!?!

I don't think the boys really believed this was why we were here. 
They were Surprised.  I will say the place was neat, but if they loved this, they're going to love Legoland whenever I take them there, someday. We had buy 1, get 1 coupons given to us, I don't know if I would have paid full price.  But with the deal it was worth it, 25$ for the 4 of us.   They absolutely loved the place.  From the moment we walked in the door, they were stoked.  


They spotted this character right away, it's LaVal from Lego Chima, a cartoon series they found on Netflix.  It's a decent show, they fight over energy called Chi, kind of makes sense.  I love lego shows, because when they destroy something, people don't bleed, they just fall apart into lego pieces, and most of them don't even have people that die.  They had a number of room exhibits with great elaborate lego scenes that were really neat to look at, like the entire Chicago skyline (where Chris spotted Emmet and Wildstyle from the Lego movie getting chased by Badcop on top of a building) and an Indian Jones tropical forest.  


Of course one of our favorite rooms was Star Wars.  
Daddy and his boys had to stop for a pose with Darth and R2D2 made out of legos. 
After the rooms displays, there were some shows.  In one, we got to watch a Chima episode in 3D, which was nice and introductory if you weren't familiar with the show; they called it 4D because they blew air on us and rained bubbles.  All the boys loved that.  


After the cartoon, Sam posed in the lion's mouth, while we waited a couple minutes to go into the Lego Factory. 


The Lego Factory room wasn't a true factory, it glossed over the making, but the kids got to push buttons,d.  It's hard to see Chris in his blue/red shirt and Sam's green shirt, they are pushing about 2 o'clock on the button to product yellow bricks.  Everybody got to leave with a yellow brick! 


There was a playland too, like Chick Fil-A or McD's playplace, and the kids decided to play a bit there too.  Even Jacob got to have some fun with some big foam Lego bricks.   He was having a great time, it was hard for Mommy to just let him without freaking out about germs.  But I don't think any of us got sick from legos. 


At one point, Chris needed a bathroom break, so I took him.  We passed places where kids could play in bins of legos, but mine didn't want to do that.  When we came back through, we saw a ride.  It was like a cross between the Dumbo ride in Disney and a  bicycle.  If we peddled the bikes, our little seats rose up in the air.  It was quite a workout, but pretty fun.  Chris and I had a great time doing this special thing on our own.  He's a rather fun date.  Just like his Daddy.  We should do one on one time more often.  


While I was running off with Chris, Daddy let Jacob loose in the climbing thing, and when I came back, he'd moved on from foam legos to duplos left behind.   Jacob is becoming quite a good little climber.  

Chris started climbing crazy, and going up the slide instead of down, so he got a timeout.  We went down to the gift shop where they had a million lego kits.  I had decided the one souvenir I was willing to buy (I didn't want to buy something with a bazillion pieces for us to a. keep track of, and b. pack up to get home) was the Lego Movie.  It just came out on DVD in the last couple weeks, so I thought it would a perfect souvenir.  We could even watch it on Eric's computer, I thought.  Turns out he can't do DVD on his computer, but when he gets the kind of video that comes with a digital copy, we can hook that up and watch it.  But I was shocked that the Lego store didn't have the Lego movie.  Oh no! 


So forget that.  Mommy noticed a Jamba juice across the street from the Lego place. 
Yes please.  So I dragged my 'in trouble' son in there while Daddy was gathering up the little ones.  
We met him out front of Legos, where the kids just played in the bins of legos outside.  There were legos spilled all over the sidewalk.  I thought, I'd hate to have the job of cleaning up that mess every day.  But the kids loved it.  Kids walking by loved it.  And my kids played happy building their own towers and blasters just because they could.  Nothing wrong with that.  Even if there is a bit of mess, I love to see my kids playing creatively.  Even better when they play creatively Outside! 


While the big boys played a little bit longer, Daddy, Jake, and I debated what to do about dinner.
And Jake sampled my Razz-a-matazz smoothie.  He liked it.  Atta boy - My Son likes Jamba Juice!


We settled on Portillo's. 
It's a hot dog joint that also serves Italian beef, both Chicago specialties.  
And a chain, such that there was one about 5 minutes away.  That's right! 


So, we went to Portillo's and got hot dogs, and all kinds of goodies.  Sam wanted a plain hot dog, and I got mine with all the schmultz.  Their food was good.  I meant to take a picture of my hot dog and my Italian beef sandwich, but I was so busy eating them, I forgot.  


When we got back to the hotel, Daddy made a Target run for the Lego Movie, and we followed up our Evening Swim with a family movie night viewing of the Lego movie.  Between Legos and Ikea, it was the perfect end to an Awesomely Scandanavian day.  Scandanavia rocks.  

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