Thanksgiving weekend trip

After spending a lovely and yummy Thanksgiving day with my parents and my sisters and their families, my own little family traveled to Chicago for the rest of the holiday weekend. I wanted to see the Christkindlmarkt, which runs from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.

We spent a lot of time walking around the city.
For the first time on a Chicago trip, we did not visit American Girl or the Lego store. Shopping was not our goal that weekend, but having the children be content not visiting their old favorites gave me a little pang.

I took this next photo because I liked how that lone dress looked in the window. It's begging to tell a story:

All the store fronts were decked out for Christmas:

Gritty scenes blend right in with the glitz in a big city:
We spent some time at Shedd Aquarium. Geez Louise that place is expensive.
I love the architecture in Chicago.
We also went to the Art Institute of Chicago. I hadn't been there since 1985! I wanted to see the Thorne Rooms. These miniature rooms are built to the scale of one inch to one foot, and represent European and American furnishings and architecture across the centuries. Some of them are decorated for Christmas to accurately reflect holiday decorating for the time and place of the room.

I love this alcove bed!
We saw some famous paintings, including this one:
A recent(ish) issue of Midwest Living had an article featuring the woman who currently lives in the American Gothic house, but sadly, they didn't show any photos of the interior. The article did say that her lease requires her to keep lace curtains in those iconic windows.

I got excited over the painting below because I had a pack of Doublemint gum in my purse.
The Chagall Windows are absolutely stunning.

I tried to get my husband to kiss me in front of them, but he refused. Oh, well, neither one of us is that fond of Ferris Bueller anyway, even though he was of our era.
Obligatory self portrait in the Bean. I am the one wearing the striped scarf and carrying the dotted bag:


Oops, the jelly fish photo was supposed to go up in the aquarium section, but it's too hard to move photos in Blogger (for me, anyway).
The Christkindlmarkt was way too crowded on Friday afternoon. It was sunny and in the mid 50s, and I think everyone in a 300 mile radius tried to squeeze into the plaza. We couldn't move, we couldn't breathe, we couldn't see a thing, so we left, and came back the next evening when it was raining.






Much less crowded, and very beautiful! I wouldn't recommend making a special trip to Chicago just to see the market, but if you are there anyway, or can plan to see other things, it's definitely worth a look. Just wait until it rains.