After adequately celebrating Halloween on Friday, we decided to skip town for the rest of the weekend.
We went to this town. You might have heard of it.
Recognize that building? The last (and only) time I went to the top of it, it was the tallest building in the world.
Saturday morning we drove to Chicago. After dropping me off at the temple, Greg and the kids braved the Legoland Discovery Center for a few hours. Then they returned to pick me up, at which point we stopped for dinner and checked into our hotel. I took the kids swimming and put them to bed while Greg went to the temple. (The fact that I took my kids swimming in the hotel pool indicates three things: 1) I must really believe worshiping in the temple is important, 2) I must really love my husband and want him to have the opportunity to worship in the temple, and 3) I must really, really not want to return to Legoland by myself with the kids.)
It was good to be at the temple--to worship, meditate, and think (or not think) without anyone crawling on me. I ended up in a Spanish-speaking session, which I quite enjoyed. (It also kept me from falling asleep because I had to pay closer attention.) I am happy Greg could spend time in the temple too. One day perhaps we will be there together. For now, it's a big family production that involves portable DVD players, fast food, swapping kids and cars, museum memberships, and even hotels. Oh well. It's worth it.
Sunday morning we thoroughly enjoyed our Embassy Suites breakfast, and then we headed into the city to visit the Museum of Science and Industry.* I was leaning towards revisiting the Field Museum, but David definitely wanted to go back the MSI. What kid wouldn't? It's the Disney World of science museums.
It turned out to be a fabulous day to go. Like Disney World, crowds are a big issue at the Museum of Science and Industry. But on Halloween Sunday there were none! It felt as if we had the museum to ourselves.
There is a great new (and permanent) exhibit called Science Storms. It was pretty awesome.
We also liked the robots in the manufacturing engineering exhibit, the coal mine (even though Mary had to bail because she was too scared), the airplanes, the farm equipment, the race cars, the electric train model, and figuring out how to ship your crude oil from the Middle East to Illinois.
Watching this giant joyball machine was also a favorite.
We spent the better part of the day at the museum. There were certainly moments when I thought the whole outing was a big, fat mistake. The place is too big and overwhelming for David--he has a hard time settling down to enjoy any one thing. Which causes me frustration... which quickly turns to despair...which soon morphs into the belief that at any moment the entire universe is going to come crashing down and get sucked into that tornado vortex thing in the museum's weather exhibit. All because my five-year-old doesn't want to milk the plastic cow.
And poor little Mary just wanted a nap--and, in a momentous decision that celebrated our family's exit from toddlerhood, we had chosen not to bring the stroller. It may have been a momentous decision, but it was also a very bad decision. Poor Mary. (And poor Greg who had to carry her tired but cute rear-end all over tarnation.)
But overall it was a fun and positive experience.
Once we left the museum (and its overstimulating environment), David and Mary were able to process what they'd seen. I was amazed by how much they had gotten out of it, especially David. He came home and insisted on writing a letter to his teacher about the museum. He included detailed, labeled illustrations of the coal mine and the robots. (I wish I'd taken a picture of his drawings!) We mailed the letter on Monday, and yesterday his teacher shared it with the whole class. What a great way to top off his trip to the museum!
Here I was complaining about what a crummy fall break it was going to be--and it ended up just great!
By the way, if you are a crazy stalker and feel like this post short-changed you on pictures of my kids in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, you can see more here (from a year and a half ago).
*Please don't ask me to explain the genuine discomfort I felt about participating in trick-or-treating (the one evening the entire neighborhood warmly turns out to chat, smile, meet, and greet) on the Sabbath, while simultaneously feeling that it was perfectly acceptable to skip out on church on said Sabbath day in order to wander a flashy museum dedicated to the joys of manufacturing toys and extracting resources from the planet. It doesn't make sense to me either. (In our lame defense, Sunday happened to be a semi-annual two-hour long multi-congregational meeting that, experience has taught us, our family would not have survived without an enormous amount of crying, begging, pleading, bribing, whining, and disrupting. Also, it meant Greg didn't have to get a substitute for his Primary class.) To be perfectly honest, Halloween is not my favorite holiday, and I'd probably take a museum over trick-or-treating any day of the week.
