Definitely one of the highlights of this summer was visiting Chicago for the ASRS (American Society for Retinal Surgeons) conference. Neither of us had ever been there and it's always fun trying something new. I left the boys in very good hands and flew from Albuquerque with Eden to meet up with Sam. We arrived a few minutes from each other so that was a blessing. Also, despite Eden being a little restless, it could have been a lot worse and the people around me were very understanding (thank goodness because they gave me a middle seat!)
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| United at last! On our way to our hotel via the Blue Line. |
Joey's note for Daddy. If you can't tell, he wrote that he wanted a Hercules Beetle
as a pet after seeing one at the Bugarium. He even drew it, aww!
We had to walk about a mile with our luggage but our hotel ended up being a huge blessing! It was within walking distance to almost everything we wanted to do! Good thing because I didn't bring a carseat for Eden, ha! Sam put his poster up where it needed to go and the rest of the day was ours.
We grabbed some lunch at a middle eastern place called Naf Naf Grill. It was tasty, but alas my stomach was feeling really bad after the fact (I believe I caught whatever Eli had before I left). It was very sad because there was an awesome dinner the conference paid for (via our tickets) at Eataly. It's a very fancy Italian restaurant and we got the entire second level to ourselves. It was buffet style, but it was some high quality things like sea food, brick oven pizza, and pasta. They had lots of alcohol that we did not partake of, but we got yummy gelato. Just because my stomach hated me that night didn't mean I wouldn't sample these things! Other things that night that we didn't do included pizza and cheese making demonstrations. Very nice restaurant.
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| I don't know what Sam got, but it looked mighty delicious! |
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| Eden enjoying her pizza. |
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| Someone offered to take our picture. |
The next day we decided to hit Millennial Park after Sam attended some things from his conference. Best part it was just around the corner. We took Eden's first year photos as well (in this blog
post). We got to see Cloud Gate (or the bean as it is more well known as 😝) Despite being overly crowded it was fun to go there.
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| Trying to get a picture of us. |
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Decided to take advantage of the slew of people here
and have one of them take our photo. |
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| Haha. Bean. |
Funny story. Some foreigners came up to us and gestured for us to take their picture. We obliged and when we gave their phone back to them, they then gestured for us to be in the picture. More family members showed up to take our picture with them. They showed us the pictures and we gave them a thumbs up to approve. Then they got even more family out of nowhere to take a picture with us and they all started giving the thumbs up to the camera. We did it as well, then we gave each other thumbs up and parted ways. From a distance I could still see them taking pictures with their thumbs up. Sam and I thought we might have started a new trend. It was weird to be taking photos with random people but funny how it all turned out.
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| Me giving the thumbs up to commemorate the random event that just happened. |
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| Millennium Monument |
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| Ridiculously tall building wherever we went. We were going to go to the former tallest building in America (Willis Tower) and go into that glass looking box at the top, but we decided our hotel was mighty tall enough and didn't need to fork out for that experience. |
For lunch we decided to try the famous deep dish pizza at Giordano's. It was delish, but I'm a Dion's girl. The hardest part was the fact that we didn't have a fridge in our hotel room so we had to finish that thing in one sitting!
Sam modeling the cheese.
Sam later presented his poster while I sat in the hotel room working on the Primary Program in our ward. When we first arrived at the hotel, we noticed how everyone was in a suit and dressed up nice, something Sam didn't anticipate. He still wore his dress shirt and slacks, but we were second guessing how formal everything was supposed to be. I mean, I felt really underdressed at the reception in my t-shirt and jeans. However, despite being formal on the outside, this conference was really laid back. There was a wine and cheese sampling during Sam's poster session so everyone was carrying drinks around and acting pretty casual. Here is one of Sam's co-workers and buddies with his presentation:
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| Grant Justin. Super nice guy and even bought us dinner at one point! |
Grant decided to join us at Molly's Cupcakes to celebrate Eden's birthday. I just searched the closest cupcake place near us and this popped up. I learned after the fact that this place won cupcake wars AND voted as one of the best cupcake places in the country. It was very delicious.
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| I just loved this memorial statue to an "eccentric resident". |
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I chose the Peach Cobbler cupcake. Sam ate his before we got a picture or before I got a taste.
He claims it was because these were small cupcakes. |
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| With the birthday girl who got a cake batter cupcake. I loved hers. |
And now a precession of cuteness.
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| Oh my heart! |
We took a stroll to the pier to see lake Michigan afterward. It really did look like the ocean as I never seen a lake so large.
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| Enjoying the view. |
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| This picture was not staged and it made me laugh! So much to see! |
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| Chicago Skyline. |
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| Trump tower. I mean, I knew Trump was rich, but seeing this hotel really hit it home, haha. |
On Sunday we walked to church and enjoyed Sacrament meeting in a multi-level building. Coincidently we were seen by a daughter of someone in our former ward. The daughter told her mom who then asked us if we moved to Chicago. Nope!
Then afterwards we met up with an old friend of Sam's Dillon and his wife. They recently moved to Chicago for him to attend Podiatry school so we treated them to another restaurant serving deep dish pizza (Pequod's) and brought them back to our hotel for more chats. They did us a huge favor by watching our little Eden while we attended a Gala at the Natural History Museum!
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| My attempt at taking more photos: Dillon and his wife Hannah. |
I was talking earlier how this event ended up more formal than Sam and I were anticipating. Should Sam rent a tux for this gala? We decided to go with his suit he brought and my dress I wore to church and it worked out great. The conference even hired shuttles as transportation from the hotel so we didn't have to walk there.
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| The Field Museum rented out just for this conference! |
This Gala had a Jurassic Park theme (probably due to the dinosaurs in the museum).
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| Props to the designers. |
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We attempted to try a panorama to show off the largest dinosaur discovered, the Argentinosaur.
It's a silly picture, but you get the idea! |
We found out you were supposed to RSVP on some site or app for the gala, so we didn't have seats. It really worked out though because we randomly sat at a table with some awesome Retina Doctors, including Dr. Peyman, the inventor of LASIK and the intra-ocular laser for retina surgeries. Even for the lay person that's really cool!! We almost asked for a photo with him, but he skid-addled soon after dinner. Instead, here's a picture of him with president Obama:
The other doctors happened to be directors of fellowship programs for Retina, which Sam is hoping to do through the military. Turns out military residents are highly sought after, so that's good news for us!
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| Sam enjoying steak and cod! |
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| Enjoying the amazing opportunity! |
After dinner dessert bars opened up and a live band was playing, but we decided to take the opportunity to explore the museum. We spent the most time in this taxidermy section, and it looked a lot like this for several animals:
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| Penguins, one of Joey's top favorite animals. |
We also really enjoyed looking at all the Prehistoric creatures, such as this Quetzalcoatlus.
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| Largest creature to fly the Earth. |
The Field Museum really was spectacular. There were many dinosaurs...
...but the crown jewel was Sue, the largest and most complete T-Rex!
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| I believe this is the actual skull. |
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| See the nearly empty museum? Just us and Sue (and the picture taker I guess, haha!) |
We could have stayed there for a very long time exploring but we had to get back to Eden and relieve our friends. So we took a shuttle back and got in the elevators. We pressed our floor but the elevators didn't move! We then poked our heads out only to see everyone else poking their heads out of the other ones wondering what was going on. Then the fire department showed up! I guess if the alarm sounds all the elevators get grounded. It wasn't too clear what was going on, but rumor was that someone hung something on the sprinkler, which it clearly is labeled NOT to do that and it set off all the sprinklers on that floor. We waited for probably twenty minutes while we watched the firefighters and hotel workers try to figure out what to do. Our problem was that our room was on the 22nd floor! Finally, in our dress clothes, we trudged up 22 flights of stairs. The first few flights were soaking and that was our guess as to which floor set off the sprinklers. Sadly Dillon and Hannah missed their train back home so they stayed with us for maybe another hour, and the next train left after midnight (😱). We really appreciated what they did for us and it made that Gala fabulous to attend.
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| What we dealt with trying to get back to our room! |
Next day we headed to a breakfast place that looked amazing but had a long wait (we tried before but the wait was 1 1/2 long so we nixed that idea). The wait was 45 minutes that time so we waited in another building and came across these cool chairs.
Sam and I each got an egg dish (omelette for me and skillet for Sam) with a side of fancy pancakes. Expensive breakfast, but super filling and yummy!
The Chicago Institute of Art was the last item on our list of things to see and it did not disappoint. It's definitely one of the top Art museums in the world! We took a butt load of pictures but not to bore you a chose just a few. Best part was it was free for military and families, so we just paid for the special exhibit: Manet. They even provided a stroller for us!
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| Sam right outside. |
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| Some of the oldest art in the world from China. We're talking B.C.! |
After seeing old art from Japan, China, Persia, India, Greece, and Rome. We went to the special exhibit, which was Manet. I was today years old when I found out Manet and Monet are not the same. Whoops!
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| Portrait of Manet |
The exhibit had a lot of his late works, and from what I remember he had a studio in Paris and the exhibit really only showed his last paintings before he died. He died from gangrene in his leg in his fifties. Sad day.
The last painting is called Spring, and it had the props similar to what was used.
Other artists we saw included Georgia O'Keefe, who has a soft spot in my heart due to her love of New Mexico.
Also, American Gothic is at this museum!
I forgot this artist, but man he was unique in in grotesque artistry.
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| I forgot his artist too, but I'm really just showing off the museum's stroller! |
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| Ah, here's Monet! |
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| Seurat's painting at a park. |
We also saw a lot of medieval art!
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| Jousting. |
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| Trying to figure out if this art was a joke, but it's funny to me! |
Eden had enough of that place so we headed back to the hotel. Sam finished his last day of the conference and took pictures of these movie posters that had a Retinal twist. I'm putting it here for journaling purposes as I don't think the lay person would get it...
On Tuesday we packed up and left to go back to Albuquerque. We had a great trip! We took Eden because she was free and it was her birthday. Chicago would definitely be fun to visit again, although I think I'm fine not living there. It's really expensive and crowded, but we didn't really touch all the things to do there.
If you made it to the end, congrats! I usually forget to take pictures so I'm not used to having so much to say!
