Chicago...

So last weekend we took a last minute trip to Chicago for our friends Petey (his real name is Dave, but all their buddies call him Petey to avoid confusion) and Lucy's wedding.  It was my first time there and Dave hadn't been since he was little so we were excited to see everyone and to explore the city.  We had a lot of fun even though we didn't end up getting as much time to sight see as we had hoped.

We got there Friday evening and after catching up for a few minutes we all headed to Carrabas for a nice dinner and to celebrate Pam's, our friend Joel's wife, birthday.  It was great to have a nice meal and relax.  Everyone was trying to entertain Lily, Joel's little girl, and keep her awake...poor thing kept drifting off, it had been a long day of traveling for her!

In the car on the way to Carrabas :)

Petey playing with Lily, so cute!

The whole group after dinner :D

On Saturday we went to Portillo's for lunch.  The wedding was held in Pete's Mom's apartment complex clubhouse, it was decorated really pretty with rose petals down the aisle and nice tables set up for the food, drinks, and cake.

The beautiful bride and her groom

I also made a new friend that day...Lily was so shy, but she warmed up to me on Sat. :D

After the ceremony we all went out to celebrate...we went to Fox and Hounds and then a salsa club.  It was fun, although we felt a little out of place at the salsa place- those people were good!

Dave and Dustin at the salsa club

Lucy and Pete were asked to dance on the bar, too funny!

Dave, Dustin, and I all tried White Castle cheeseburgers for the first time that night...they weren't amazing or anything, but hey now we can say we've had them :)

Sunday the plan was to leave as soon as possible to get to the city and explore, but of course we didn't get there until about 3...we still got to see a lot though and we were lucky to have nice weather all weekend so it wasn't freezing :D  The other thing that was frustrating is that we were in a big group of people and everyone besides Dave, Dustin, and I were from Chicago.  They all had their own agenda as to what the plan was for the day and what we were going to see...they were also frustrated by the three of us stopping to take so many pictures...I mean, we were on vacation, what did they expect?  But we just stopped to take pictures anyways and if they kept walking we just had to hustle a little to catch up...

Dave and I on the L train

Our first stop was to the Sears, I mean Willis, Tower...it was such a weird feeling riding up the elevator so fast.  It was definitely a lot higher than I realized before and the view was amazing!  They also have "skydeck ledges" that are glass boxes that go off the edge of the building, they are so neat...it makes you feel like you are floating above all of the buildings.

On one of the Skydeck Ledges

The whole groups feet on the Skydeck Ledge

Haha, Dave being silly...he was a little nervous taking this one!

After the Sears Tower we stopped to get some famous Chicago deep dish pizza at Giordano's...it was really good!  Dave and I had the veggie lovers, mmm mmm good :)

Haha, the guys being cheesers and displaying where we were about to eat

Our next stop was to Millennium Park...I REALLY wanted to get a picture of us in the bean!  Although I did get a picture it is really dark and not good enough to post on here :(

Us in front of the bean

After that we went to the Navy Pier, it was really pretty down there with all the lights and the huge ferris wheel, sadly it was closed so we couldn't take a ride...

The next stop was to Hard Rock Cafe to relax and check out their neat stuff...Dave and I split a brownie sundae and a fun drink :) We saw lots of guitars and John Lennon's leather messenger bag (very cool!)  After that we went down to Wrigley-ville to see the stadium and hang out...I don't have our picture in front of that yet because my camera was dead at that point and someone else had to take our pic (very unwillingly might I add.)  Haha!

Overall it was a crazy unplanned yet very fun trip!  We can't wait to go back again and explore Chicago on our own...