{Shedd Aquarium}

While Megan was here we spent a good amount of time in downtown Chicago seeing the sites!

 Cute Siblings!!

 So on Friday the 8th we went down to the museum campus to stop at the Shedd Aquarium. The husband and I love aquariums so we were pretty excited about this stop!

The Shedd Aquarium had an awesome exhibit about jelly fish! It was absolutely fascinating! But, the whole time I was looking at the exhibit I had this song stuck in my head - please enjoy :

There were some crazy cool looking jelly fish that we saw - it was amazing to see these alien like creatures. :)

We got to touch starfish! It was pretty crazy feeling.

We also went to a dolphin show which was pretty fun. It wasn't quite as epic as those at Sea World or anything like that, but it was interesting because the show was about how they train the animals which was fascinating.

They showed us some of their training tools, how they used positive reinforcement, and how important the whistle is. It was very cool to learn all about that.

Here are some pictures that we took outside of the museum in front of the city skyline:

Thoughts on the Shedd Aquarium - I'd give this museum 2.5 stars out of 5. First off - it was pretty crowded and it made it difficult to look into the little tanks to see the fish. It seemed a little dingy and dark. Also, the lighting was terrible in many parts of the museum which made it impossible to look into some of the tanks. BUT - the jellyfish exhibit was amazing, so....yeah. Overall - I would go again if I got the museum pass which included the museum, but I would not pay for it on it's own.

{4th of July Part II - the Burbs}

On the 4th of July we started our day playing a variation of softball with our ward. It was super fun and very kid friendly, meaning that I, lacking all sorts of baseball skills and being quite pregnant, was able to do just fine. We had a great time and didn't embarrass ourselves too badly, I think. Here's some pictures:

After the game we went to pick up the husband's sister, Megan, from the airport. She came out to stay with us for 2 weeks! It was such a blast to have her here - more on that later with a bajillion pictures for sure. That afternoon we had to prep for the 4th of July party that we were having with a couple of the husband's co-workers and their wives. We had burgers on the grill, potato salad, delicious fruit, chips, soda, all the good summer-y stuff that you're supposed to eat. It was wonderful!

After dinner we decided to light a few of our own fireworks before the neighborhood firework show started. The other couples were nice enough to get a few for us to light. Unfortunately, one box of fireworks that they bought had a much more epic name than it actually deserved. Turns out, it was just a smoke bomb: Pretty lame, but the boys figured out how to spice it up later that night.

Apparently the house that we are staying at this summer has the perfect view of the neighborhood fireworks from the front lawn, so we pulled out some lawn chairs and blankets and made ourselves comfortable to enjoy the show. We also had a few people from the ward come over to watch the fireworks with us.
Here's Megan:

 The show as actually a lot better than I was expecting from just a little neighborhood, so kudos to them for putting on a great show!

After the big fireworks were done, we lit up the sparklers that the other couple brought:

Once the sparklers were out the boys were trying to decide what to do with the smoke bombs to make them more awesome and to suck less. So, they brilliantly came up with the idea to set the whole box on fire.

We got a pretty huge fire with tons of nasty smoke at the end of the driveway which was perfect timing as there were dozens of cars driving past leaving after the firework show. It just kept growing and growing and I was getting a little bit nervous, but, thankfully it put itself out before too long and then we dumped a bucket of water on the whole thing.

Overall, it was a great day and it was very fun to celebrate it with new friends!

{4th July Part 1 - the City}

On July 2nd [Saturday night] we went downtown and met up with some of the husband's work buddies to go see the fireworks at Navy Pier. It was a mad house, but so wonderfully fun. The friends were great, the fireworks were great - we had such a blast.
Pictures:

We saw this guy after the fireworks show completely wasted lying on the ground yelling at people to leave him alone....poor guy. One of the guys in our group saw some paramedics not too far away and ran and told them about him.

Someone has had a long day.....

Haha... I count as priority seating - Love this picture.