Our last day in Chicago... started sadly.. and I'm not just talking about the Burger King Breakfast (which was awful... not to mention they ran out of Cini-mini's which was devastating to at least 3 of the girls). We had to say goodbye to Nicole (Mackensie's BFF from Tucson). Nicole acclimated greatly into the mix of Mackensie's friends and everyone loved her.. it was sad to drive her to Chicago's Midway airport today.. there were tears everywhere (including mine!)..

Then we drove back to the hotel.. showered and started trying to make a sad day happier...

So we started walking down Michigan Ave... great shopping.. right?... wrong. It's Easter Sunday and clearly, I didn't plan for this.. but hardly anything is open. So we walk on the river walk for a while.. and we all realize that we got quite a workout last night in our heels, as we have very sore calves... then over the river and hop on a water taxi.

There were definitely a couple of "Titanic" moments.. all for dramatic effect only... but we got quite the view while heading over to the Sears Tower..

The "Windy City" lived up to it's name when we got to that side of town.. we were holding on to Sara to make sure she didn't blow away...

We took the elevator to the top of the "tallest building in the Western Hemisphere" and did our touristy thing... including letting the girls stand out on the glass "ledge" for a photo op... we have some great photos (yeah, they sucked me in and I bought them.. like I said.. I'm the biggest sucker in the world)...that I will scan and upload when I get home tomorrow night.

Then we walked back across the river to Union Station. The girls were dying to ride the subway, so I thought we'd give it a try. Little did I know.. unless we wanted to go to Seattle or Aurora.. this was not the train station for us. However, it was a super impressive station and the girls enjoyed wandering the various platforms and plotting various imaginary vacations.

So... back to the water taxi for us.. much cheaper than a real taxi at $4 a person.. we got back to Michigan Ave and decided we wanted to go to Dick's Last Resort for lunch.. for some reason, waiters insulting the girls sounded like LOADS of fun to them..

Unfortunately, at 2 pm (can you believe it?) they were still serving brunch and none of the girls wanted brunch. Next door was McCormicks and Schmidts... out of my price range.. so we wandered .. and wandered.. and wandered..and then, wandered some more. About 20 blocks.. looking for anything open on Easter Sunday for lunch.

Finally, the girls convinced me to take a cab back to the hotel for room service. However, when we got back to the hotel, I talked to concierge and found out that the Irish Pub around the corner apparently doesn't celebrate Easter and was open and had meals for like.. 1/3 the cost of room service.. so, being the mean mom that I am, I made them walk half a block for lunch.

It was terrific.. we had spinach/artichoke dip and quesadillas for appetizers.. then lots of chicken club sandwiches, buffalo chicken wings, Caesar salads.. etc.. everyone ate well.. but the portion sizes were HUGE! We had tons of leftovers.

I had the restaurant box up the leftovers and then we walked back to our hotel, distributing the leftover boxes to the homeless.. who were very grateful. The girls got a real rush out of seeing their faces as we offered them nearly untouched pizzas, sandwiches, etc.

Tori and I went back to our favorite accessory haunt near the hotel, while the other girls got ready to nap.. 15 minutes later when we got into the hotel, Tori joined everyone and soon, they were all passed out.

I woke them up at 6 pm to tell them that Second City Comedy Club had reduced tickets to $10 a person to see improv tonight.. and asked if they'd rather do that.. or see the newest Nicholas Sparks movie. To my great fortune, they chose Improv!

It took them a good 20 minutes to wake up.. but then everyone got dressed and we hailed yet another minivan taxi (thank God for those!) and headed over to Second City.

We picked up our tickets and had 30 minutes to spare, so we found a truly terrific authentic Mexican restaurant on the block. No one was really hungry, but we ordered chips and salsa and then had tableside guacamole prepared. Every girl (except one) tried the quac and was quite impressed.. 4 of them had multiple servings.. 2 had never even tried it before and now found a new thing that they like!

I love creating foodies!

Second City was hilarious.. the girls laughed and are still laughing. Improv is really great with all of the audience input!

We cabbed it back to the hotel and the girls went to 7-11 to stock up on junk food, in an effort to stay up all night tonight.. since it's their last night in Chicago.

However, 3 of them are already passed out.. so I have high hopes that I will eventually get some sleep!

Tomorrow, we will drive back... since one of the girls has a job and has to be back at 4 pm, we expect to leave by 10 am.. so we will see you soon!

Thanks again for letting me borrow your daughters. This has been an incredible weekend and one that I'm sure none of us will ever forget. Every girl has been fantastically well behaved, appropriately grateful and a true pleasure to be around. You should all be very very proud. I know I am!

Saturday Details

Saturday was an exhausting day! We actually all slept in til 10 am (which was good, since we didn't go to bed til 2 am), and we awoke to pouring rain. We found out that this restaurant called "The Emerald Loop" right around the corner from our hotel had an "all you can eat" breakfast buffet for $9.99.. so we walked over. The food was actually really good. Eggs, bacon/sausage, hash browns, fruit, yogurt, pancakes... etc. The girls ate really well!

Unfortunately, despite my warnings, only 2 of the 6 girls bought umbrellas.. so we had to go to 7-11 to pick up 4 more.. but then we were off and shopping!

First we hit the Macy's on State Street. It was 9 stories of JUST Macy's. We were all in awe. I think we actually only visited 4 floors but the experience was still a lot of fun for everyone! We wandered around a little more (Zara, etc) and it was already time to hit the spa! We headed over to the Bloomingdales building on Michigan Ave, where parking was a complete nightmare.

Downstairs, is the biggest "spa" that I've ever seen.. Mario Trocucci... with over 200 stylists/artists/techs! We all got "glammed up" with hair and makeup and found we had some time to spare before dinner, so we set out to explore Michigan Ave.

Turns out that the girls had no interest in Bloomingdales (horrors!).. but spent over an hour at Victoria's Secret. I don't get it?... but anyway, an hour and a couple of hundred dollars later, we started making our way back, with stops at Filene's basement, among other stores.

We got back to the Hard Rock hotel around 5 pm, and had one hour to transform ourselves into "city theater-goers".. the girls all dressed up and looked fabulous! We took a taxi to the Hard Rock Cafe (taxis are much cheaper here than parking at $20 an hour), where we had a quirky waitress that made the evening very entertaining. Again, all the girls ate well and were well-behaved.

Of course, every meal in every restaurant has been "Mackensie's birthday".. and she has not tired of the free desserts! However at the Hard Rock, they do things a little differently, they bought her up on the stage where the rock bands play and made everyone in the restaurant wish her a Happy 16th Birthday. I think she loved the attention!

Then we took a taxi to the Cadillac Palace where we had tickets to see Beauty and the Beast. We arrived 40 minutes before show time, and Nicole decided she "had to have" a pair of pink shoes she'd seen the day before at Zara.. so we all sprinted 3 blocks to Zara so she could pick them up. I told her that her mom might not be happy about such an extravagant purchase and she told me.. "My mom collects shoes, she doesn't wear them, she will be happy".. Cheryl, you and I could be great friends ;)

We saw the show and the girls loved it. I don't think they moved from their seats at all during the entire show.. not even one text message! It was a truly terrific production.. the stages were amazing, and the way they adapted the story was really great.. I even found myself moved to tears more than once.

Then, in all of our 3 and 4 inch heels, we hoofed it back the 6 city blocks to our hotel. The weather was really great (of course it quit raining exactly ONE HOUR after I bought the umbrellas), and it was a fun walk.

Everyone was pretty giddy with excitement.. we stayed up talking for a while and then felt pretty hungry, so we ordered ice cream sundaes and banana splits from room service, which the girls promptly pronounced "the best ice cream ever" (gotta love the superlatives!). I finally got them to settle down around 2 am.

It was a really great day, but exhausting for my 41 year old body.. the girls, however, were raring to go for another day!

Update coming.. today was a long and exhausting day! I just emailed everyone a link to the photos so far.. Will update the rest in the morning!

So here I am.. 24 hours later.. and we are IN Chicago!

The drive was pretty uneventful.. except for the fact that we learned that Sara has a bladder the size of a pea.. but otherwise, the girls mostly slept, complained about the lack of decent radio choices in rural Indiana, and sang obnoxiously loudly to "The Climb" by Miley Cirus... I am pretty sure that was sarcastic singing, btw.

In general, I was actually quite impressed with the musical tastes of this group of girls.. we all tended to make fun of the same things (think Lil' Wayne - Bedrock and Justin Bieber...).. It's so nice now that the girls are past the 12-14 year old stage! And I was pleasantly surprised to find out that they could actually sing lyrics to Michael Buble' songs and some of the girls didn't mind mentioning that they loved John Mayer as a songwriter (I made sure to comment on the fact that he is a womanizer and not someone they should see as a potential dating partner)..

Due to our stop somewhere in Indiana where the girls ordered custom subs at Subway and a freshly grilled chicken sandwich at DQ.. we ended up approaching Chicago at 5:15 pm.. OHIO TIME.. so it was only 4:15 Chicago time. We thought we were in good shape when we realized the time difference.. we had beat rush hour after all!... or so we thought..

We ran into major road construction and spent about 1.5 hours on the last 30 miles of our drive.. this is where Sara's bladder came into play again.. but the girls were well fed and well rested.. so no one whined or complained at all.. they were all good sports and enjoyed taking pictures of the city as we approached.

We finally got into downtown Chicago.. had to make the block 3 times to get close enough to the valet at the Hard Rock Hotel (only to find out that they charge $48 a day for parking.. WHAT?.. we will be self parking tomorrow a block away!).. the girls found our circling during rush hour hilarious.. I was not so amused.. but we made it nonetheless...

We got into the hotel, and the girls were psyched.. I've never been in this hotel before.. but it's pretty cool. The girls were impressed. We got two adjoining rooms on the 17th floor.. on the corner of the building overlooking Michigan Ave.. the views are super impressive. The rooms here are big and the bathrooms are great.. and we also have 2 walls of mirrors.. which, with 7 females, comes in super handy at make-up time!

All the girls spent some time getting made up.. and putting on their highest heels.. when I told them that we'd be doing lots of walking tonight... so maybe comfortable shoes would be in order. MOST of them took my advice... I'll let you guys ask your daughters which one did not... but she ended up buying a comfy pair of shoes on sale about 15 blocks later... ;)

We had dinner at a traditional Italian restaurant in the theater district.. Petterino's.

The girls ate so well! Well, all except for Mackensie, who didn't care for the menu.. but wow! The girls ate Calamari, real Caesar salad (with anchovies!), chicken parmesan, lobster ravioli.. it was great! I was super impressed.. and all of them had fabulous restaurant manners. It was a real treat to be with such well mannered young women!

Then, we took taxis to the Briar Street Theatre. It was the first taxi ride ever for 3 of the girls, so they loved that.. which was a lot of fun for me.. taxis are such a normal part of my life, to see the excitement made the experience new for me as well. We arrived and got our seats.. on the 3rd row.. which was the "wet zone"... so we all had to don ponchos.. which was a little nerve-wracking at first, but proved to not be as worrisome as we expected.

The Blue Man Group was FANTASTIC. I am sure you will hear all about it from your daughters, but they all loved it. They talked about it non-stop until they passed out. One of them even mentioned that when they get married, they wanted to have the Blue Man Group perform at their reception.

All in all, it was a really great first day. The girls are all terrific and had a good time. Now I guess I should get some sleep (after uploading photos), since tomorrow is Shopping, Spa Day and then... Beauty and the Beast!

Pictures to follow.. more updates tomorrow night!

So.. it is 1:15 in the morning.. the day that we are leaving for Chicago. Mackensie and 4 of her friends from school here in Madeira, plus her best friend from Tucson who has flown in for her birthday week/Spring Break are all headed to Chicago for a girl's weekend.. This blog will detail our weekend (with pictures) for all of the girls to be able to view and remember (and to keep all of the concerned parents "in the loop" while we are away)!