Ahh, Day 2 of our Chicago adventure.  July 4.  Due to our previous late night, everyone slept in until about 9:00 (I KNOW, we’re getting old if 9:00 is “sleeping in”) and slowly began getting up, making coffee, and eating this tasty coffee cake Sister managed to score for free from Starbucks.  She’s got a friend on the inside, I think.

It took entirely too long for us to get ready.

And Sister’s scale offended me because when I stood on it to test how much weight I had gained from eating 5 libs of Cheetos the prior afternoon, the thing said “ERROR”.  I tried it again, same message.  Taking this to be a bad omen, I gave up and continued getting ready for our exciting day of walking around.

Three hours later, everyone had showered and was awake enough to form complete sentences.  After some debate, we headed to Go Roma! for lunch.  We were offered monstrous spoons of gelato to sample the moment we walked in the door.

“I like this place,” Joey said, licking the spoon clean that I had handed to him to try.

“OH!” I wailed, “You ate all my gelato, I barely had any at all!”

He looked guiltily at the empty spoon.  “Sorry…don’t give anything to me until you’re sure you’re done with it, then I won’t eat it all on accident.”

We settled on our menu choices and went outside to bask in the sun and wait for our food.

Sister and Stephen look grouchy, but they really weren’t.

After lunch, which was tasty, we headed to Michigan Avenue.  We had two goals in mind:

1.  Find Sister a messenger bag that was small, compact, and wouldn’t kill her back.  (She has wicked bad back problems.)

2.  Look at cool stuff.

We made the boys go the Apple store while we walked into a few shops because, honestly, sometimes it’s just more fun to shop with your sister.  Plus boys have short attention spans while shopping, and we felt like browsing.

Thirty minutes later, the boys were bored of the Apple store.  We told them to meet us at Gap Kids, which they did.  Sister found a very cute brown bag that fit her very well, indeed.  That accomplished, we headed back up the Magnificent Mile to the Hancock building so we could get Jamba Juice.

Sister was feeling very weak after walking so far, so we put her in a chair while we waited for our Jamba Juices to get made.  We waited, and waited, and waited.  The line was painfully long, so we amused ourselves by taking pictures while we waited.  This picture is, um, typical.

The Jamba Juices still weren’t coming, so I dragged Joey out to the fountain and had him take pictures of it.  Then I got in the fountain, which was probably against his better judgement but there were no signs posted saying to keep out, and the water was very, very cold.

And here we are together.  I’m out of the fountain at this point.

I LOVE MY JOEY!!!

I broke our first camera here, at this very location, after we had been married for just three days.  Here I am reenacting my face after I dropped our precious camera on its lens and broke it.

Joey wouldn’t let me touch the camera again until after we had our Jamba Juices and were far, far away from the Hancock.  He didn’t want a repeat of three years ago, and neither did I.

We walked home and then looked at Sister and Stephen’s pictures from their Europe trip last month.  Sister was in the Moody Chorale and had great stories and pictures from their month on the Continent.  How lucky indeed.

About 4:00 we hit a couple more shops before getting in Sister and Stephen’s very loud car and driving to A la Turka (a Turkish restaurant) for dinner.  Joey and I had been here before and we were really looking forward to it.  Turkish food is YUM.

We walked in and the waited asked us if we wanted to have a table, or floor seating.  We glanced toward the “floor seating” area, and it was a short table surrounded by long pillows.  It seemed exotic.

“Floor seating,” Joey said.

We all took off our shoes and climbed into the table.  We giggled.  A lot.

We were also the only people in the restaurant, despite the fact that it was 7:00 in the evening.  (We did, perhaps, forget that it was the Fourth of July…)  Because of this, all the waiters pretty much spied/eavesdropped on our conversation the whole two hours we were there.  It wasn’t even subtle, either.

Stephen sort of looks like one of those pictures of a Greek dude on a fresco or something.

And I like this one because it looks like the water glass is sprouting Sister heads.  She’ll probably take me outta the will when she realizes that I posted this picture of her, though.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to eat laying down?  I got Lahmacun all over myself and the cushions, which was a problem.

Shortly after this picture was taken, I lost my vitamins.  I got them out, took them like I was supposed to, and then must have set them on the cushion instead of back in my purse.  I lamented their loss for the rest of the trip, much to everyone’s dismay.

All of our food was good, except for Sister’s meal.  It was dry and gross.

Joey and I loved our food, as usual.  But we didn’t take any pictures of it.  Just us.

Ahh, one big happy family.

Here’s Joey.  I’m not sure what he’s doing.

ISN’T MY SISTER CUTE?!

We finished up our meal, after laughing so hard it was probably not good for our digestion, paid the waiter and went on our merry way.  It wasn’t a long drive back to Sister and Stephen’s, but it went much faster than the part where we tried to get to the restaurant because none of us had bothered to get real directions…we just figured we’d find it.  In any case, we made it there and we made it home.

We were all so tired that we fell into bed.  We knew we had to rest up for our Navy Pier adventure the next day, which Sister was already excited about because of the Ben and Jerry’s we were planning to get.

The only problem with having a fun day over and done with is that it puts you one day closer to having to go back!