life like wildfire

So I should probably talk about my Chicago adventure...

I left school on Thursday and went to my grandparent's house. We ate mexican food then went to bed early so we could be up and leave town at 5. We traveled for 10 hours, stopping at some of Iowa's gorgeous rest stops, getting Cinnabon, and eating pizza and going to Wal-Mart to buy warmer clothes in a town Ronald Reagan lived in, a fact that impressed my grandmother to the point of standing on a booth in Pizza Hut to take a picture of a picture, while asking the teenage waitresses about his involvement in the town:

We got to the city around 3 and thanks to some closed roads, got a good tour of downtown Chicago. We arrived at our hotel and checked in, and admired the view from our rooms:

Then decided to go on a highly-photographed walk.

After going around the block, taking pictures of every little thing we saw... the sentences "oooh look at that fancy McDonald's! Let's walk by and take a picture of it!" and "look at those potted flowers! girls, can I take a picture of you with the flowers?" were both uttered, as evidenced here:

We decided to walk the mile to Moody Bible College, where Bailey is hoping to go in two years.

We ate dinner at Hard Rock Cafe, where we were served by Wendy the Waitress and surprised by how many songs we knew. Then we went to Walgreen's to load up on souvenir tee shirts, mints, mugs, magnets, etc.

On Saturday, we started the day with Chinatown. We went into all sorts of shops, visited a Chinese-American history museum, and I got to see some borderline racist moments from my family. I bought a mug, plate, and teabag dish from a little cookware store with a very cute cashier.

After an authentic Chinese lunch at the P.F. Chang's next door to our hotel, we started getting

ready for the main event: The wedding reception!

The plan had been to meet in the lobby on the 6th floor, then all go down the street to Joe's seafood restaurant together. The elevators [lovingly dubbed the hell-evators], however, had decided to give out. As it was, the hotel had 2 elevators doing the work of 5. With one elevator not working, the wait had become about 20 minutes per trip, and you'd be lucky to fit 2 people on. It got worse when we heard rumors that someone from our group was stuck on the broken elevator! After making sure everyone was accounted for and that the people who had no choice but to take an elevator were safely on their way downstairs, the rest of us decided to take our gussied up selves down a filthy industrial stairway we had thought let out in the lobby, but, as we found out after going through

a door that locked behind us, let out around the corner from the hotel.

Everyone made it safely to the party, which was done extremely nicely, in a private room of a nice restaurant. People busied themselves getting drunk, taking pictures, and congratulating Josh, Kimberly, and Kimberly's little daughter Elaina.

Dinner was a formal 4-course affair which lasted an hour and a half and included platters of seafood, fancy bread, and the best fillet ever cooked.

After everyone ate, we lingered to talk and enjoy the company of people we didn't often get to see. Gracie kept herself entertained by going up to people and playing fashion designer, critiquing their outfits, to the delight of the groom's drunk friends.

On Sunday, most of the extended family left early, my parents and sisters and I ate breakfast and checked out of the hotel, and we went exploring.

We went to the 103rd floor of the Willis Tower [formerly Sears Tower]: