Party of Six: Grace's Chicago Birthday

Grace was born on December 23, 2003. Since her birthday is only 2 days before Christmas we try to make her day as special as can be. This year, for her 7th birthday, we let her choose how she wanted to celebrate. She wanted to go downtown Chicago. Aaron was in charge of the research to make sure she knew of everything that there was to do on that day.

Grace has never been on a train before so she wanted to take one into the city. Aaron had no objections to this at all, I think he was just as excited as she was.

First stop, the Art Institute of Chicago. This is one of my most favorite places to go in Chicago. I haven't been there in years and I was so excited when Grace said she wanted to go. I was looking forward to showing everything I love and hoping she enjoys it as much as I do.

Marc Chagall is one of my loves.

His art is almost magical, I can sit and look at this for hours.

Another great area of the museum is seeing the old Stock Exchange room. I can't begin to explain how much beautiful detail is in this room. The hand painting on the walls and ceiling is unbelievable.

Monet

Seurat

Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884-1888)

After about 30 minutes in the museum Aaron and Grace were ready to leave. I kept dragging them around showing them beautiful works of art which they had no interest in. I have to admit it made me a little sad.

We had a little time before we had our next adventure so we hopped into a cab and headed over to Michigan Ave.

We stopped and ordered some hot chocolate to warm up before our walk over to old Chicago Water tower.

Next stop on Grace's list, Peter Pan at the Looking Glass Theater.

This was a treasure map to show us how to find our seats!

The theater was very small, at most it seated maybe 150 people. The stage was in the center of all the seats, if you were late you couldn't come in until the second act.

The pictures inside are not great, I was sneaking them because there was no cameras allowed in the theater. I just had to take one of this hanging light. They were all over and it just looked so interesting.

We LOVED,LOVED,LOVED this play! It was amazing. So very basic, their costumes to the stage set were very minimal, they made it so you had to use your imagination.

After the play we walked a few blocks down to Rosebud for Gracie's birthday dinner. The food was wonderful and after Aaron and I had a few glasses of wine and Grace had her mini birthday cake.

After dinner we had about an hour before our train ride back to Grandma's house so we decided to take Grace over to the Christmas Market. We wanted her to see what the German markets looked like and how much fun they are to go to.