Chicago...

I cannot believe it's nearly the middle of December. We have had a crazy day.
It started with an early morning phone call asking Michael to come quickly to help give his dying Grandmother a blessing.

He left immediately, then called me five minutes later.

The car had died on the freeway.

We almost were down to one car anyway, as we contemplated leaving his car at work the night before (because I had picked him up on the way to a party),

but ended up bringing it home-luckily!

So, I jumped in the car and met him on the freeway wearing my pajamas and slippers-passed the working car to him and he continued on his way. I sat in the dead car and waited for my awesome friend, Nicole, to pick me up and take me back home.

Thankfully, she and her family are early risers and I didn't worry about calling her at 7:30am on a Saturday!

Unfortunately, Mike didn't make it before his Grandmother passed. But, he was able to say good-bye to her and be with his family at this tender time. We know she was ready to move on and be reunited with loved ones. She was a hard-working, strong woman and we admire her.

The craziness didn't end there, but I'll go into it another time. I need to get the rest of this Chicago trip posted so I can get on to December events. Isn't it just like this during this time of year? It sure was sneaky this year and caught me by surprise. I have had much anxiety the past week, but I'm learning to breathe again....but on to the Chicago story....

The rest of the story is going backwards, but since the pictures were in order, I didn't want to mess with it. The following starts after everyone left but us....then I talk about the last night we were all together for dinner in the next paragraph....sorry, but try to keep up :)
The next day, everyone flew home except us! We wanted to spend a little more time there. It was so fun to be there together and explore this new city. We went to the Shedd Aquarium. I know we have one in Salt Lake, but this one makes ours look like a fish bowl. It was truly amazing! We got to see them train some Beluga Whales. We stood right by the pool as they put on a little show. Intelligent beyond belief. Before the show started, one whale would make noises whenever saw a trainer. As they ignored him, he became louder! Much like a child!

I took a lot of fishy pictures to show the kids, but I'll only post a few here.

After we left the aquarium, we decided to walk down to Navy Pier. We walked past the Chicago Tribune building and noticed that it has stones, pieces from walks or bricks from many world famous buildings and places (such as the Grand Canyon). We looked around until we found the one from Utah...The company that does some work for Mike's company is in Chicago, so Mike had checked with his contact to find the 'things to do and places not to miss' She is a big sushi lover, as are we, and as we were walking to Navy Pier we walked right past the sushi restaurant she told us to try! It was lunchtime and so we stopped in. It was SOOO GOOD! What a find!

Now for the first part...
We ate at Lawry's Steakhouse-the same people who invented Lawry's Seasoning. They have since sold it to McCormick to produce, but operate this amazing Steakhouse. The food was AWESOME! The choices were prime rib or a seafood selection....and some sides. That's it. But, seriously, that's all they needed. We enjoyed the company and conversation. It was a great way to end a great day! Funny thing, we ran into Paul Chatterton! Mike runs into him at every away game the Utes play that he attends. Out of the thousands of restaurants in Chicago, he showed up the same time we did! Paul was one of Mike's priest in our Murray ward. We have a soft spot in our heart for this guy. He's a great kid and has a darling wife and daughter.

After dinner, we walked along the bridge back to our hotel, but stopped to take some pictures.

I'll finish up in another post....