Finally

I have too many pictures to post on this blog, so I made an album...simply click on the following link and you will see some of the fun times we had.


http://picasaweb.google.com/carashby/Chicago?authkey=Gv1sRgCP-e__K1kNip0wE

Ok, so we decided to go to Chicago for our friend D-rod and Savanah's wedding and stay with our good friends the Piersons. As luck would have it, about a week before we left we found out our friends the Piersons had to leave Chicago the day we got in for a family emergency. We debated whether or not to go through with our plans because we didn't know where we were going to stay and thought it would be fun to spend the times we weren't doing wedding stuff with our friends. Well, what really made the decision of if we were going to go or not was that the only time we could go was after graduation, but turns out Tyler has to take the GMAT on April 30, which totally ruins those plans. So, we decided to head out there anyway.

We left Wednesday, and I spent the day in Layton judging a high school FCCLA competition (kind of like FBLA or DECA, but different...) and then drove back down to Provo, met up with Ty and his mom took us to the airport. We had a layover in Denver and then were off to Chicago.
We arrived in Chicago-Midway Airport after midnight and our friend Mike picked us up from the airport. As we were driving around he warned us to be careful where we were looking, and not to stare. He explained as we drove that the area surrounding the airport is commonly referred to as the blue light district because there were blue lights flashing every 100 yards or so. The blue lights were police cameras that enabled the police to see if the situation was safe enough to send an officer to. The housing in this area is called "the projects" and is all government subsidized housing. Many of the windows were boarded up, probably because they got shot out and the government didn't want to pay to put more glass in the windows. Anyway, this information will become very important to me later in the week...

Thursday we spent downtown going to some of the places Chicago is famous for: Portillo's Hot Dogs, Sears Tower, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Millennium Park to see The Bean. Union Train station is also a hub of activity. Mike showed us the ins and outs of commuting by train in a big city. He calls it the running of the bulls--after work when the train arrives at the stop, everyone pushes over each other to the doors and bursts out as soon as they open in a full out sprint to their vehicle--trying to get out of the parking lot before anyone else. We walked to and from the train station.

Friday we were boring and had to do some homework, but we did go to the famous Naperville Outlet Shops and Ty indulged me at two of my favorite stores: Gap and Banana Republic.

Friday night we did something so unconventional for us, we rented 2 movies and watched them both. One right after the other. The first movie we watched was City of Ember--a fun kid's movie that I highly recommend. The latter was the third Mummy--not so much a fan.

Saturday was the wedding. Without going into to too much detail, many things went awry with the planning of everything, but overall the sealing was nice, the Chicago temple is beautiful, and we had a fun time with our good friends the Dutchers and Spat. The one thing I will mention is that Cafeterias in hospitals offer great food for an inexpensive price!!

We went to church Sunday and ironically enough the combined Relief Society/Priesthood lesson was on Emergency Prepardness (given by Krishna, Tyler died when he learned his name). We are the Emergency Prepardness chairs in our ward and got some good ideas for our ward.

The rest of the day we spent driving to and from the airport. We drove to pick up the Dutcher's and drop them and the rental car off at the airport. As I was driving near the projects in a car by myself, I realized, this is scary. To make matters worse there were homeless people accosting drivers for money at each intersection. All I could think of was a story Mike told about his mother in law when she was visiting: out of the blue a guy came up and pounded on her window screaming let me in!! It was intense. We drove back to the Pierson's and then drove back to the airport to pick them up at about 12:15. Our flight left Monday morning at 7:00, so we decided to pull an all nighter and chat. By about 4 am we were past coherentness and we tried to get some sleep before we had to leave by 5:30. I was zonked the rest of the day and our flight got delayed in Denver for 3 hours so it made for a really long day.

That's the trip in a blur. Hope you enjoy the pictures:)