Our Little Chicago Trip For Lydia's Birthday

We took a little trip to Chicago this week for Lydia's birthday. We had a great time visiting the Shedd as well as her family. Here is a little picture of the the skyline taken from the toll road leading into Chicago. I cannot believe that a city can charge $2.50 just to ride in on the quickest route to downtown. Amazing!

Here is the Sears tower. I have nothing more to say about that.
We got to the Shedd and went right to the dolphin show. It was not very exciting, but the kids thought that it was something fun. I cannot believe that someone would want to get paid money for teaching giant fish-like things to jump and look cute. Not my idea of a calling.
Here are the things flipping around in the oceanarium. Notice Lake Michigan right outside of the windows. I was more amazed with the number of tall ships that moved along the lake. I am also amazed that there are no notable cities on OUR side of Lake Michigan.
Here is the birthday girl with her two little ones.
Here is Anna and Owen looking at the Coral reef. There are some AMAZING fish in this area.
Here we posed in front of the super classy fountain that welcomes visitors from around the world to the Shedd. They call it 'the world's aquarium'.
We went to Lydia's parents house to meet them for dinner. We went to a Bohemian restaurant and I had Moravian duck. We had a great discussion about Jan Hus, the Reformer from Prague. He is still a national hero there.

When we left we took Peaches the family bird of 14 years. Our little friend Sydney B. has been saving her money for a bird and we knew that Peaches would be happy with her.

Some more notable things:

• Today is Lydia's birthday.
• We have not done much to celebrate.
• Justin and Marion are liars.
• Little Stuart is being baptized this Lord's Day.
• People keep asking Lydia if she is having twins and commenting on her ginormous belly.
  

Nomi

We have a new member to the family. We have decided that it is time for Anna to learn to care for a pet. Meet Nomi. The name is taken from the film Finding Nomi. (I am sure that none of you have seen it). Nomi is Japanese Koi. What does that mean? Basically a koi is a goldfish that cost $6.00 instead of $0.14. Koi are those giant goldfish that you see in ponds and they come to the top and gulp down bits of bread and cheeseburgers.

Nomi is loved by Anna very much already. She walks into the kitchen and yells, "Hi Nomi!" She also has to make sure that we know that he is swimming and that he is orange. Today she asked Lydia where Nomi was and Lyd told her that he was gone. Anna proceeded to cry about the loss and Lydia quickly turned it into a game of peek-a-boo, fish style.

An interesting thing about Nomi is that on his food container it says that if it under 39 degrees we should not feed him. Hmm. Guess Nomi does not have to eat while he lives in our home.