Its been 8 years since my family made a trip to US/IOA. But this winter we are returning to give the park a second chance. Should make for an interesting trip for such diehard Disney fans ( especially since we are not thrill ride seekers). I pulled out my pics from my scrapbook of that trip. I had just started scrapping at the time. Boy, has times changed! I even journal on my pages now. Something I hated back then. I'm thinking this week would be a good time to go back and fill in some blanks (lol). Of course it helps that my scraproom has finally been cleaned up a bit.


The whole family on the Men in Black ride ( a rare picture ).




My park map page.

Me as a participant in the Nickelodeon show! Quisha volunteered me for the show ( I still owe her a payback ).

Characters

Jurassic park, the one flume ride you will never find me on ( well that an Splash Mountain at Magic Kingdom).

We are staying offsite this trip, originally we were going to stay at Disney. But with 7 of us going it just makes more sense to rent a timeshare. The Vistana Village seems like a pretty good choice.

The one good thing about this trip is that I get a chance to get better pictures of the park. We did not even own a digital camera at the time (shock smiley should be inserted here....lol).

Did I happen to mention that Chicago really did turn out to be my kind of town?

Thought I would share a few pics with you. I posted a lot of them on my family blog. I am still amazed at the fact that I am actually looking forward to going back again! As I stated I am not a city girl by any stretch of the imagination. I will take the suburbs any old day ( its slightly better then living in the country ). Not that I haven't lived in the city during my lifetime. That is the problem...I know what city life is like. I was born a city girl and for many years my mom raised me in the city. Thankfully she had the foresight to get me out when I was young. I spent summers in the country with my grandparents and at least one week in the summer in the suburbs with my aunt and uncle. My husband will tell you that he thought he was marrying a country girl, but in fact he married a city slicker. And of course he goes on to say that country girls dream about pots and pans and city girls dream about plots and plans. The problem is I fall somewhere in between on most occasions. I love my country home and I love the fact that I live near the water, but every once in a while I get the urge to see tall buildings and fancy department stores, art galleries and museums. I guess that is the one advantage to having had a chance to live in both worlds. So even though I don't plot or plan or even dream about pots or pans...every once in a while I crave the city life, and then am just as content to go back to rocking on my country porch in the suburbs. I guess you can say I am blessed to be able to experience it all.

I felt sophisticated and really put together the night we went to the theatre (LOL).

Gotta love Macy's ( actually I loved the stores in the mall ).

Loved the hotel we stayed at.

I could eat at this place every morning. And also for lunch because the salads were really good.

We ate at TGIF the first night we were there, which is funny since we have several here and I had never been. I loved the quesadillas. I will have to check out the local TGIF here.

I'm Back!

I had an awesome time in Chicago. The city is beautiful...way beyond my imagination. We saw so many sites but there just was not enough time to see everything we wanted to see ( especially a dinner cruise and a trip to the top of the Hancock Building ). So we plan to head back in about two years ( with the girls this time ) and really give it a good run. The Color Purple was a great show ( some surprises along the way ). I especially loved the music. Did a bit of shopping on Madison Ave ( just a bit...LOL). Had a great Italian meal at BICE ( I have to check the spelling on that ), but if you are ever in Chicago you have to try it. Most of our meals were at a place called The Corner Bakery ( great salads and breakfast meals for a low price ). I regret not getting a chance to try a Chicago style deep dish pizza though. We didn't make it to the Navy Pier or Millennium Park but its at the top of the list for the next trip. We did see Oprah's Studio and where she now lives. If I was a city girl I think I would choose Chicago over New York ( as a matter of fact I know I would ). The best part of the trip was hanging out with the family ( although I missed my girls...and the boys ). It's been a whirlwind month, so now its time to slow down and get back to organizing and scrapping. No planned trips until the winter...hopefully to Florida. I have been feeling homesick for my favorite place in the world. So stay tuned until the next time.