The Visit

After a summer spent on a lot of visits to other families, we finally got to host one of those families in our house. We spent 10 wonderful days with our friends Craig, Gillian, Effie and Fergus, who came all the way from Victoria BC for a visit to our fair city. Unfortunately, the weather was not very fair—indeed, it was bordering on unreasonable (record cold for October in Chicago). There was a bit of rain/sleet somewhere in the middle, which made our excursions slightly more challenging, but the last two days were full of sunny skies, and we hope that is what they will take with them.

This morning, we are all adjusting to the feeling of a more empty house. There are no visitors coming up for breakfast or to help us plan the day. I am really amazed at how well our two families do together, how the kids (mostly) get along together, how our rhythms, although different, seem to match up so well. When they left last night (in a taxi cab that almost didn't arrive in time), we sat on the porch, sort of stunned to realize they were actually gone. We ate the Pringles chips they had left behind, and Max suddenly said, "there are some good things and some bad things about them being gone, but mostly there are bad things." I love how he was able to express this feeling.

This afternoon, Max suddenly came to me and said, "it just feels so weird now that Fergus and Effie are gone, I can't really explain it, but it just hurts here," and he pointed to his chest. I told him I understand what he means, how it's weird after being with them so much for so many days to suddenly be apart from them. He cuddled up with me for a while and we sat together, talking about the fun things we did with our friends. Meanwhile, Otto has a fever and is alternating between being cuddled up in a blanket or being so hot he can't take it. I suppose they are experiencing a let down so extreme that it is emerging from their very bodies.

We did manage to fit a lot of fun in our ten days, and there were even a couple of down days for us in there, so that Otto could have a home day while Effie and Fergus could see more stuff.

I had made a fairly extensive itinerary with all sorts of ideas of things we might do. I had no idea if we'd get to half of it or even a bit of it, knowing we would take it day by day and would rely heavily on all the kids being agreeable to the outings. In the end, we did quite a lot, all on foot or by CTA. We did, however, seem to run up against a recurring theme: closed or free (and in these cases, we were not really happy about the free part). I think we all managed to see the humorous side of this.

We went to the Shedd Aquarium (free day, crowded, the first day it was open post two days of being closed, and also the first day of the new dolphin show, Fantasea—it was so darn crowded, we did not even get to see this show, which was a bit of a disappointment), the Museum of Science and Industry (free day, crowded, the beginning days of the new exhibit You, and our arrival was timed with the fire drill and evacuation of the entire museum), we saw Millennium Park at sunset (this was beautiful, even if it was a bit cold and misting), and we rode the water taxi down to Chinatown and back on our last sunny Sunday. This day was definitely a highlight, noted for its fine weather, the combination of shopping, eating and playing in the park. Craig joked on the way down, "Do you think it's a free day in Chinatown?" But it was only moderately crowded, just the right amount to feel like a bustling big city Chinatown. And we ended the day at the Blue Man Group, where all the kids had a great time. Fergus was really excited about it and couldn't wait to see what all the toilet paper was for. I think he was pleased with the results.

Beyond the Blue Man Group, there was more music to be had. Craig and Gillian went to see Tom Rush (a folk legend and old favorite of Gillian's family) at the Old Town School of Folk Music. Martin took Craig to see Yeast Nation, a new musical at the American Theatre Company, featuring our talented friend Wendi. Gillian and I had a dance party with the kids in the living room.

There was lots of eating: Hachi's Kitchen (we did take-out sushi from here twice, since it was everyone's favorite meal), Snail Thai (in Hyde Park, post our MSI visit), Lee Wing Wah's (during our Chinatown visit), Pizza D.O.C. (for some delicious fire-baked pizza, only shadowed by the revelation that the Mayer family makes their own grilled pizza, which is even better than the D.O.C. variety), Lula Cafe (for a somewhat stressful breakfast, given that it was 3 pm by the time the food arrived, and the children had not eaten all morning), and an attempt to capture the taste of an amazing steak taco that Craig and Martin had following their night out on the town (we tried a nearby Birrieria, where Gillian, Craig and Martin all got heartburn from the goat tacos, and in the waning minutes of the visit, we stopped by El Cid for steak tacos which only met with mild approval from Craig). We also took the kids to Margie's Ice Cream for old fashioned sundaes, served in large shell-shaped bowls.

Effie and I got to spend some time doing crafts together—clay, melty beads, jewelry beads, shrinky dinks, drawing, and one night, we looked through my portfolio and some of my hand-made books together. I realized this would be a fun activity to do with her, book making, but we didn't find the time to pursue that further on this visit.

We watched movies (it was an Indiana Jones marathon, so much so that Fergus found he was Jonesed out), we played video games, we played board games, we played with the Lego minifigure collection, all of them making their own special minifigures. We ate an extraordinary number of Werther's Candies and Ikea chocolate bars.

We spent some low-key days in the neighborhood, walking to Starbucks and various parks. And we also took the bus up to Lincoln Square to visit Quake Collectibles so that Effie could significantly grow her Star Wars action figure collection. We also stopped in Timeless Toys to check out the puppets and stuffed animals.

Effie had saved up a large sum of money for her visit and was very careful about how she wanted to spend this money. There was a lot of time spent at each store as she considered each purchase and counted out the total she would spend with her toy money (this is a fabulous way to represent the actual money without risking losing the whole lot). She made two visits to Quake, as well as a visit to Fantasy Costume, and a trip to Target (we can walk there from our house, which is exciting in itself). Perhaps her most successful visit was to the American Girl store, where she went one afternoon with just Gillian and Craig while the boys and I stayed home and watched movies and played video games. I think having the full attention of her parents while she spread out the possibilities on the floor was a bonus. Effie got a bed for her doll Felicity, as well as three new outfits. She was very excited about these and showed them all to me when they got home.

Despite numerous drive-bys and boat-bys and photographs taken of the Sears Tower, we never made it to the actual building, nor did we make it to the John Hancock for a sky high view of the city. I suppose we had to leave some things for their next visit.

And of course, somewhere in there we celebrated Max's birthday (as discussed in the previous blog post). He was very happy to have spent this birthday was his good friends.

Note: our small camera has been missing since mid-September (it is beyond missing, officially gone), so I have had to rely heavily on Craig for photos for days when I did not want to carry the big camera around along with our changes of clothes and coats and snacks and drinks. But here are a few moments, captured on film.

So here are Craig, Gillian and Effie, as we are heading out for Day One. I forgot to mention that our attic reconstruction has fallen so far behind that we could not house them there, as initially promised, and we did not think it possible to squeeze us all into our tiny space. But we got the surprising news that our downstairs tenants had bought a house and were moving out just two weeks prior to the arrival of our house guests, so in the end, it worked out really well. We had a "guest apartment," more room to run around there than we could have possibly offered, even if the attic had been finished. The only drawback was that, due to my own overzealousness on a remodeling project, the kitchen sink was rerouted and not working for their visit, so even though they had a full kitchen in their apartment, they weren't really able to use it. Still, it seemed to work out, as it was mostly late night snacking that they did down there, and we were together for all actual meals.



On the bus, headed for Lincoln Square.



Our first visit to Quake, where they are now old friends with Dave, the owner.



Heading for delicious pizza that doesn't begin to compare to Pizza M.O.C. (Mayers of Canada).



Kids in costumes.



Effie's new action figures.



This park was closed for resurfacing during their entire visit. It didn't stop us from standing outside and looking longingly at it.



The neighborhood coffee shop happens to be a fairly well known chain.





Crafting while Gillian and Craig went out on their date. All the kids made really cute little clay creatures.



Max inspects his birthday cake.



Headed to the Museum of Science and Industry for a (surprise to us) free day. Too bad Gillian bought a membership to her local science museum in order to get in to this one. Apparently October in Chicago is a free time in many museums. The rest of the month is free on weekdays at the MSI.



The Bean at sunset. We could not have planned better timing on this (it was entirely luck that we arrived when we did).




New sculpture in Millennium Park.



More pizza. Lucky Vito's variety. This was such a hit that we decided we should have pizza for the kids as an option for every night. But the next night, when we suggested pizza again, Max complained he had had enough pizza for a while. Oh well, the best laid plans and all that.



Taxi!



Martin served as tour guide as we cruised down the river, on our way to Chinatown.





There's the Sears Tower again.



At last: Chinatown. We played for a while in Ping Tom Park.



We stopped first in the "mall," the more modern part of Chinatown, where we know a few good shops and restaurants.



Candy, fill your own basket.



Dinner negotiations (some people were hungry and ready to sit, some people were anxious to explore more).



The hungry people who were ready to sit somehow got their way, but I think everyone liked it.



Then we made our way to the traditional Chinatown street, where we shopped some more.







Sunset water taxi ride back north.





This was such a perfect outing, not just because it happened to be on the most beautiful day we had, but also because it was the one thing that Fergus had somehow set his mind to do, and that he kept asking about, possibly because he thought he was actually visiting China. As the end of their visit drew near, we did not think we could fit it in. But because he said it over and over again on Saturday ("I want to go to Chinatown." "When will we go to Chinatown?"), we decided to abandon any other plans for Sunday morning and make a concerted effort to get down there. We were all really happy we did. Effie got a collection of fans, which made her happy, and Fergus got to run around and look at "China rocks" and "China signs" and "China toys." And the timing on the return taxi boat, with the sun setting and glowing on all the buildings...well, once again, we could not have planned it any better. It was a very nice ending to a very nice visit.

Thanks for coming, Craig, Gillian, Effie and Fergus. We had so much fun.