An awesome weekend in Chicago, now off to Denver.

On Thursday morning we took a 6:20 flight from Kansas City to Chicago. After a train ride from the airport into the city, we met up with our friend Kyle to drop our stuff off and get our bearings. We caught a train towards Millenium Park and spent a good amount of time walking around the area, checking out the shell, the bean, and the fountain. We walked all the way through Grant Park then took the bridge up to the Art Institute. It had some cool photography and some weird modern stuff but it was definitely worth visiting. We then walked to the Field Museum of Natural History and scoped out some stuff on ancient Egypt and the T-Rex skeleton they've got on display. After an hour or so we went to grab some dinner and meet up with Colee's friend Ben. Ben showed us around Wrigleyville and we stopped by Cubby Bear and Vine for some drinks before meeting up with another friend, Jimmy, at his dad's condo in Old Town. After watching some basketball we headed to McGee's Tavern for some nightlife.

Friday we started off walking around downtown and checking out the city with Jimmy. We eventually ended up at Shedd Aquarium and spent about 2 hours there. The aquarium had some pretty sweet sharks and lots of penguins and frogs and even some monkeys. After the aquarium we decided to take the long walk to Navy Pier to check it out and grab some dinner. After a cab ride back to the condo we settled for some basketball since we didn't have the tv channel that the Blackhawks game was on. I've gotta say, People absolutely love the Blackhawks, and even the dinosaur skeleton outside of the Field Museum was sporting a Blackhawks jersey. After hearing that the Blackhawks won 4-3 in overtime and watching LeBron hit the most clutch game-winning 3-pointer ever, we headed out to Wicker Park for the celebration.

Saturday was an interesting day, which started off with us making our way to the south side of Chicago to check out the Museum of Science and Industry. Within 4 train stops of our destination, the train operator announced that the next group of stops would be skipped, so we just got off early at the White Sox stadium. We thought we were close enough to walk so we started on our hike through the south side. After walking for 30-40 minutes through some pretty sketchy streets, we finally saw another train station and realized we were still almost 20 blocks from the museum. After all the walking, we decided just to head back into downtown and towards our next destination, the Sears Tower. The 103rd floor of the tower was closed for the day, but we were able to get to the 99th and see pretty much the whole of Chicago from some awesome vantage points. After the tower, it was back to the condo for food and more basketball on tv, then out to John Barleycorn for a girl's 21st birthday.

On Sunday, we took it easy and slept in before finally getting up and eating lunch. We packed up our stuff and said goodbye to Jimmy and took the train back to the airport for our 4:15 flight back to Kansas City. Once we landed, Colee's brother Steve and niece Ellie picked us up from the airport and we had a great evening in the backyard with the rest of the family playing croquet, grilling out, and even checking out the amazing deer poop pellets that Steve found. We ended up watching some Deadliest Warrior with Eli before heading to bed.

Today, Monday, we got up at 8am, packed everything in the car and said our goodbyes to Steve, Tracy, Nate, Ellie, and Eli (and Casey and Carson). Right now we are in the car, not too far from the Colorado state line. We're driving through a huge rainstorm but there's not too many cars on the road so we'll be fine. We'll be in Denver tonight through Thursday, staying with Joe and Crisco. This week we'll be going to the Nine Inch Nails / Jane's Addiction show, a Colorado Rockies game, and plenty of other stuff. We'll be putting more pictures on here each day, and work on making the pictures bigger and more accessible when we get some free time. If you'd like a postcard, make sure to email or facebook message us your mailing address. Thanks for the messages and comments, week 1 is in the books!