Christmas Time is here!

After nearly 9 hours of airplanes and layovers, I am happy to say that Andrew and I successfully surprised my siblings Christmas morning. They had no idea we were coming to Chicago to see them! There were gasps, tears and cheers when we appeared Christmas morning. It was great.

On Friday, the whole family took a trip downtown. We took the 'L', or for those of you who are unfamiliar with Chicago's fine public transportation system, the "elevated rapid transit railroad." It's a lot of fun - especially for suburbanites who don't go downtown much.
When we got there, we visited my dad's office. His whole office has moved down to the company's headquarters right in the heart of the loop next to the Chicago River. Here's a pic of the view from the office.After that, we went and saw the decorations at Marshall Field's....Oh, I mean Macy's. Every year they decorate the storefront windows with scenes from children's stories. In years past they have done stories like Pattington Bear, The Nutcracker, Pinocchio, and Harry Potter. This year, they did their own story about decorating Chicago for Christmas.
After that, we grabbed some lunch, checked out streets where scenes from the Dark Night were filmed, and headed over to Milenuim Park to see the Bean. Of course, it was all foggy and non-reflective because of the weather, but still fun. Then, we went over to Daley Plaza to see the HUGE Christmas tree. Here's our family in front of the tree.
The rest of the week, we did some shopping, played Wii (the family gift), and of course went out for some Chicago Dogs at Portillos. It was great. We had a lot of fun, but got to relax too. (To see more pics, take a look at my facebook album.) Merry Christmas Everyone!