Craig and the other three girls dropped Maddie and me off at St. Louis’ Union Station early on Thursday morning. We’d heard good things about the Megabus from friends; the tickets were cheap, so that’s the option we chose. It was great all the way to Chicago. Coming home, however, will be a story for the post on Day 3.

Maddie wanted to sit in the front seat of the top deck of the bus, so that’s where we were the whole way to Chicago.

We didn’t have a lot of plans for Thursday other than simply getting to Chicago, so I checked into Navy Pier and sure enough they were doing something. They had a Winter Wonderland inside with lots of things to do – rides, ice skating, etc. We went. It was extremely crowded, so we chose not to buy the $12 wristbands for the rides (there were lines at every station, 30 minutes deep); instead, we just walked around and watched everyone else do it.

Then we walked by the Create-a-Cookie station.

For $2 they give you a sugar cookie and you take it to a table with squeeze bottles full of red, green, and white icing, as well as tubs of sugar sprinkles. Maddie made one.

We tried to walk around some more, but mostly saw the crowd.

We stared out the window at what looked to be a very cold Lake Michigan.

We then went to the Chicago Children’s Museum and got in free with our St. Louis Science Center membership. We sculpted.

We (okay, I) made fun of the man sitting next to us who was sculpting scary monsters in an attempt to traumatize small children at the Chicago Children’s Musuem.

We went to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. for dinner (Maddie is a shrimp fan).

We purchased the obligatory Navy Pier/Chicago sweatshirt.

We then walked back to our hotel. From there, we talked a lot about the upcoming years, what she can expect to happen to her as she develops and all that. We tried to go to sleep about 9:30, but had some neighbors having a party in the room next to us. I like to be a good neighbor and all, but an hour later I finally called the desk on them (I had to call twice before they sent someone up and it quieted down soon after that).

And that was Day 1 of our Chicago Adventure.