Snow in Chicago

We left for Chicago on Thursday to enjoy Northwestern Mutual's central regional meeting along with catching up with my sister, Cheryl, and our friends, John and Linda.  As per usual for the regional meeting in Chicago it had to snow and be bitterly cold.  But it was a great trip, except for both of us almost wiping out while running the path by the lake from a well disguised sheet of ice - hidden under the new snow.  While in Chicago we got to enjoy dinner with my sister at Ralph Lauren's restaurant (yes he has restaurants as well as clothes) on Thursday.  We then found time on Friday for a great lunch with Cheryl at Wolfgang Puck's eatery, at the University of Chicago overlooking the Chicago river, followed by a visit to the Dreihouse museum.

The Dreihouse museum is a restored mansion that was built in the early 1900's and is truly a spectacular place.  It is about 25,000 sq. ft and decorated with elaborate marble and woodwork.  Well worth a visit once you have run through all the standard Chicago museums.  John and Linda had recommended a visit and Cheryl had been wanting to go there for a while.  The only thing missing, I thought, was some photos or descriptions of what the surrounding neighborhood looked like when it was built and more information on the Nickerson family who built it.  Just would have been interesting to put it into context.

Saturday after the morning meetings were done, we were picked up by John and Linda and then spent a fun day catching up with all the family events and discussing everyone's vacation plans for the year.  Dinner was an adventure that ultimately culminated in take-out pizza, after 60-80 minute wait for a table at another restaurant that we just eventually gave up on, but since it was Chicago style, thick crust pizza with great company it was worth the wait.  We finished the evening with a rousing game of Scattegories in which the team of Jo and Eric emerged victorious (mostly because of Jo I might add).  Sunday morning, Linda treated everyone to a wonderful brunch with monkey bread and a frittata.  While everyone is trying to eat healthier, the monkey bread was, by far, the overwhelming hit.  Then it was time to get back downtown to catch our Amtrak train to home before the ice storm hit. 

By the time we got home, we were both exhausted and spent the afternoon catching up on our accumulated newspapers and rest.  Monday night we joined a volleyball league after almost 15 years away from the sport.  Our lack of doing any sport requiring coordination definitely showed as we were both incredibly rusty even after all those years we used to play volleyball.  It also didn't help that we are both a lot slower than the last time we played which repeatedly made us a step or two late for plays we used to make routinely.  And as is usual, we discovered muscles we hadn't been using in our other activities, so we have been incredibly sore for the last two days.  That said, it was fun to get out to play again and it seems like a great group of people that are playing.  Might make some new friends.