Chicago in the Fall

As it was Election Day, and we'd voted early, and the girls had no school, and our floors were getting a polishing, I decided to take the girls downtown to have some fun. I had to take them to the Starbuck's Roastery for some steamers and snacks.

There are only a handful of these in the world and while I'm sure most people are drawn to the specialty coffee selection, I'm just happy with the foam art they make in my hot chocolate. 

This is a view from the top floor down. It's just such a cool, hipster kind of place to go and everyone was really kind to the girls. 

Since there's currently no indoor dining, we had to take our treats outside to nosh on. We spotted this sign which I thought was pretty cool. 

The twelve year old did too.

The Disney store is always so much fun and today it was pretty quiet. All of downtown was- I'm sure a combination of pandemic shut downs, looting and riot aftermath and Election Day. 

For some reason, whenever I plan to take the girls on a fun day out, they kind of turn into monsters. They squabble and whine but this time they were really bad. I mean REALLY bad! They were fighting loudly enough for strangers to hear and I was getting more and more livid. I was ready to throw everyone back in the car and go home. The girls promised to turn it around and I decided if I could easily find a parking spot near Millennium Park, we'd do Take 2 on this day. The floors still needed time to dry but man, I was pretty fed up. When I was a kid we didn't do fun stuff like this because of money and logistics constraints. I would have been on my very, very best behavior, I'm sure and I was so mad at the girls for being so ungrateful. As luck would have it, I found an off road that had loads of parking. I took a breath and decided to give this another try.

The last time we went downtown, Millennium Park was barricaded off so we couldn't even walk around. I was so happy to see it was open again! Lots of trees were already completely barren but there were brilliantly fiery trees that were just too perfect a photo op to pass up. We ended up having an impromptu photo shoot.

First some of Liesel's individuals:

Ireland:

I'm not sure why, but I like this profile pic better than the previous full frontal shot.

That streak was just the sun streaming through the trees. It truly was beautiful!

Brigitta:

Of course she would laugh manically at the leaf!

Sydney:

Sydney didn't toss her leaves up very high so they kind of came right back down in a heap right on her head.

Of course I wasn't expecting to take so many pictures and I could just kick myself for not doing something fun with Sydney's hair, but the sun really makes her smooth skin glow so it turned out ok.

In a way that escaped tendril is kind of sweet!

All my girls!

I thought it might look cool if I dropped some leaves as if they were falling right that second. Turns out throwing stuff in a kid's face isn't the best idea for a photo- haha!

We headed over to Pritzker Pavilion where the grass was still green and cool. The girls kicked off their shoes to run and play.

Liesel showed off her scorpion.

She's getting pretty good at that move!

I actually recorded this walkover and cartwheel in slow motion but can't figure out how to keep it that way when it loads to the blog. I've watched this over and over. These girls blow me away with the things they can do!

One side effect of the intense family time during this pandemic is that these two have finally, FINALLY become the good friends I've always hoped they would be.

The only downside...

...is now sometimes they can kind of gang up and mean girl the other two.

Watch what you wish for.

Still, I love the coordinated cartwheels!

Given the rocky start, it ended up being a glorious day. Fall poured forth her golden glory in such a stunning display that we momentarily forgot about this troubled world and drank in the bliss. 

For me, this is the money shot. Gita is so happy and free and there's her mask loosely hanging from her fingers. The fall colors of those trees and an unusually empty Bean in the background. This is my favorite photo of the day.

We all needed this. Really needed it.

"Autumn... the year's last, loveliest smile."

~William Cullen Bryant