Chicago

We all went to Chicago for four days so Melissa could attend a teaching conference. For the first time since Melissa's been teaching, we actually got to stay at the hotel in which the conference was held. Boy, was that nice! The conference hotel was just 5 or 6 blocks from Navy Pier right on the water. Chicago has a Children's Museum at Navy Pier so Sheinah got to go play everyday while we were there. Since Melissa does best in the morning, that is usually when we took Sheinah down to the pier as Melissa had enough energy to make the walk there and back. Check out snapfish for the full repertoire of pictures. Travis got a new, professional grade camera as he's been contracted to shoot the student portraits at the college so he took a whole bunch of pictures.

As many of you know, Travis traveled with a woman's choir while he was in college. One of the women from the choir, Rosie, lives in Chicago so we connected with them one night to go out for dinner. We decided to go to Cheesecake Factory (Melissa's favorite restaurant). It was about 12 blocks away on the "Miracle Mile" where parking is virtually non-existent so we decided to hoof it. For Melissa, this meant borrowing a wheelchair from the hotel and Travis pushing her to the restaurant. Sheinah caught a ride in the stroller with Rosie's little girl so the only Bumgardner who got any exercise was Travis. Surprisingly, Travis didn't get any pictures of Melissa in the wheelchair. Travis snapped a bunch of pictures of the girls in the stroller, but little Selah did not want to smile at him. After about 20 pictures, he finally got this precious grin.

We had a great time with Rosie, her husband Jose, and her daughter Selah. While we were walking down to the restaurant, we noticed that many stores had decorated mannequins in the planter in front of the store. There were all sorts of oddly dressed mannequins, but the one Travis liked the most (and took a picture of) was the coke girl. As lovely as this picture is, the best story of the night happened when Rosie left to change Selah's diaper. Melissa happened to take Sheinah to the bathroom at the same time so just the guys were left at the table. Somehow, they managed to let the waiter take away Rosie's plate even though she hadn't hardly eaten her dinner yet. When Rosie came back, she wasn't exactly happy with Jose. The story has a happy ending though...we just told the waiter what happened and the manager replaced Rosie's meal...just one of the many benefits of eating at a nice restaurant!