6:00 a.m
We decided we were hungry so we headed over to the bagel shop and both got a Utah Sunrise.
6:30 a.m.
There was time for a quick potty break before we were supposed to board, so we seized the opportunity! Plane bathrooms are tiny and shaky and not a very condusive enviroment for potty-ing. Ew.
6:34 a.m.
We arrived back at our terminal to find they had already boarded our section of the plane, so we hopped in line and got on.
6:55 a.m.
We were tucked snuggly in to our seats and snoring soundly on our way to Chicago.
8:17 a.m. (9:17 a.m. Chicago time)
We recorded this freaking amazing message for all of your viewing pleasures!
(I'm really sorry if you don't sign. Find your local interpreter and put them to work!)
10:15 a.m. (We are henceforth on Chicago time. (Until I tell you otherwise.))
We touched down at the Chicago Midway airport half an hour early! WOOHOO for us!
10:32 a.m.
We met our friend Alicia
Got in line to pick up our rental car.
1o:55 a.m.
Still in line to pick up our rental car.
11:02 a.m.
Finally got through the line and got the rental papers so we could hike our little selves upstairs to truebiz get into our rental car.
11:13 a.m.
Packed our things away in our cute blue not red (I'm sorry for the earlier misleading post) car and were on our way to the hotel.
11:42 a.m.
We arrived at our hotel well before check in time (like three hours), but because I tend to have a very good persuading face, I went in to the front office to see if the lady would let us check in that early. Low and behold, she was very nice and I must have been on top of my really great persuading face game that day (really she said it was just because our room had already been cleaned) she let us check in early. Thanks lady at the hotel check-in desk!
11:54 a.m.
After getting settled in our room, we pulled out the metra (not metro, it's feminine) schedule to find out what time the train will be by the station that our hotel was six blocks from. It turned out that the train was coming at 12:06 p.m. in just ten minutes! We thought for a split second that we might wait for the next train, but it wasn't going to come for another hour. We decided we could make a run for it and left in a hurry to see if we could catch it.
11:57 a.m.
Speedwalking towards the train. Three blocks up and then three blocks to the right.
12:00 p.m.
Still speedwalking towards the train. We can see the station.
12:04 p.m.
While speedwalking, my un-zipped bag falls open and everything tumbles out including my cell phone and driver's license!
12:04 and a half p.m.
Emily ran back down the sidewalk and picks it all up with the exception of a few lost lifesavers. My hero!
12:05 p.m.
We were now RUNNING towards the train!
12:06 p.m.
We made it to the train station with just a few seconds to spare and hop on board. Now let me just preface the rest of this blog by saying that this trip was a trip of firsts for me. I had never ridden a real live train before in my whole life. It was a wickedly fun time!
12:15 p.m.
The conductor guy (I don't know what they call them.) comes around and we have to buy our tickets on the train. No one else had any cash except me so I put up the green stuff. They started calling me piggy bank. :)
12:37 p.m.
The train arrives at Union Station in the heart of downtown Chicago. What a thrill! We rode some escalators up and just outside the doors of the station, this man stops us and gives us stickers that say, "I got my choo choo on!" Apparently it was national train day, and we got to be a part of it! Woo hoo!
12:38 p.m.
We begin what I am going to call "The Walk Of Death". We decided that since we were only there for a short time we could only hit really one good museum. Chicago is the city of museums and the are all kind of in the same vicinity called Millennium Park. We decided before we even got there that the Shed Aquarium was the place for us! I had never been to an aquarium (this was another big first) so I was ever so excited to see all of those big fish! Here are some of the highlights from "The Walk Of Death".
1:00 p.m.
We
continue on "The Walk Of Death". We were planning on walking down to Millenium Park and then take a bus over to the museum.
1:11 p.m.
We are still on "The Walk Of Death" but instead of hopping on the bus we keep seeing cool things to look at on our way to Shed Museum. We never did find where to get on that bus. We stopped by this giant fountain that was apparently in the opening of the TV show Married With Children. It was pretty wicked.
1:13 p.m.
I
got to scatte
r some real live pigeons. We don't have those in Utah.
1:35 p.m.
We arrive at
the Shed Aquarium and be
gin our big adventure 
seeing all the fish! I am t
hinki
ng that instead of giving you a 
blow by blow o
f our 
exci
tem
ent
inside
, I will j
ust 
po
st a picture blow by blow. I'll see 
you at the en
d! 
Enjoy!
6:01 p.m.
At this 
point we were all a little tired 
because we had been on "The Walk Of Death" and then at walked around the aqua
rium for like five hours. It was time to go because there were still a few other things we wanted to see before we were going to 
head out of town. W
e were just about to leave the aquarium when I saw a pair of elevators that lead down to what was called "The Reef". We decided to check it out and boy are
we glad we did! It was where all the sharks were! I can't believed we almost missed it! I
would ha
ve been ever so sad.
6:17 p.m.
I think all of us wanted a good picture with a shark and lucky for us they just swam around and around and around in circles, with ever lap coming right up to the window. We found a good spot to stand and wait for them to arrive. Well Alicia and Emily both managed to get really really great pictures of them with sharks.
I on the other hand got lots of pictures but none of them were really that good.
So then I was a sad camper. :(
6:49 p.m.
Enough was enough of our fun little tour of the great reef. We decided to call it for the day at the aquarium (not to mention that it would be closing in like 11 minutes).
7:02 p.m.
There were some huge globe scul
ptures outside one of the museums near the aquarium that looked pretty interesting, so we decided to go check them out. Emily and Alicia kept saying, "Embrace the solutions, not the globes!" I had no idea what the heck they were talking about so of course I wanted to have my picture taken embracing the globes. Apparently the globes were there to make a statement about how we need to combat pollution and make our planet a healthier, better place to live. Hence the embrace the solutions n
ot the globes mantra. I didn't get it. I do now. I apologize to the city of Chicago for embracing the globes when I shouldn't have. Here are some pictures of us clearly not embracing the globes. :)
7:31 p.m.
"The Walk Of
Death" was not an option for
me on our way back to see what Alicia called "The Bean". We hopped on a bus after a guy lied to us about how much it cost, and took a different route back to the heart of Millenium Park to see the bean
7:44 p.m.
We arrived at the bean after much grumbing about how much further we h
a
d to walk to get to a lame sculpture. I think here is the place I need to apologize about the grumbling because it was a pretty wicked little, or not so littl
e 
sculptu
re. Instea
d of describing it I think I will just post the pictures, but they don't really do it justice. It was really cool.
8:02 p.m.
The time was now right for a little sustenance. Because we were in Chicago the sustenance needed to be pizza. Deep-dish, real Chicago-style pizza. Both Alicia and I wanted to go to this 
pizza place called Giordano's. She had been there before and I had talked to people that had. Everyone said that was the place for real Chicago pizza. We weren't quite sure where it was so I used my handy-dandy ability to google the address from my phone. Well google, being ever helpful, gave us the address of a couple of different locations. We didn't exactly know where we were at so we just picked one of the places and started walking.
8:17 p.m.
And we kept walking.
8:27 p.m.
And we kept walking.
8:32 p.m.
We met these nice men who tried to point us in the other direction for a closer Giordano's but we wouldn't let them deter us from our goal. They told us it was closer, but we thanked them kindly and said we didn't want to backtrack so we were going to go on ahead the way we had planned. They told us it was only four blocks to our destination and boy was I happy to hear that news. However, we have to remember that I am from little old Provo, Utah where the city blocks are pretty little. Chicago blocks are not so little.
9: 01 p.m.
It didn't look like much from the outside but we hoped that the hour walk was worth the pizza. 
9:o4 p.m.
We probably ordered enough food for a small army, but we figured it was worth it because of all the calories we probably burned off on "The Walk Of Death".
9:23 p.m.
It is worth it. Oh so very worth it. Yummylicious-che
eseylicious-deliciousness. I am going to let the pictures speak for themselves.
10:40 p.m.
The last train out of the station left at this time and by golly we were on it! (After having backtracked back to the train station to finish out our "Walk Of Death".) We met some very friendly drunk people coming back from the Cubs game. It was very fun. I love new drunk friends. They are highly amusing.
11:00 p.m.
We arrive back at the station we so energetically had run to in the first place and end our day with a six block jaunt back to the hotel. It was super duper great!
12:02 p.m.
Falling into bed I could only dream of the wonderfullness that the next day would hold. :)
Sunday May 11 - WHAT A WICKED DAY!!!!!!!!!!!
8:31 a.m.
I woke up to my phone buzzing and the soft pitter-patter of raindrops outside the window. I looked out the same window and realized that it wasn't just a pitter-patter but it was a down-pour. Fun times! We all got ready and headed down to our very first breakfast of the trip. DIY waffles.
9:27 a.m.
DIY waffles. Here let me take a minute to explain that my dear friend Emily is kind of a hotel snob. I didn't do a super great job booking the hotels but the one thing I did do that she was adamant about was DIY waffles. This hotel had more along the lines of DIT (Do It Them) waffles because Emily went to put some batter into the machine and the girl working there kind of freaked out. Apparently they pay her to stand there and make waffles all morning. What a job! :)
9:43 a.m.
Our second vlog of the trip was documented. This time we got Alicia in the mix. :)
9:59 a.m.
We decided that we would venture downtown today in the car so after the play we could be quick about our turn around with the rental cars. (And let's be honest. One day of "The Walk Of Death" was quite enough for me let alone a "Walk Of Death" in the rain. NG!
10:37 a.m.
Downtown Chicago is kind of scary when you are driving and don't know where the heck you are going. There are extremely tall buildings so there isn't any sort of directionality to where you
think you should be. The other downside of that is because of the extremely tall buildings the GPS doesn't always get a signal so you are TOTALLY lost. Scary! Let me just give props to the pro driver Emily who got us to where we were going without even getting lost once! WOOT! We parked our cute little blue car in a parking garage like a block from the theater and then hopped in a taxi that would take us to Navy Pier. Another first for me! I had never been in a taxi. It was kind of a good time, a little awkward, but fun. :)
10:47 a.m.
Ten minutes and ten dollars later we arrived at Navy Pier. I
t is kind of like an indoor mall, but it is built on a pier. It was a pretty wicked place. We shopped for a while and made our way down to the end of the pier. Apparently past the mall part the have this little museum or something that they have exhibits in. While we were 
there the exhibit was a whole bunch of stained glass. It was very pretty. We didn't get lots and lots of time to linger because we wanted to get to the end of the pier to see it. Now just a little reminder, it had been rain
ing pretty much all day and by this point we were pretty far out into Lake 
Michigan. Rain+wind+middle-of-the-lake+flip flops=SCARY!
1:01 p.m.
Back in a taxi we went to move on to the very best part of our trip! 
WICKED! Oh my gosh 
I was so excited I could hardly stand it!
1:14 p.m.
Ford Oriental Theater. It was beautiful. The walls 
and the ceilings and the lobby were all so ornate and wonderful. We we
nt in a straight away bought Wicked apparel. There was no way I was 
going to go all the way to Chicago to see Wicked and not get a sweatshirt with the logo on it.
1:32 p.m.
Em and I were having our picture taken in the lobby when this older lady came up behind me and told me that she had flown in from 
Indiana that morning and accidentally left her cell phone at home. She hadn't had a chance to call her husband and let him know that she had arrived safely. I must look like an overly-pleasant person because she wanted to know if she could borrow my cell phone. I must look like the kind of person who would lend a cell phone out. I guess I am that kind of person because I just said, "Sure!" and han
ded her my cell phone and turned back to have my picture taken. :) I'm glad that she was a nice old lady because I got my phone back. She is the one wearing the blue shirt talking on the phone in our picture. :)
1:41 p.m.
I sat down to witness the wonderful event. Oh the flutter of my heart was too much. Emily got us tickets on the eighth row! We were so so so close. It was super exciting just sitting there looking at the curtain, which was no ordinary curtain. It was a giant map of the Land of Oz with the 
Emerald City right in the middle. (I am pretty sure we weren't supposed to take this picture, but alas, we did. :))
1:45 p.m.
I made friends with the lady sitting next to me who was there with all of her daughters for Mother's Day. She had seen the play before and she just re-affirmed that I should be sitting in that seat in Chicago. She told me it was the greatest thing ever, and I warned her that I might either: a) sing along, or b) cry. I just wanted to apologize in advance if I dripped a tear on her. I have been known to do that in the past.
2:00 p.m.
It started. I cried.
3:15 p.m.
Intermission. I cried some more. I also didn't breath through the whole first act. It was just that good! I do no think that words can convey how wonderful it was. It was half over and I wanted it to last
forever.
3:30 p.m.
The second act started. More crying. Somewhere in the middle of this act the song "For Good" was sung. I was a mess. I should have brought my tissues. The lady I had made friends with kept looking over at me and giving me a knowing smile. As though she had done the same thing her first time around. I am tearing up now just thinking about it. I will move on. The one thing I will say is that I am saving money every week in a 
Wicked Fund so I can see it once a week when it comes to Utah in May 2009. Anyone is welcome to join me.
4:30 p.m.
It ended. I cried harder than ever. It was the saddest thing in the whole world. The fact that it ended. I wanted it to go on and on and on and on forever. I love it. We took some really great pictures outside the theatre as well as some good ones of the Chicago Theatre sign. We are cute.
4:45 p.m.
Our precious time in Chicago had come to an end. We headed toward the airport to drop off the rental car and pick up the one without the $300 drop fee. (We saved a lot of money doing that.)
We got to the airport and into our new car. It was red! WOOHOO! I knew we would get a red one. We were on our way to beautiful Sandusky, Ohio and the thrilling Cedar Point Amusement Park.
7:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. Ohio time)
Emily has a sort of unhealthy love of Starbucks. We decided that we should definitely have a night time booster of yummylicious frapuccinos. Alas. It was closed. We cried a little, but we did get to use the bathroom so I guess it was worth it.
11:47 p.m. (We will be in Ohio time from here on out until we go back to SLC.)
We arrived at our hotel in Sandusky safe and sound and pretty much fell into bed. We were tired little souls.
Monday, May 12
9:00 a.m.
It was decided that we wouldn't worry about getting up super early on this day because the park didn't open until 10:00.
9:35 a.m.
DIY waffles for reals this time! And they were really truly DIY. It was wonderful. I do have to say though that the batter they made the DIT waffles out of was way better but it was still fun to be able to DIY. :)
10:02 a.m.
It looked like rain outside and the smarties that we are, neither Em nor I had broughten any sort of rain-repellent gear. We decided to hit up the Wal-Mart and find some, as well as some gloves so our little fingers did not freeze. While we were there I decided that I needed to buy some walking shoes. I had left mine at home and on our "Walk Of Death" my ankles were killing me because I was wearing shoes that had absolutely no arch support. They were very cute but not the right kind of shoes you should wear when on a "Walk Of Death". Anyway, I figured that we were going to be walking kind of a lot around the park because we were bound and determined to hit ever roller coaster there, so I decided new shoes would be just the thing to make my feet feel a little bit better.
10:34 a.m.
We were on our way! Our purchases had been made and we were heading to the best puke filled time of our lives! Cedar Point has some of the biggest roller coasters in the world. It was going to be great!
11:02 a.m.
We rolled into the parking lot of Cedar Point and I was in total awe of the massive size of the park. I grew up in little old Utah with Lagoon. Now for those of you who have never seen a roller coaster except for the big blue one at Lagoon (much like me), you have never actually seen a roller coster. These things were huge! We are talking 400 feet straight up! It was the best time of our lives!
7:00 p.m.
What a great day! Emily and I conquered all of the big coasters in the park. Some of them twice. :) I am happy to report that no one puked, but that I spent at least an hour of the time we were there in the bathroom. Cold+huge roller coaster=the serious need to pee.
7:23 p.m.
Em and I dropped Alica off at the hotel and ran to Wal-Mart to get our pictures from the day put on a CD.
8:07 p.m.
We decided to have dinner someplace that they don't have in Utah. We went to this restaurant called Max and Erma's. They have the best banana bread on earth. Just so you know. It was yum delicious.
9:02 p.m.
Em and I decided that a dip in the hot tub would be just what the doctor ordered for our sore walking-all-the-time muscles. Now let me interject here that while Emily requested DIY waffles in a hotel, it was not her only request. She also requested that there be an indoor pool, and then she didn't even get in it! Oh snap! I swam with the little kiddies all by myself and she looked on like my mommy from the hot tub. She even judged my handstands. It was super great!
10:02 p.m,
Bed time came a little earlier tonight. We were all pretty much beat from all the excitement.
Tuesday, May 13
8:47 a.m.
It was hard to wake up because today was to be the last day of the best trip of our lives. I cried a little as I woke up. I'm not kidding. We got ready and headed down to breakfast.
9:05 a.m.
DIY waffles are not so great the third day in a row. Still yummy, but getting kind of old. We needed to find a Starbucks stat!
10:25 a.m.
We checked out of the hotel and headed for Cleveland. We had done some homework the night before and decided that since we weren't going to be in the city for that long, we weren't going to hit up a museum or anything that would require tons of time. We found this cemetery online and decided that it would be just the thing to kill a couple of hours before we had to head to the airport.
11:25 a.m.
Cleveland was under construction. We made it through unscathed however due to Emily's mad driving skills.
11:37 a.m.
The cemetery was pretty rad. There was a chapel that was built with
Tiffany stained glass win
dows. Wicked! We also found out that this was the cemetery that Presi
dent Garfield as well as John D. 
Rockefeller are buried in. We didn't stop by Rockefeller's grave, but we couldn't help but notice President Garfield's monument. It was a building. A GIANT building. Like a four-story with a basement and apparently a ballroom (although this has been closed to the public). I ha
ve never been in a real-live cript before and this one was kind of creepy-
licious. I think seeing the caskets no
t buried is a little weird. It was a great time anyway, and from the top there was a great view of the Cleveland skyline.
1:00 p.m.
Starbucks was a must before we headed back to drop of our car and grab the shuttle to the airport.
2:02 p.m.
We went to the rental car drop-off site, got rid of our car and then hiked through the parking lot to catch the shuttle.
2:27 p.m.
Checking our bags was a big deal. I had purchased two new sweatshirts as well as a new pair of shoes plus some other stuff on our little trip so my bag now weighed well over the 50 pound limit. We had to do some shuffling (or I had to do some shuffling) around of things and I ended up putting stuff in Em's suitcase. She made fun of me all the way home because hers was only 30 pounds. My clothes are heavier I know it.
2:43 p.m.
Alicia lives in Pennsylvania now so she had driven to the Cleveland airport and then flown from there to Chicago. She bid us farewell as we went through the trauma of security and she went to hop in her car to drive home.
2:58 p.m.
Security, as it turned out, was not that traumatic. It always is a little annoying to be divested of your belongings and shoes, and this unnatural fear usually clutches at my heart when I walk through the metal detector, just praying that I didn't forget to take something off. You always hear those horror stories of innocent people being strip-searched and stuff like that. It scares me. I can't alway breath when I am walking through, but I was fine. :) It is the only part of flying I don't really like.
3:17 p.m.
Em and I walked around for a while, trying to waste some time. We got lunch (not-so-great Chinese food) and then just headed toward the terminal to await our plane.
4:15 p.m.
They started boarding our cute little one hour flight to Chicago, and we hopped on.
4:40 p.m.
We were off on our way to Illinios!
5:55 p.m. (4:55 p.m. Chicago time)
The Midway airport is an interesting one. Em and I did a little shopping and a little eating (we had this sandwich that had this yucky mustard on it, but she seemed to like it a lot) and a lot of waiting.
6:37 p.m. (Chicago time)
We were standing in line getting ready to board the plane when I started looking for the pod to get the headphones off of it so we would be able to watch a movie on my laptop with sounds. I realized all too quickly that the pod was not in my bag. I frantically called the hotel in Ohio to make sure I hadn't just left it in the hotel room, but alas, they didn't find it in there while they were cleaning. I decided that a full blow Meg-splosion would have been a little much for the situation so I just convinced myself that I had just left it in my suitcase, and calmed down a little. (Not an easy thing for me to do. Believe me. :))
6:51 p.m. (Chicago time)
While boarding the plane, we noticed that there were an awful lot of elderly people going home to Salt Lake with us. We sat down next to this lovely older lady that had been visiting her grandchildren back East.
7:10 p.m. (Chicago time)
We were supposed to take off at this time, but due to some bad weather we were still sitting on the runway ready to go at this time.
7:43 p.m.
We finally got to take off after waiting for about half an hour. I guess waiting half an hour is better than dying so I'm not going to complain too much. :)
8:58 p.m.
One of the flight attendants came around with some decks of complimentary cards. Luckily, we were sitting on like the fourth row so she didn't run out of them before she got to us. I think we got the last pack. Em and I played a couple of games of speed and then we talked the lady sitting next to us (who is our new best friend, although we can't remember her name) to playing hearts with us. I was pretty much the bomb-diggity-om and won like every round. WOOT!
9: 23 p.m.
I got up to get the candy that was in my bag in the overhead bin, and as I was moving back towards my seat, the three little old ladies sitting behind us (They played Bridge the whole flight! It was pretty gosh-darn wicked!) asked me what I was eating. I pretty much supplied all of the old people on my flight with chocolate. Gotta keep 'em happy!
9:42 p.m.
We vlogged for the very last time on our trip. I almost cried because it was so beautiful.
10:35 p.m.
We were supposed to be home by now, but of course we didn't leave when we were supposed to so we were still flying our little selves over the mountains.
10:57 p.m. (9:57 p.m. Salt Lake time)
It was a whirl-wind weekend, but totally worth the exhaustion! We found out that the ladies on the plane had been on a tulip tour of the midwest, and I vowed to myself that when I am old, I am going to go on every tulip tour there is.
10:04 p.m.
Shane came to pick us up, and we were really on our way home.
10:23 p.m.
The pod was not in any of my stuff. I cried a little (okay maybe a lot) until I found my Wicked sweatshirt.
I fell asleep holding it, dreaming of our wonderful vacation.
I swear I did!
