My mom’s visit

My mom was in the town for the past few days, and, as usual, we had a blast! I was excited for her to come because I used her visit to officially begin touring the city of Chicago. We started out on Thursday by going to the Field Museum to visit the King Tut exhibit which is on a two year U.S. tour right now. After the museum, we walked down towards North Michigan Avenue, hung out around there a little bit, and then stopped over at the Art Institute. Thanks to Ford Motor Company, entry to the Art Institute is free on Thursday and Friday nights, so we saved a few bucks there.

Friday was pretty low key. We went to see Little Miss Sunshine, walked over the Navy Pier for a little bit, then went back towards downtown to have lunch at Maggiano’s. After lunch, we headed over to Daley Building (I think that’s the building we went to) to see a huge Pueblo Picasso metal structure. That evening, my mom decided to stay in to rest for the next days’ activities.

Saturday was the day my mom was waiting for. It was the 77th annual Bud Billiken parade. This parade was founded to support education and Chicago public schools. It is held the second Saturday in August… just before school starts. And I’ll tell you what, it really does promote education. My favorite float was presented by Washington Mutual bank. Their entrant consisted of a motorized float with huge books of different subjects stacked on top of each other. Subjects included ‘Reading’, ‘Writing’, and my favorite ‘Mithology’. In addition to floats, the parade had a few celebrities, including Barak Obama, Marquis Houston, and the Chi-Lites. The parade crowd proved to be amusing as well. We saw hoochie mamas, lost kids, and people offering to take pictures of families with a Polaroid and selling them for $1.

After the parade, we went back to my place, picked up my car, and headed over to Ikea. For those of you not from Raleigh, the ability to say “Hey, I think I’ll go to Ikea today” is a big deal. You can’t really do that in Raleigh. The closest Ikea is in Maryland, which, for me, was at least a four hour drive. Anyway, we arrived at the huge blue and yellow building, which looks like all other Ikea’s I have seen, and shopped for about two hours. I ended up with three book shelves and a few other odds and ends. Now that my bookshelves are up, I can begin taking pictures of my apartment and posting them here for you all to see.

Sunday, which was yesterday, was my mom’s last day in town. We went to brunch, and then hung out in my apartment until we had to leave for the airport. Overall, we had a fun time, and I’ll miss her until I see her again.