Christmas in Chicago

My parents are leaving early on Sunday morning.  We've got a packed schedule on Saturday with a basketball game and celebrating my Mom's birthday.  We couldn't figure out where to fit in going into downtown Chicago so I made an executive decision to keep Reese home from school yesterday so that we could all go.  I made the huge mistake of telling her on Tuesday night.  I asked her to please stay quiet about it because I didn't want her teacher to know that I was keeping her home for that reason.  She asked what she should do if someone asked.  I assured her that no one would ask if she was going to be absent but if, for some extremely odd reason they did, not to lie but to simply say that she was staying home to celebrate Christmas with her grandparents because they were leaving town in a couple of days. 

On Wednesday night I had a feeling that Reese had spilled the beans.  I knew she was no good at keeping things to herself.  I said "Reese, did you tell Mrs. Eischen what we're doing tomorrow" and she said "No Mom!  She asked if anyone was going to be absent next week so I raised my hand and said that I wasn't going to be gone next week but I am going to be absent tomorrow but my mom said not to tell you where we're going or what we're doing".  Uh.....

I ended up sending her teacher an email to tell her what we were doing to try to make up for it.  It was all worth it in the end because we had a really nice time downtown.  We went to the Christkindlemarket and to see the Macy's window displays (which were a huge disappointment this year.  Boo!).  Afterwards we headed over to Michigan Ave and had lunch and visited the American Girl store. 

My Mom loves driving around to see Christmas light displays so after the (2 hour) drive home we went on a hunt for lights.  We found some pretty spectacular displays.  It was a great end to a great day.