Max in the Big City

Labor Day weekend gave us an opportunity to visit my family in the Chicago area.  We had mentioned this trip to Max a couple weeks ago and he’s been excited to see Chicago.  I was a little worried about the long drive (about 10 hours) when Max said he hadn’t been in a car for more than 6 hours.

We picked up Max and our son early from school on Friday and left around 1:00.  It was a very long drive, especially since I took a wrong turn in the middle of Illinois and added about 50 minutes to our drive.  We arrived at my parents’ house just before midnight. 

Saturday morning was spent hanging around the house.  My dad, husband, son (Dylan) and Max played a couple of games of Ladder-ball.  Then we headed off to Arlington Park Racecourse for an afternoon of horse racing.  My dad explained how to read the race program and horse stats to Max and Dylan.   We had agreed we would give each boy $2 per race to put on their horse, and they would keep the winnings at the end of the day.  Max started out with the strategy of picking a horse to Win.  Dylan started with the strategy of betting on the long-shots.  The both quickly changed their strategies to picking horses with good odds to Place or Show.  Max tried cheese fries for the first time during lunch at the track.

Before the last race, we cashed in their winnings and gave them the option to use those winnings to bet more on the last race or walk away.  Max decided to add another $5 to his bet.  Dylan decided to use $2 to bet on a second horse.  During the post parade, Max saw that his horse was gray.  My husband teased him that a gray color meant the horse was old.  During the last stretch of the race, Max was yelling that his horse was winning and went nuts when a gray horse crossed the finish line first.  But, alas, it was a different gray horse.  Easy come, easy go, right?!  In the end, Max came out with a loss overall, and Dylan had a few bucks “profit”.  Max’s lesson learned: The best way to earn money is to work hard for it.  Dylan’s (9-year-old) lesson learned: I can come out ahead if I bed Mom and Dad’s money.  Hmmm….we need to work on that one.

That evening we took Max out for some Chicago-style hot dogs.  He was surprised at the HUGE serving of fries that came with them.  Somehow he managed to finish two fully-loaded dogs, the big bag of fries, and some of the cheese off of Dylan’s pizza.  He even tried Mountain Dew for the first time.

On Sunday we drove up to Milwaukee, WI to visit my sister in her new house.  We had lunch at Cracker Barrel and talked Max into eating breakfast food for lunch.  Dylan also taught him how to play checkers there.  We then drove to the subway station to take the train to downtown Chicago.  When we walked up the stairs to street level in the city, Max’s eyes turned huge.  He started snapping photos of the buildings around us.  He said he had never been in a city with skyscrapers.  Our plan was to take him to the top of the Sears Tower, but it was a 2-1/2 hour wait, so we opted to skip it.  Then we took a cab over to Navy Pier, during which Pete, our cab driver from Greece, gave Max and Dylan all kinds of advice about life.

Navy Pier was extremely crowded and it was difficult to get around.  We planned to go on the big ferris wheel so Max could get some pictures of the city skyline, but the line was long and Max preferred not to wait.  My husband suggested we walk along the lakeshore so Max could take pictures.  That turned out to be the perfect suggestion.  We walked back to Millenium Park and found the Cloud structure, which was pretty neat as it reflects the skyline from all angles.  Even though we spent only a few hours in the city, Max absolutely loved it.  That evening we enjoyed some Chicago pizza at Gino’s East.