Nationals Day 5: A Trip to Chicago!

Today's day got to start a little later than our others and for that I was thankful!  A little longer to sleep!  Bryce had woke up a couple of times so that extra hour was needed.  Today Cohen had open solo and unfortunately her nerves got to her today and while she did a good job it was definitely not one of her best solos.  She had more drops than usual and that hurts at nationals.  But everyone has bad days and you have to pick up and move on.  I actually forgot to take a picture of her this morning so I will have to make up for that tomorrow!  I did want to tell this one little funny.  Cohen has met some new friends here in her age group and yesterday they were standing in line talking before their strut.  Cohen was talking and one of the girls asked Cohen why she talked like a "Texican".  Cohen or Amy told her we were from Georgia.  She was from New Hampshire so our southern accent must have sounded funny to her, or Texan!  This was also the same little girl who asked Cohen her name and when Cohen told her she said, "wow I won't forget that."  She was very sweet about it.  I thought that was pretty cute.
Since solo was her only event today we got to have a free afternoon and we chose to go to Chicago!  Chicago is about an hour and a half from South Bend so we thought that would be a fun trip while we were this close.   I had been to Chicago once with work and that was a few years ago so I was excited to get to see it again.  We really had going to Cloud Gate as number one on the agenda.  Cloud Gate, or "The Bean", is a huge mirrored sculpture that reflects everything and everyone.  You can walk in it and it is super cool to look up at the ceiling.  We took lots of pictures so I will apologize now for the picture overload!  I think we were all in picture heaven!

Our group selfie...Hubs couldn't quite look since he was navigating us through the city streets

Finding our reflection!

Someone else was amazed

Bryce's serious face 

We enjoyed our afternoon walking around Millennium Park, seeing Buckingham Fountain, and of course eating some yummy Chicago deep dish pizza!  We had such a fun day.  This trip has been filled with a lot of fun memories!  We have been seeing and doing things that we wouldn't have gotten the chance to do otherwise and we have been with fun people!  It just makes me all the more thankful that we had this opportunity.  I think the girls were amazed at the city.  They told us tonight that they liked the big buildings.  Kate told me she liked the bridge we rode over as we were coming into the city.  I think they enjoyed Cezann and Caroline the most!

Kate was going to nap like some of the other people we saw

Cohen's impersonation of the face sculpture

 The Crown Fountain was a neat one to see.  The water comes out of the mouth every few minutes.  It is a different face each time.  Very interesting!

Buckingham Fountain

We found some geese which Kate loved!

Little man in a Big city!

Giordano's...Our yummy dinner spot

Sometimes you have to change a diaper right there in the middle of it all

Cohen wanted a balloon from this man on the street so bad!  She and Kelly made a friend in the process!  He had to take a picture of Cohen, Kelly, and Bryce.   "My new friends" he said!