This is all the adventure he needs right now, throwing rocks in the pond in the park located adjacent to our apartment building.

You may have noticed we haven’t done a whole lot in Chicago, in terms of experiencing the nightlife or seeing the sights or eating the terrific food (we’ll get to that last one eventually, we’ve got to save save save before we can get there though). I wanted to change this, and so I set some goals when making my 101 in 1001 list that would get us out of the house and into the city. This included an architectural boat tour, a visit to Millennium park, and some museums.

In terms of opportune time to do these family trips, this past month was it. That Husband isn’t working or going to school right now, so we could do everything mid-week in the middle of the day when the crowds would be smaller. The weather is nice, T1 is older and just starting to appreciate things, and we’d create some fun family memories while taking lots of pictures and blogging about all of it.

As I sat down to research all of this, the architectural boat tour was immediately out. $25 per person? No way are we paying that much to ride around on a boat and listen to a tour guide! Especially since some of the tours I looked up don’t even have discounts for kids. That’s just not something we are interested in doing. I was bummed to realize that I wasn’t going to be able to cross that item off my 101 in 1001 list, but otherwise we weren’t too sad about it.

After that I decided we were going to do 5 outings over 2 weeks, which would be Millenium park, the zoo, two museums, and a trip to one highly rated/discussed pizza place. I was plotting maps and looking up times and costs and I realized…

I didn’t actually want to do any of this. I turned to TH and asked him what he thought.

“Well, I was really just doing this because you said it was important to you.“

And you know what? It’s not really that important to me either. I was going through all this work, and feeling stressed, (actually kind of dreading it), because I felt like everyone on the internet was telling me I was living my life wrong.

Ha!

How silly of me, and now that I’m aware of my folly, I hope to save myself some time spent stressing by not getting caught in that trap again.

I don’t have to like Chicago, and I don’t have to get out and experience it if I don’t want to. We’ve realized that we just aren’t Chicago people, and I highly doubt that devoting half a day to visiting a museum is going to change our minds. The cost of living is crazy high, I want a washer-dryer, I like the farmer’s market options/selection better in Dallas, I want a backyard for T1 to play in, and I was miserable during the winter because TH was miserable.

We like staying home and working on our projects that are meaningful and important to us. We like having friends over for dinner, and taking T1 to the park right next to our apartment, and snuggling up on the couch with a big bowl of popcorn while we watch a Harry Potter movie. That’s us.

This doesn’t mean we won’t ever do all of those things, but we’re going to let it happen organically instead of forcing it because it’s on a list. As T1 gets older, things will change and we’ll get out and do more because it will means something to him. For right now though, I’m going to keep popping those bowls of popcorn for movie night at-home with That Husband on the couch right next to me. On Wednesday and Saturday nights during the summer we’ll look out the window and watch the fireworks over Navy Pier, not because someone else said we should, but because it just feels right.

 

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