Chicago Trip, Day 2

We checked out of our hotel in St. Louis early in the morning, ate breakfast at the Waffle House once again, and got on the road and headed to Champagne, Illinois to visit the University of Illinois, Dada's alma mater.

Luckily it was much cooler and breezier in Champagne than it was in St. Louis.  We ate delicious Indian food for lunch, something I have been craving for a long, long time.  After lunch, we headed over to the U of I campus and let the kids run around for a while so that they could expend some pent up energy.

Here's Dada and the kids posing in front of the Alma Mater statue on campus.

Some shots of the kids on the gorgeous quad.  Stella and Des ran from one end of the quad to the other and back.

 

This is one of my recent favorite picture of Stella, simply because we were able to capture her genuine smile rather than the goofy faces she likes to make when being photographed.

Des, of course, found a stick to play with while walking on the quad.

After the kids were thoroughly worn out, we got back on the road and headed to Chicago.  While on the road, I managed to capture a picture of...

Mr. Cool and Serious

 ...and Mr. Not-So-Serious

We got to Chicago by 5 pm, but didn't get to the townhouse we were renting for the week until 6:30 pm due to all of the traffic.  As soon as we got to the townhouse, the kids immediately started playing with each other.  Stella and Des were so, so happy to see and play with their cousins.

Here is a group shot of all of the first and second cousins.  From L to R: Ian, Eli, Stella, Zoe, Des, Tessa, Eva, and Drew.  (Tessa and Drew are Stella and Desmond's second cousins who live an hour outside of Chicago, so they came to visit us on our first day.)

At one point, Papa put Desmond in a duffel bag and was carrying him around the house, and Des just thought that was the funniest thing ever.

After a very long day, the kids went to bed all together in one bedroom.  The Rankin 4 slept in one bed and Stella and Des slept in another bed together.  We didn't know how that was going to work out, especially since Des has never slept anywhere but in his crib or with his Dada in hotel rooms, but to our surprise, it worked out just fine.  This bodes well for putting Stella and Des together in one room in order to make sure that the new baby will have a dedicated room all to his/herself.