Saturday in Chicago with Stephanie


Stephanie enjoying some hot Asian buns at Wow Bao.


We almost dropped!


Welcome to the Briar Street Theatre. Have a fruit rollup.

Last weekend Stephanie came to Chicago for a visit. I wasn’t sure what a 16-year-old would be interested in doing, but then I realized. .. duh. . shopping! We spent the day on Michigan Avenue. We hit H&M first because Steph had some money leftover on a gift card that I gave her for her birthday. After that we went to Wow Bao for lunch where we split a thai curry chicken bowl, 5 different flavors of bao, and hibiscus tea and lemonade. Wow Bao is in Water Tower Place and we spent about the next million hours in that mall going from store to store, before heading back out onto Michigan Avenue. We hit up a few more stores and then had a smoothie break at The Shops at North BridgeWhispers Coffee and Tea. And then we cabbed it home.

We rested for a bit at home because we had a big night coming up. We were going to see Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre. I took mom to see this show way back in 2007 and she loved it. I thought Steph would like it too.. and luckily she did. She laughed like crazy and was super into it. I’m so happy she had a great time.

What a fun day hanging out with Steph. Talks of high school, grades, drivers ed, jobs, and college, such a teenager now!

By the way, this is Steph’s 6th visit to Chicago. Check out previous visits:

2011: Trapeze School, Summer Sessions, Manicures
2010: Segway Tour, Tour de Fat, Summer Sessions, Skate Park
2009: Adler Planetarium, Cirque, Navy Pier
2008: Sears Tower, Millennium Park, Art Institute, Retro on Roscoe
2006: Shedd Aquarium

Blue Man Group With Mom

2007_01_briar_street_theater.jpg
Briar Street Theater, Boystown, Chicago

2007_01_blue_man.jpg
Rachelle, Blue Man, Mom

Every year my mom comes down and we have dinner and go see some sort of show. I usually treat the show tickets for her birthday and she usually gets dinner.. just because that’s what moms do? This year was delayed a month or so just because our schedules weren’t matching up. There weren’t a ton of “big” shows that were playing that we wanted to see, so we opted for Blue Man Group. Neither of us had ever seen it. I thought it was fun. It reminded me of Stomp a lot (I saw it twice) .. the style of it and the small theater.

Last year and the year before we saw Wicked and Mama Mia. When I lived in Wisconsin we did sort of the same thing, without the stay overnight part, and went to a Lorie Line concert and saw Riverdance.

2007_01_kitschn_waffles.jpg
Belgian Waffles, Kitsch’n, Roscoe Village, Chicago

The next day we went out for brunch at Kitsch’n . The Belgian waffles were plated in a way that reminded me of summer.. or maybe just Hawaii with the flower. Then we went shopping all day.