On Jessica’s last day visiting us we hung around the neighborhood all day. We probably walked a few miles plus played in two different parks. I was so tired that night. .. and so was Jess. She slept the whole way when I drove her home!

In the morning we visited Palmer Square. It has a nice play area that is really new and we’ve visited it before, but it is geared towards younger kids. Still, Jess had fun on this spin apparatus. Especially when I spun her and she really got going. She couldn’t help but scream “AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH TOO FAST, TOO FAST!!!!!!!,” which was amazing compared to the quiet girl who had arrived at our house a few days before.

Later on we walked up Milwaukee Avenue to the Logan Square Farmers Market. Jess got a nasty case of hiccups so I got her a strawberry lemonade from the Vietnamese stand.

We walked around the market a bit, but all I really needed to buy were tomatoes. Jess had fun looking at all the dogs that everyone brought.

The Milwaukee Avenue Arts Festival was going on that weekend so up by Logan Square they had a bunch of booths set up. There was also a stage and when we went by the Chicago ballet was doing a performance.

I thought Jess would be really into the performance, but she didn’t really care. She did sit down and watch one dance though.

We walked around some of the booths that were set up on the square and Jess wanted to get our picture drawn by one of the artists there. It was pretty cheap, so I said we could.

What do you think? Does it look like us?

I was asking Jess what she wanted for lunch, since it was getting to be about that time. I was suggesting pizza, thinking we could go to one of the new pizza places in the neighborhood. I also suggested spaghetti, burgers, chicken fingers, tator tots, tacos, etc. I asked what her favorite food was and tried to figure out what she’d like. In the middle of all this she interrupted me and said she would like to go to Subway. Wow. Eat fresh! I hadn’t even suggested or thought of that. Later on my brother said they never go there, which is maybe why it intrigued her so much. There’s a Subway nearby our house so maybe she saw it while we were walking around and decided she’d like to try it. I wasn’t pumped about Subway, but it was Jess’s choice. We ended up getting sandwiches and taking them to Haas Park, so that actually worked out good.

Haas Park is a park on Fullerton that I’ve gone by a million times but have never been to. The play area is relatively new and is in really great condition and the landscaping is pretty nice. The only downside is that the trees are too young to provide any shade really, so the play lot is in full sun, making some of the equipment too hot to use. There was a sprinkler and we did run through that, even though we hadn’t brought our bathing suits. It was refreshing.

We ate our lunch and played at the park until we literally could not any more. See, Jess loves the monkey bars and the rings and went on them so much that her entire palms were red and blistered. If you look close at the photo above you can see the red marks forming. Crazy. Jess said she’s done this before. A lot. Gone on the monkey bars so much her hands blister. She told me sometimes she still keeps going even though her hands hurt so bad she’s almost crying.

When we got home I put some Bactine on her hands and some Neosporine ointment on the blister parts and then tried to bandage it up. It’s really hard to bandage the palms of your hands though. We were done playing, though, and Jess really just had to sit in the car while I drove her home, so hopefully it helped her hands a bit.

So, that was our whole weekend. I’m glad Jess came down to visit and that she opened up a bit, at least to me, if not to Dallas. Makes me think we should have done it sooner, but I’m sure she’ll be back next year!

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