Anyway, this morning we headed out to take the El down to Roosevelt to try the new Target. Now, they had lots of snowbards in various configurations, but nothing that one would want to strap a 4 and 9 year old onto. This had been our "last best hope" for finding anything "designed for the task", and #2 was being a little shit about the entire process. We poked around looking for something that might function as a sled, and ended up finding these plastic storage things which were intended to put away Xmas wreaths (fortunately, on clearance). They were more-or-less round, and in the 18-24" inch range, so we figured the lids might do. We bought two and headed off to the Museum Campus.
Unfortunately, The Girls were not cooperating with the "let's go from point A to point B" concept, and were taking forever flopping through the knee-to-waist-high (on them) snow rather than the reasonably shovelled walks. By the time we were 3/4 of the way over to the intended hills, Daughter #2 was in full melt-down mode, not helped by being very cold due to having outright refused to have been dressed in optimal snow gear when we were trying to get out of the house. Her discomfort was amplified by The Wife's typical "devil take the hindmost" style of leaving us behind ... I swear, she's going to lose the kids some day because she will not wait up for them, and #2 and I found ourselves 2-3 blocks behind (not an uncommon thing when she's in "conflict mode"). So, by the time #2 and I got to the hills in front of the Field Museum, #2 was in tears, crying "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" and unable to forge her way through the deep snow to where #1 and her mom were trying to use the storage things to sled down the hill.
It eventually became clear even to The Wife that #2 was beyond being uncooperative and deeply into being not happy. #2 and I had worked our way up the somewhat-shovelled walk and to the upper reaches of the hill in front of the museum, where it became pretty plain (due to the large banks of plowed snow), that we were unlikely to find our way down to them, so #1 and The Wife met us up there. We opted (thank the Gods for museum memberships) to duck into the Field to warm up and get a hot chocolate or something. Well, although she was relieved to be inside, #2 was clearly not going to be a willing participant in anything that was not actual sledding on an actual sled on a sled-friendly hill, and preferably in warm, dry sledding-appropriate clothes. The Wife suggested that she'd just go home with #2, but hadn't brought any money, so we scraped up what cash we had (I was pretty sure The Wife was going to take a cab), and they headed out. The Wife did not think about the fact that she didn't have her keys either (which meant we got charged $25 by the building to have somebody let them in when they got here), but that's another issue (note ... in my universe neither the cab nor the lock-out charge would have happened ... hell, I could finance a whole set of hobbies for the cash The Wife pisses off by not thinking through these things in advance!).
Anyway, this left Daughter #1 and me to our own devices at the Field Museum, not exactly how I'd envisioned spending the NFL Conference Championships afternoon, but at least we were out of the snow. Still being in the "hot chocolate" plan residue, #1 and I headed over to the Corner Bakery restaurant in the museum. However, when we got there we saw soup, and thought that would be a plan, then we saw a kids meal, and #1 thought that would be better yet, and so we ended up without any hot chocolate, but with lunch (I had soup in a bread bowl ... just about the messiest thing to try to finish known to Western cuisine!).
So, after doing the Machu Picchu exhibit, #1 wanted to see the Egyptian Tomb thing, and we proceeded through that with my being equally irritating doing a rambling data-dump spew from my many years of studying that stuff. They have some cool things in that exhibit, especialy these little bitty dioramas of the mumification workshops! By the time we got done with that I was beat and pretty much just wanted to hit the gift shop and then head home, but #1 wanted to do the "underground adventure" (where you "get shrunk down" to a half-inch size and wander through this tunnel with giant bugs, etc.), so we headed off for that. In the "lab" part once you're out of the bug part she plopped herself down at a computer thing, and I got to snag about a 15 minute nap! We eventually ended up at the gift shop (I was hoping to find some cool thing for The Wife's valentines' gifty, but nothing seemed right), and I managed to get out of there spending $2 on a couple of little dinosaur flyers.
We lucked out in getting the free trolly back to the El about 3 mintues after we left the museum. I got home in time to see the last few mintues of the Eagles/Falcons game and then got to "watch" (OK, so I slept through the first half!) the Patriots/Steelers. What a day!
