Friday Favorites!

Happy Friday, friends!!! Hope you all have had an amazing week! 

I'm linking up with Andrea from Mix and Match Family again today for another round of Friday Favorites. This one's going to be filled with a lot of pics from our mini vacation to CHICAGO!!!! *Insert a million heart eyes emojis here.* We left Tuesday morning and arrived around lunch time and got back around midnight last night. It was a quick trip but so needed! I had forgotten how much I absolutely love Chicago and miss being in a big city. (Louisville is not what I consider a big city -- ha!) And it was great to spend some quality time with my favorite family! :) I'm going to hit some highlights from our trip and tell you a little about my favorite things we did. 

One. 

Food. Let's just go ahead and get that out of the way! ;) We had some restaurant suggestions from a Chicagoan before we left, so we came prepared. For our first meal we had some amazing Chicago hot dogs from a place called Flub a Dub Chub's. You literally cannot get more "hole in the wall" than this. We almost missed it walking by because you have to go down into a basement to get there! It was an amazing way to break the ice though! We also ended up eating pizza one two THREE times. I'm not ashamed. We tried out Giordano's the first night, but our favorite was a friend-recommended placed called Lou Malnati's. It's definitely not a hole in the wall, but it was fabulous! We ate there twice and got their special deep dish Chicago style pizza. We had never had the true deep dish before (Pizza Hut is lying when they say "deep dish," we now know! Ha!) and we LOVED it. So good! 

Flub a Dub Chub's hot dogs!

   

Deep dish pizza at Giordano's

Hank and I at Lou Malnati's 

Two. 

THE AMERICAN GIRL PLACE. Cue happy tears, childhood memories, and emotion overload! I came to this store when I was a little girl and loved it, and I loved it again this time! In storage at my parent's house I have Molly, Felicity, a Today Girl, and a Bitty Baby. Molly and Felicity are both sadly now retired, but I almost want to put Grace on my Christmas list this year!! Lol! A French baker doll?? Yes please!! And who knew they had BITTY TWINS now?!!!! Oh my, the cuteness!!! 

Three. 

Our walk from Lincoln Park Zoo to Millennium Park! Okay, this is actually a love/hate relationship, but we experienced some great things along the way! We started at Lincoln Park Zoo (which is a great, FREE place to go if you're ever in Chicago!) and walked the whole 2.7 miles 47 trillion miles to see "The Bean" at Millennium Park. I really do think our map was wrong, because 2.7 miles seemed A LOT longer than it should have! But we got to walk through some beautiful neighborhoods, see the incredible Magnificent Mile, and take some selfies at The Bean (Cloud Gate)!

Daddy and Hank at the zoo!

Beautiful (and expensive) neighborhoods on the way from the zoo to the Bean!

Bridge near the Magnificent Mile

We made it to The Bean!

Mandatory selfie

Four.

Water! On Wednesday we walked a couple of miles down to Navy Pier, and we stopped at the Ohio Street Beach along the way! Sadly we didn't know this man-made beach existed or we would have brought swimsuits!! But nonetheless Hank got to experience his first "beach," and it was a fun way to cool off a little bit. Wednesday night we picked up our Groupon tickets for an architectural boat cruise on Lake Michigan, and this is easily my favorite thing we did in Chicago! We took off from Navy Pier and got to ride through the beautiful city while learning about all the buildings. Hank also got to experience his first boat ride, and he loved it when he wasn't asleep! :D 

Ohio Street Beach

Hank's first boat ride!

The beautiful Chicago skyline, up close and personal!

Five.

Family time! Not only did I get to spend a couple of quality days with my two favorite boys, but Thursday before we came home, we also got to see my sister and sweet nephew, Eli! They live in Wisconsin, so they drove an hour and a half to spend part of the day with us before we had to head back to Louisville. 

Told you there were going to be a lot of pictures!!! :D I'm so glad to have been able to spend a few refreshing days with some of my favorites, doing some of my favorite old and new things! I hope you guys have a wonderful weekend! :)