most amazing day!!!!

Wow! The view from our hotel window this morning was amazing! The sun shimered gold and silver off the nearby buildings. Amazing beauty! Especially after the preceeding rainy days.

Kyra and I had breakfast with Ty, Sophia and Natalie and then the five of us walked to the Nike store for Ty to exchage a pair of tights that she'd purchased yesterday at the Expo. They were too big... She made the exchange, after chatting with a group of women runners from Louisianna that were contemplating purchasing tights, and then we parted ways... They were going to meet/pick up Ty's mother at the bus station, and we were going to continue shopping to buy Kyra's half-sister a souvenier.

When we walked out of the Nike store, we were pleasantly surprised by the silver statue/dancing man. He was spray painted silver, had a boom-box playing techno music, and only moved when tips were placed in his bucket. He was quite an amazing artist! We stood there watching him for about a half-hour. Now why don't beggars in Atlanta do something like this? I'd be much more inclined to give donations for a performance than to someone simply asking for money...

After watching him for a while, we walked towards the mall. We stopped in the Apple store, which was totally awesome! It had an extremely open floor space, with large white tables with a variety of Apple products attached/displayed for playing with. Kyra played with the iPod Touch, while I played with the Mac-book-pro nearby. I LOVE THIS SIMPLE OPEN FLOOR PLAN!!!

We continued walking through Chicago marveling at what a great city this is! Lots of huge, great stores with plenty of space/no over-crowding! We picked up a present at American Girl Store for Kyra's half-sister. Then we headed back towards the hotel. We stopped at Forever 21 to purchase a hat, scarf and gloves for Kyra (it's colder here than we planned for).

Then we met everyone at Pizzaria Uno for lunch, but then moved to Pizzaria Duo because the wait was shorter. Natalie is exhibiting the "brain sucker" straw while we waited for the most delicious pizza!

After a yummy lunch, we went to Navy Pier. We obviously picked the perfect time of year to come to Chicago because of the performing artist at Navy Pier! They were AMAZING! We enjoyed their interactions, had a blast on the Ferris Wheel, the girls had fun on the swings, and we all enjoyed the haunted house. It's hard for me to select photos to display from today at Navy Pier because there are so many great ones. I'm going to create a separate blog-post just for Navy Pier photos.

Ty and Lisa's husbands flew into town and met us at Navy Pier after we had finished enjoying the scenary/activities. We had an amazing dinner at a Japanese restaurant in Lisa's hotel this evening. We're getting nervous/excited about tomorrow's race...:-\