Catching up

I'm sure most of you have seen Josh's homecoming video that went viral, and that landed us a trip to Chicago! The Steve Harvey Show invited us to come on. We hadn't ever watched it before, Josh didn't even know who he was! But there was no way we were going to turn down a free trip to Chicago, and the opportunity to be on national television!

 

 

And so began the LONG train ride

 

Thankfully the girls were free to walk around and there are no seat belts, much more laid back than an airplane! And there were a lot of open seats for the girls to spread out on.

This was after the train stopped, don't worry!

 

 

 

Mackenna found a great little sitting place under the vanity in our hotel bathroom!

 Our car wasn't coming to get us until 1:00 so we had all morning to kill. We walked in the frigid cold

 to explore a nearby mall called the Vertical Mall. The girls had fun going on all the escalators and elevators! It wasn't exactly a kid friendly mall, so we weren't there long.

Except for the Lego store...

 Then we finally got to the studio, where we waited....and waited...and waited for about 3 hours.

 Thankfully there was a T.V. and plenty of snacks.

Then it was finally time to get ready! Here is Bridget getting her hair done!

All ready for the camera!

Mackenna and I got to watch on a screen backstage. I was shoving Mackenna's face full of food to keep her quiet! Everyone was so worried about having a toddler backstage since they have a very strict noise policy!

As Steve was leaving the studio, we got to take a quick picture with him!

My favorite part of the whole experience was as we were leaving the studio, the audience members were being ushered out of the studio as well and as we walked by they were all gushing over Bridget saying "She's so cute!", "Look she has a baby sister!", "What a cute family!" and "Thank you for you service". It all made me a bit teary eyed! While Josh didn't actually serve in a military branch, all of the work he did there was for the military and he did it well!

 

After leaving the studio, we decided to try some Chicago-style deep dish pizza!

 

Bridget was very tired. It ended up not being the greatest idea to take kids, because it took 30 minutes to get our pizza out. So by the time our food actually came, the kids were done. So we boxed it up, and went back to the hotel!

 

 

While the trip was full of very cold temperatures, little sleep and lots of tantrums, I'm glad we went and it is definitely one that we will never forget!!