James Russell Clark

James Russell Clark

was born on

Monday, July 1st 2013

at 1:49pm

7lbs 14oz 20in

This little munchkin made a rapid delivery into this world.

He is here and we love him to pieces!

I've got about 500 more photos....so stay tuned! :)

Chicago!

The first week of November Matt had a week of vacation. It just so happened that Matt's dad had a conference in Chicago during that time, so we made a little trip of it! As always, it was packed with lots of adventures and fun! Doug and Katie only live about 4 hours away, so they were able to meet up with us for a couple of days too.

We visited the Aquarium there. Which is HUGE and really amazing. I highly recommend it.

 Then we took a lovely little river cruise through the city. It was an architecture cruise, so it was fun to see/learn about so many of the buildings. It was FREEZING though.

 Devin is such a ham.

 We really loved (and were a little jealous) how downtown Chicago built their city right along the lakeside. It is so much prettier than Cleveland. 

 These shorter buildings were the original lakefront downtown back when Matt's grandpa lived here long ago (during the 20's-30's). It was neat to see the little strip and now all the enormous buildings that surround them.

 And we had to see the Bean! It was pretty cool.

The boys were especially amused by the bean, it was so funny.

 Matt's Grandpa Clark moved to Chicago during the 20's to go to Northwestern University Medical School. After med school he did a residency at Cook County Hospital and then later opened his own practice.
The building on the left with the flag was the same medical school that his Grandpa attended in 1926. It really is such a beautiful campus in the city. 

Sunday afternoon we spent mapping out different locations where Grandpa worked/lived. It was especially fun for Matt and I to see because we spent about 2 years working on and piecing together his autobiography. And another reason why it was fun to see, was because Grandpa Clark was a Family Doc, Matt's Dad is a Family Doc and now Matt is a Doctor of Ob/Gyn (which they all did in their practices too). 

And Doug, Matt's little brother in the pic, is currently in school training to be a Dr. of Optometry. 

Then we drove out to Evanston, a suburb of Chicago. Grandpa Clark built this house in 1940. It was fun to see that the exterior hasn't really changed at all (I just looked up the photo and it really hasn't!).

Matt's dad actually went to the door to talk to the owner. They said they were changing it soon, so we're glad we saw it before renovations happened.

Last stop was his office on Argyle Street. It definitely is not in the nicest part of town now, but I'm sure back in the 30's-40's it was much nicer. He said that he paid $17.50 per month for rent for his office space. 

Later Doug and Katie left and we had a couple more days to spend with Anne and Rob. We spent sometime at Navy Pier. They had a few dinky shops, but a really great children's museum. 

Seriously, this place was huge and how cute is this...a pretend fire that teaches kids how to get out of the house?

Dev is my "all-boy" kinda boy (not that Luke is girly or anything). He's just into the typical boys stuff, like trucks, trains, cars and animals. Luke was always more into building things, solving puzzles, reading books...that kind of stuff. It's been really fun to see Devin get excited over tractors and things like that.

They had this fun building section where they spent a good 15-20 minutes building a skyscraper. And as soon as it was complete, Dev pushed it over. But it survived! So they must have done something right.

Theirs is the building with the big L.

They had this adorable water works section too.

And of course the grocery store, cars, buses, nature stuff...tons and tons of things to do!

We also spent one day walking miles and miles and miles in the freezing rain (sounds fun right?). We walked down Michigan Ave to see lots of big beautiful shops like Bloomingdales. Thankfully we were prepared and had our BOB stroller (which is a tank) with our rain guard and umbrellas...so it actually wasn't an unpleasant trip. It was fun to spend time in the city!

We got to work out in the hotel gym, and swim almost every night. It really was such a fun trip and a nice break from work! Did I mention that I drove the entire way there, 6 ours?! Yeah...I'm awesome.

Thanks G&G Clark for spending time with us and taking us to so many fun places!!!