We finally arrived in Brazil and were so excited to make it to Lucas' parents house!  We stayed around the house for the most part and just enjoyed letting Lara play and get to see her grandparents!  We of course took about 3000 pictures of Lara and very few of anything else ;-)

Well it was that time again... We decided to make one more trip to Brazil with Lara before she turned 2 and we had to start paying full price for her plane ticket! ;-)  We were set to leave Nashville on 11-11-11.  Our flight was leaving around 8:00am, so we decided we would go up the night before and stay in a hotel, so we didn't have to get up ridiculously early to make our flight!  We found a great deal on a hotel that was right next to the airport that we could leave our car at essentially for free for 18 days!  Woohoo!  They even took us and picked us back up in the shuttle.  

Unfortunately none of us slept very well at the hotel, but oh well, at least we didn't have to get up at 4am! :-)

Our flight from Nashville to Chicago was uneventful, and Lara was not afraid of the plane at all.  I had a few fears that she might be upset, because for some reason she had been telling me that "airplanes scary" for the few weeks before we left!  

We had a 12 hour layover in Chicago (yes, we are crazy and planned it this way!)  We figured that as much as we travel it would be nice to see some new places along the way!  Once we arrived in Chicago, we headed off to find the Train that would take us to the city.  We found it pretty easily, but had a bit of a hard time trying to figure out which of the 30 machines we needed to use to buy our tickets... Apparently they do not sell the unlimited train/bus pass at the airport... makes no sense to me, but what can you do!  The ride to the city was supposed to take about an hour on the 'L'.  Lara was in desperate need of a nap, so I was a little concerned that she would be a booger :-)  But, in typical Lara-fashion, so was fabulous, loved the train and even took about a 35 minutes nap on the train!

My only other concern for the trip was potty training.  Lara had been doing great at home and only wearing diapers at night and nap time, so I didn't want to go back to diapers for traveling, but I was a little worried that with it being a new, crazy place that she would have more trouble.  Well, she did not have ONE.SINGLE.ACCIDENT the whole trip!  I was so proud! :-)

Once we got into Chicago, our first stop (after finding a place that we could buy the unlimited pass) was the Willis Tower (formerly known as the Sears Tower.)

I was a little put off by the price they were going to charge for us to go up an elevator, but we went for it anyways.  We had a great time, and it was definitely a fabulous view of the city!