The Kick-Off

While no doubt there have been many folks watching football this past weekend (ugh, Bears), this is about kicking off the Christmas Season (yea, Christmas!). We walked ourselves silly on Saturday, but it was so much fun to visit the packed downtown locations of Daley Plaza and Lincoln Park Zoo it was well worth it.

It was a first to go to the Christkindlemarket at the Daley Plaza. Bonnie Hunt was just there this past Wednesday for the official tree-lighting celebration and the installment of the first-ever single tree since 1955 - previously the large tree was composed of many trees posing as one tree. Thank you, Weivoda Family from Palos Hills, for donating this lovely 55 ft. tree!

Daley Plaza had a bazillion people walking around sipping "beverages" from little green ceramic boot mugs. I kinda wanted one, but wasn't in the mood to wait in a long, long line to get it!

Michigan Avenue was our next destination. I liked all the huge urn plantings with boughs and branches. Can you believe this was the only picture taken on our stroll down the avenue? Probably saved my camera by withholding pictures...again this area was packed with people!

The afternoon turns into evening. We stopped for pizza at Rocco's in Lincoln Park - yes we walked to Lincoln Park from Michigan Ave. (This restaurant was a great find - we'll be coming back here!) Never have we gone to this event before ... we got all excited to think about bringing our grand-daughter next year for the company of all those other stroller strollers!

Whew! What a day to kick-off the holiday season! (And, thank you Chicago weather that was so mild for this time of year.)

And what a way to kick-off calorie burning by walking around eight miles as we figured...we celebrated by eating ice cream once back at the City Nest, promptly followed by going to bed shortly after 9:00 PM.

It is a most-wonderful-time-of-year, don't you think?