Chicago

Lauren here with her second cousin, Scott.



The famous Chicago bean. It was really amazing. See the skyline and clouds reflected in it? If you click on the picture to see a larger image of it, you can find the five of us by looking for me in an orange shirt in the center, back, toward the buildings. You will see Marsha, my cousin, me in the orange shirt, Lauren, Stephanie and Scott, Marsha's kids. They came in from Bourbonnais, Illinois to spend the day with us.



Chicago welcomed us Texans with record-setting heat - it almost reached 90 degrees the day we were there. We got to see part of the Chicago marathon which was going on as we watched from the top of the Sears tower. We saw marathoners proudly wearing their medals of completion. We came upon a street where a fire hydrant had been opened up to cool off the runners - we had to re-route to keep from being drenched.

It wasn't until the next morning that we heard the terrible news that a runner had died and almost 300 others had been treated for heat-related illnesses because they simply were not prepared to run in that heat wave.