Well this is my first vacation of 2009. The Heath high school band and choir took a trip to Chicago. We all had to be at the high school at 5:00am ~ eeekkk!!! Everyone who was on bus 1 met in the band room and everyone on bus 2 met in the choir room.

I think Elisa was just too happy for 5:00 am lol.

Front View from inside the bus. The ride was not bad.

Back view of the bus. Tod straight back in the center was one of the parents who went along.

This is Tina and Karen standing on the grand staircase at the Chicago Art Museum.

Here we are waiting on the buses to pick us up for our next stop the Sears Tower which in mid July will have a new name. Our band director Traci is the 3rd from the right.

We are on the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower. The view was awesome!

This is where I sat while everyone else had about 2 hours to shop. The sun was moving when I took this picture and it started to get a little chilly.

This was my little friend who kept me company while everyone else got their fill of the shops. LOL the dumb bird wouldn't leave me alone and no I didn't feed it.

For dinner we all went to the Rainforest Cafe. I must say out of the whole weekend this is my most favorite place to eat.

This is just one of the aquariums inside the Rainforest Cafe. This one you had to walk under to get to your table.

Yep, I couldn't leave without taking a picture of the elephants. Its a little dark but still awesome to me =)

The color guard girls practicing before they head out to have some fun at the pool before bed time.

A group of the kids sitting in the hallway of the hotel talking before bed time. They really were very well behaved the entire trip.

My color guard (well all but 3 who couldn't make the trip) Katelyn, Chelsea, Marchel, Brooke, Elisa, Kayona and Katie.

Here the band is performing for the residents of the Lutheran Home. The band and color guard did a great job and the men and women seemed to have a great time.

Just a random picture I got as we were riding around Chicago. Wonder how Whiskers would do here? LOL yea right!!

We took a boat ride on the river and what I thought was going to be boring actually turned out to be really interesting. We learned why buildings were and are built a certain way by the river and we also learned about the big Chicago fire in 1871 ~ Mrs. O'Leary's cow did not start the fire as everyone thought. It was a story made up by a newspaper man because he thought that story would be more colorful.

We went to the Navy Pier next and while walking we came upon this group of shady pirates lol.

For dinner we went to Midevil Times which is a dinner show ~ not a good place to go with kids all dressed up. Why? you have to eat your entire meal with your hands! Yep your hands.

The show was really good and as you can see by the color of our crowns we were for the green knight (who ended up being the bad knight, but we rooted for him anyways). The kids had a ball being able to scream and holler without getting yelled at. Yes our green knight lost =(

This is the group of girls that I was looking after for our trip. Elisa, Tabitha, Lacey and Kayona. They were a really good bunch of girl.

Sunday we had one more stop and that was at Shedd Aquarium where the high school choir sang some songs. They also did a wonderful job. After they were done we got to look around the aquarium and take a tour of the Reef exhibit that they had and we ate lunch (which was the most expensive meal on the whole trip) before heading home.

This was cleaning day for the tanks and even the coral got cleaned off. The fish must be used to divers being in the tanks because they didn't seem to mind that she was in there with them.

This is Nickle the turtle. She was hit by a motor boat and it damaged her shell. She has a devise to help her float because she has trouble swimming around.

When we were done looking around we all met at the door we came in and waited for the buses to pick us up for our loooonnngg trip home.

I had so many pictures that it was really hard to pick which ones I wanted to post and which ones I didn't. For a look at all my pictures go to my myspace I will have them posted soon.

Well that was my first vacation of 2009 and all in all I had a good time. Until next time.

Bye!