Maybe evil, maybe genius....

But we took our kids on vacation without telling them first.  Last week the kids were off of school for Spring Break.  It was a quick, last minute decision to take them on a short vacation for part of their break.  We didn't say anything so they would stay focused on their studies on not bombard us with the constant question of when are we leaving.

Needless to say, daddy had the most fun with this part.  He had all of the kids believing that he was lining up chores to keep them busy all week.  All the while we were secretly packing their stuff for the trip.  When we headed out Sunday morning, they thought we were running some errands and then going to MOA for a bit.  It was until we crossed the river and headed in to Wisconsin that they started to get curious.

We stopped in Eau Claire, WI at Olive Garden for lunch and to give the kids a chance to stretch and get some energy out.

"Thank you for using the Illinois Tollway".  We laughed, did we really have a choice?  These are not something we see on our daily travels around our home, so the kids we full of questions as to why we had to stop and others could just keep driving.

We arrived at the hotel shortly after 6:30.  I've never checked in to a hotel where the lobby was on the 5th floor of the building.  The kids were quite excited at this point looking around the hotel and the glass elevators and the open atrium.  After we got settled in to our room, we ventured out to find a late dinner.  Dad's only request was that he wanted to have a drink with his meal, so that ruled out the kids request for McDonald's or Subway.  Seriously, we did not drive over 6 hours for food you could have back home.

It was dark and getting late, so we headed back to the restaurant where we grabbed a table at P.J. Clarke's inside the hotel.  I ordered us the Streeterville appetizer (shrimp cocktail, mini crab cakes, buffalo chicken tenders, chicken quesadillas and onion strings) minus the buffalo sauce on the chicken tenders (too hot for the kids).  Daddy got to relax and enjoy his drink.  Sorry for the dark image, but if I used the flash he was completely washed out.

Time to call it a night and get some rest before our long day ahead of us.  

Note:  all photos posted today were from my cell phone.