A year older

Last summer we were downtown and walked past the American Girl Store on Michigan Avenue. Olivia was glued to the window and Rick and I nonchalantly said "maybe we can go next year for your birthday". A year later she still remembered, so we made a day of it to celebrate her fourth birthday.

The girls in front of the store.

Once in the store, it was completely overwhelming!! Before any decisions were made we had to see all of the dolls. For a moment, I thought Olivia was going to have a breakdown but the crisis was averted. One of the employees told us that breakdowns were a very common occurrence at the store.
She finally decided on a bitty baby (with no hair- her words) which she promptly named Erica. Olivia also picked out a beautiful white dress for her too.

Olivia & Erica
I had made a reservation for all of us at the American Girl store to eat lunch with her new doll and have cake but Olivia wanted to eat at The Cheesecake Factory (or as she calls it, the Cheese Factory) next door. I was secretly very happy about that decision because I had heard that it was overpriced and the food wasn't very good.

Olivia with her Oreo Cheesecake

Blowing out the candle
After lunch we walked down Michigan Avenue to 'The Bean'

Do you see Rick, Will and I in the reflection?

Will was such a trooper. He slept, ate, and was happy the whole day.

Then we walked over to the fountain at Millennium Park, changed the kids into swimsuits and they played in the water.

The towers are faces and every few minutes they would spit water out. Ben would wait in the exact place until it would spray him.

Our our walk back to the car (can you tell we walked a lot??) , we came across this scene...

It is a scene from the Transformers 3 movie set. They have been filming in Chicago the last month or so. The only way you could tell it wasn't real was that the side of the brick wall is Styrofoam. I didn't see the first two movies but now I want to see this one, just to look for this scene.

It was a big day and we wore her out!!

We went into her room that night and this is what we saw. She loves her Erica!

Happy Birthday ZaZa!!