Church History Tour: Chicago's Natural History Museum

We spent our last morning in Chicago at the Natural History Museum. I didn't have time to visit this beautiful museum last time I was here so I was excited to check it out!

The building itself is gorgeous!

We spent a few hours weaving in and out of the different displays. I loved the dinosaur and taxidermy exhibits the best.

When we got to our car after our visit, we were shocked to see that someone had broken the driver's side window and taken a few of our bags, one of which was my purse! I had covered it up with a blanket before leaving, but they still found it and took it, wallet and all. Considering we had all of our luggage and my camera bag in the back, none of which got touched, it could have been so much worse. We found out from the parking attendant that 5 cars in total had been broken into. I was able to cancel my credit cards right away and the only other bag they took was full of my mom's coloring books and pencils. So all in all, they didn't really get much from our car, we were extremely lucky! Everyone we worked with from the parking attendant to the rental car company was extremely nice and understanding and helped us get a new rental car no problem. We were delayed getting into Nauvoo, which is a 5 hour drive from Chicago, we pulled into our hotel around midnight.

Church History Tour: Willis Tower Skydeck & Art Institute

Our next day in Chicago began at the Willis Tower with a visit to the Skydeck. The Willis Tower is the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and has the most amazing views of Chicago.

All the boys were extremely brave and stood out on The Ledge. At 1,353 feet in the air, the Ledge’s glass boxes extend out 4.3 feet from the Skydeck!

I was so excited to see a Mold-A-Rama in the gift shop! There was one of these at the zoo in SLC and it was always so exciting when I could get one of the plastic animals molded in front of my eyes as a kid. The boys could not understand why I was so excited about this machine,  so I showed them what it was all about by getting a small, plastic model of the Willis Tower. The warm smell of melting plastic was so nostalgic and brought back so many happy memories. Anyone who also loved Mold-A-Ramas as a kid will know what I'm talking about.

Our next stop was at the Art Institute of Chicago. Karin did an amazing job prepping the boys about the works of art they would be seeing here by doing all sorts of activities at home before our trip. She had asked me to create a scavenger hunt of some of the most well known works of art here to add a little excitement to our trip to the museum. I had so much fun putting it together! It was so hard to not make it 10 pages long because there are so many works of art in this museum!

America Windows

Marc Chagall

1977

Lotus Lilies

Charles Courtney Curran

1888

The Commode 

Walter Gay

1905/12

The Annunciation

George Hitchcock

1887

Dragonfly Lamp

Louis Comfort Tiffany

The Child's Bath

Mary Cassatt

1893

I love Mary Cassatt's paintings, they are so sweet and tender. I also love her use of patterns which were greatly inspired by Japanese woodblock prints

Mrs. George Swinton (Elizabeth Ebsworth)

John Singer Sargent

1897

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy

John Singer Sargent 

1907

Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1 (Whistler's Mother)

James Abbott McNeill Whistler 

1871

Nighthawks 

Edward Hopper

1942

Greyed Rainbow

Jackson Pollock

1953

Lozenge Composition with Yellow, Black, Blue, Red, and Grey

Piet Mondrian

1921

The Red Armchair 

Pablo Picasso

1931

The Basket of Apples

Paul Cezanne 

1895

Stacks of Wheat Series

Claude Monet

Water Lilly Pond

Claude Monet

1917/19

At the Moulin Rouge 

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

1892

The Bedroom

Vincent Van Gogh

1888

Self-Portrait

Vincent Van Gogh

1887

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte

Georges Seurat 

1884-86

Saint George and The Dragon

Bernat Martorell

1434

We spent a long time in the Medieval armory, the displays in there are amazing.

Arthor Rubloff Collection of Paperweights 

Our last stop was the famed Thorne Miniature Rooms!

"The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s. Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications."

I was excited to see this interior mixed in among the different rooms. This is a miniature of Andrew Jackson's entrance hall in his home in Tennessee. I had just visited the life size version of this entrance hall a few months prior!

After our long day at the museum I needed a blood sugar boost! These colorful macarons did the trick!