Leaving for Chicago, Woodfield Mall

   We left this morning for Chicago, IL to attend the 2012 Family Economics Conference hosted by Generations with Vision (Kevin Swanson.)  I don’t have many photos of the drive up, because very frankly it was quite boring .  Nothing but cornfields and about 3 towns-or so it seemed.

Looked out the back dash and thought this semi looked pretty mean -  Windmills

But this was the highlight of the drive:  BOGO .99c blizzards!

We approached the Chicago suburbs that seemed to go on and on and on.  We were reading a few facts about Chicago and I had no idea that it was the 3rd largest city in the US.  It didn’t seem too big at first, but once we hit the suburbs they went on and on and never seemed to end.

We checked in at our hotel which actually ended up being a full-blown resort and conference center-more on that later.  We unloaded our luggage…well, in reality the bellhop unloaded our luggage…and we got unpacked.  Mom had an idea of a few things we could see nearby, so we drove to Woodfield Mall. 

These are just a few random photos taken on the drive there:

Sam “Tornatore”  -  Woodfield Mall

 

If you noticed in the picture of the hotel above, the rooms are all hexagonal and this theme was also used in the mall:

The design and layout of this mall was a lot different than the ones I’ve visited::

Hexagonal elevator car

These walkway ramps were everywhere in the mall

 

Oh, the light from this store seemed to shine as a beacon to the masses to enter into plastic paradise…and leave with an empty billfold.

The first thing you saw as you walked in was that the light was coming from a giant yellow brick.

So many choices!

A few photos from their displays:

A set based upon the Robie House designed by the Chicago architect, Frank Llyold Wright.

Pictures I took as we walked through the mall:

This is something you will not see in St. Louis!

Clever advertising is so cool…  - GLOWING Golden Arches

The Disney Store

  I knew this idea would be addressed by Kevin Swanson at the conference!

  For those of you who listen to Generations Radio: “…up from 30% in 1970!”

 

Day continues in next post…

July 25, 2009

The family was tired from the work this week, so Mom took the day off-but my brothers and I sure didn’t.
We started a game of soccer, but it was really hot. Benjamin and I ended up working on a Lego movie. I usually dislike making Lego movies because I’m the post-production man and Legos don’t give you much of a head start when it comes to dialogue, sound effects and ambience. However, maybe I’ll post some of the rough drafts of our LEGO movies on this blog.
That afternoon Benjamin wanted to go down to the creek and fish. Three children of one of our neighbors also came along. A 9 year-old boy, a 7-year-old girl and a 6-year-old girl. The fishing spot that Benjamin wanted to try was about three quarters of a mile away. It’s a little difficult to get through the fields now that there are soy beans planted, but we walked along the edge of the fields and made it to the creek.
The fishing wasn’t great, but that may have been caused by our neighbor’s dog who kept on jumping and swimming in the water and probably scaring the fish away. However, Benjamin did catch one good-sized Sunfish.
I had hoped to make a GTC Outdoors episode while we were at the creek, but it would have been hard with the company. However, I did squeeze out a promise from Benjamin that during our 8 night stay on Table Rock Lake in September Benjamin would help me produce three GTC Outdoors episodes.