St. Patrick's Day: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

St. Patrick's Day has always been a good holiday for me. I love the world being covered in green and all the gleeful hunt for someone to pinch. This year was no different. I was happily anticipating St. Patrick's Day when I realized the day I planned to go to Chicago to the LDS temple was also the day they would be having their celebrations! I was ecstatic!  I would be able to be part of one of the biggest St. Patty's Day celebrations in the nation and have the best St. Patty's Day ever! Right?

The day of celebration arrived and the car was packed full of warm green clothing. We were prepared for the snow and the 30 degree weather (Hey, I thought this was March. What gives?!) but what we weren't prepared for was the 4 toll booths in between Madison and Chicago. So $7.80 in tolls later, we arrive in the city, joining the reveling masses and trying not to hit the throngs of already intoxicated idiots. We park at Navy Pier. 20 minutes getting suited up and 20 dollars for parking (What is this L.A.?) later we are ready to hit the parade!

We had a pleasant walk in the lightly falling snow and saw examples of Chicago's taste in art:

This one reminded me of you, Rena. Isn't it fine? Oh, so fine!

The parade was somewhat less awesome than expected. It mostly consisted of high school bands and people walking down the street behind a banner. The best float was the McDonald's one.
Which is kinda depressing considering it's not that cool. I thought this was a world class parade. Disneyland does a better parade than that three times a day. I can only hope that all the really cool stuff had gone by before we got there. We still had a fun time and got to see a great bagpipe band.
Seeing the floats is all well and good but my real reason for going to parades is the free stuff. But they were only handing out stuff to the kids.  I kept trying to get people's attention with the baby (That's right. I'm not above using my kid to get free stuff at parades!) but to no avail. Then finally a nice young man hung a string of green beads around Indy's neck. I was thrilled! But Indy didn't seem too interested in them. So of course, I stole them.
After the parade we walked along the dyed river. The green was so much more vivid than I expected. It didn't look like a dirty green tinged river but a true St. Patty's Day green for miles! If I didn't know Chicago was such a eco friendly town, I'd be worried they dumped toxic waste in it to get it that color. It was surprisingly beautiful.

Back at Navy Pier we had a fun dinner at  Bubba Gump's and then went to check out the stained glass museum. I love stained glass. I wish I could dedicate a whole house to it like Alex Jordan, Jr. So it wasn't even half way into the museum that I looked at my watch and realized the last session at the temple was in 50 minutes! We were 15 minutes away from our car and 45 minutes from the temple. So we ran back to the car and hit the road as fast as possible. But with the soused pedestrians and rush hour traffic, there was no way we were making it.Slightly disappointing but having enjoyed a lovely day, we headed home early.

Arriving home, we were greeted by the smell of natural gas. So we called the gas company and was met with a kind young man named Neil. He informed us that it was not a leak in your apartment but was coming from our downstairs neighbor's. Unfortunately, they were not home and no one with a key could be reached. So the fire department had to break down the door!

I would be lying if I said I wasn't filled with absolute glee watching 4 hunky firemen come to my rescue. ;)

We were evacuated to our car while they cleared out the gas

At the end of the night we didn't die in a fiery explosion of death and got to bed before midnight so I considered it a successful day.

On Sunday, I made the traditional corned beef and cabbage. I got it in a little later than I wanted but at least we'd get dinner before bed time.... or so I thought...
It got unplugged! So after 8 hours we had no dinner and had to throw all of it out. :(

So what's a girl to do? Stuff her face with green frosted cupcakes!

They may look hideous but they were fun to decorate and delicious!

 After all was said and done, this St. Patrick's Day was at least memorable and that's all you can really ask out of life.