July 28 - Lincoln park playground and zoo & dinner at the Bristol

This morning was cool and breezy so we scrapped our original plan of hitting the splash park and did the zoo instead. Once our sitter showed up for the last date night of the trip, we set off on foot for Bucktown for a visit to the restaurant that makes one of the best Dark & Stormies in the city -- The Bristol. We came to the Bristol many times when we lived in Chicago so it seemed a fitting ending to a fantastic trip. After dinner, we were going to see some experimental theater at the Steppenwolf incubator but missed the tickets so we went to the movies. I'm ashamed to admit that we saw a movie on vacation - we do that all the time in Marin - but it was our last night and we'd done it all. We just wanted to chillax! We saw the movie 'Boyhood'. I urge you all to stop reading my ramblings RIGHT NOW and go out and see this film. It's about nothing and everything! It seemed a very fitting final chapter to a vacation where we purposefully and thoughtfully tried to engage the girls -- to remove all of the day-to-day distractions and connect with them. That's all well and good and we did a bunch of that and they loved it but they are growing up every moment of everyday. It seems glacial right now, g-l-a-c-i-a-l, but experiencing the passage of 12 years in 3 hours gave me a very small but visceral taste of what it must feel like when your kids have flown the nest and you, as a parent, are looking back on it all. Our littlest is 9. Almost a decade has passed since we started this crazy phase of our lives. What?!?

Please, grab a handful of tissues and a box of milk duds and give this movie 3 hours of your life - I promise, you won't regret it.