Take Your Kids To Work Day - Edelkids 2018

This is the third year that I have been fortunate to bring the kids to the office at Edelman.  Here's last year's post.  And the one from 2016.  But this year was different.  Why?  Because the Beef could come!  He's three now and wearing underpants and not taking naps and generally a kid these days.  And while I know he was excited to come, I was even more excited.

The day started with a train ride down to Union Station on an early morning Metra.  We had to the good luck of walking to the station and riding with our neighbors - who have girls that are both in second grade (same as Eloise) and Kindgergarten (same as Sadie).  They've become fast friends.  Having them on the train was, I'm sure, quite fun.  But it also made it easier and less stressful.

The girls grabbed some prime seats at the top of the car.  And Frankie was close to them, too.  He was so happy to be on the train.

My office is in the Aon Center.  And the train gets into Union Station.  That's all the way across town.  And on a good day, when I'm by myself, it takes me about 20 to 25 minutes to get to the office.   But, I brought the stroller and thought that we'd give it a try.  This way, the kids could see some of the city and the weather was cooperating so it seemed ok.

Turns out...it *is* far.  And they got tired.  Instead of 25 minutes.  It took us almost an hour from the time we got out of the train until the time we got up to the 64th floor.

We stopped for breaks and photos.

And talked about some landmarks.  Including the Chicago Theatre (below) and the Sears Tower.  I told the kids all about Nat's Granddad and how he worked in the Tower.  Sadie asked:  "Was Granddad's Dad famous?"  I said:  "Sort of.  At least inside the Sears Tower, I think he was."

We rode all the way up to the 64th floor.  Edelman occupies a bunch of floors in the Aon Center and the day's events were spread out in between a few of them.  The kids fought everytime we were going somewhere who was going to push the buttons.

Edelman did a great job with the events.  They started with a photobooth with props.  All three kids too multiple photos.

Then it was off to 'photo frame' decorating.

Everyone decorated a frame and stuck their photobooth photo inside. 

Then, we worked with the Kellogg's team (they're an Edelman client) to do a Rice Krispies Treats decorating class.  The Beef ate more than he decorated.  But that was fine with me.

It was a busy day, so we needed a little downtime, too.  Here's Eloise laying on the floor under my desk eating her Portillo's lunch (that's who catered), watching some netflix on her tablet.  A teenager in waiting, that's for sure.

After lunch, it was time for a carnival.  Where did we spend  most of our time?  On four things:

Snowcones
Cotton Candy
Face Painting
and...Balloons.

Here's SD with a snowcone:

And Eloise pre-face painting:

And post-face painting.  she had a flower applied to her face:

Here's SD in the face painting chair:

And post-face painting.  Butterfly face!

We also had cotton candy.  Multiple cones, too!

And the last thing we did?  Balloons.  SD and Frankie were able to get these cute baseball and bat and hat things.  And Eloise?  She went big.  Octopus!

What a day.  What a lucky guy that I got to share the day with my three kids.  Can't wait for next year.