Day 158, 159, 160- CHICAGO!!

Ms. Beckett, Ms. Hall, Ms. Toles and I went to Chicago this week for the International Reading Association conference! It was amazing!

This was for the closing session. All of the General Sessions were awesome!
Monday's session with Dr. Steve Perry

 Tuesday's session with Steven Layne and Ron Clark

Wednesday's session was in the afternoon, and we had to leave early to check out and get to the airport. Well, let's begin our tour!

First, we start at the airport.
My hubby and 2 of my kids dropped me off.

 Ms. Beckett and I

Ms. Hall and Ms. Toles

 Our airplane getting ready to board

 Other airplanes getting ready

We got to Chicago Sunday afternoon. We walked around for a while before stopping for dinner.

This is a memorial to Jack Brickhouse. He was a sports caster who reported play-by-plays for the Chicago Cubs. His memorial is right outside the WGN-TV building. 

This statue of Marilyn Monroe is outside of the Chicago Tribune. It's a little scandalous. 

Bright and early Monday morning, we showed up at the Convention center. Ready to learn!

 Beckett, Delk, Toles, and Hall
The badges made us real professionals!

The Expo. 

In other words, the place to get freebies!! Rows and rows of vendors wanting to share their products. Don't worry, I brought back lots of stuff... for the children of course!

These were my favorite vendors. This booth sold Military Alphabet books! They had Army, Navy, and Marine alphabet books for sale. The woman on the left is the illustrator for the Marine book, and the woman on the right is the main author for all 3 books. The author's name is Sammie Garnett, and the illustrator is Vickie Frasier.

The really neat thing... I got all 3 of the books autographed! Each book is signed to "General Delk"! And the author promised to check out the blog! It was officially the coolest thing to happen at the conference!

 I didn't get pictures during the sessions, and it rained every day we were there. We managed to get a few pictures of Millennium Park, which was just a few blocks from our hotel.

Of course, we had to see The Bean. 

I'm not sure of the attraction, but everyone had to do something unique at the Bean. Whatever. 

Here's a picture of the amphitheater at the park. Not sure what it's called, but many concerts are held there. 

More pictures of planes. These were outside the terminal where we waited for our plane. 

At 10:12pm we landed back in Chattanooga! Straight to bed for me!

I'll post my power point presentations when I present them to the faculty.

Thanks, International Reading Association! I loved every minute!