Disney To Offer 'Piggy Bank Adventure'
Group To Teach Families About Saving, Investing Money

AP, BALTIMORE -- A Baltimore investment management firm is going to Disney World -- to teach families how to save money.

T. Rowe Price Group announced Tuesday that it will sponsor an exhibit at Disney's Epcot Theme Park called "The Great Piggy Bank Adventure."

The company said the exhibit scheduled to open this spring "will bring basic saving and investing concepts to life."

Edward C. Bernard, vice chairman of T. Rowe Price Group, said the goal is to get parents to talk about saving and investing with kids. He said such conversations are "more important than ever before."

T. Rowe Price was founded in 1937 and had $276 billion in assets under management at the end of last year. The company's stock fell 41 percent last year as investment advisory revenue dropped and the firm's investments took a hit.

Thursday, April 26: Hopped in Handsome Rob about 11 to head up to Chicago. My original thought was to try to time it so that I'd be driving into town just about the time Lisa & Katie were scheduled to fly in, so I could pick them up on the way. In hindsight, abandoning that plan was the smartest thing possible. I'd ended up putting so much stuff in the car that I decided to leave early, so as not to force Lisa, Katie AND all their luggage into the leftover space.

I checked into the hotel around 4:30 and called to check in on everyone. I already knew that Katie had to reschedule her flight because her original one was cancelled, so I got a status check on her--waiting in the airport, hoping to get on a flight, all flights into Chicago delayed. Called Lisa to find much the same situation. While she was on a confirmed flight, they were delayed for hours due to the fog (and impending T-storms) in Chicago. Since I now had HOURS until I'd need to go pick either of them up, I unloaded Handsome Rob and called Beth, who invited me to her parents' house for dinner.

Beth's house is in a very wooded area. And on a foggy evening--the street to get there is flippin' SCARY!! Their house is beautiful. Big and pretty, but in a very casual and homey way. I was a little worried about seeing Beth, but she was still Beth. She was wearing a scarf and her face was a little puffy, but she still looked like herself. Left shortly after dinner to give myself plenty of time to get all the way down to Midway to pick up Lisa. Along the way it started FRICKING POURING rain--raining so hard there wasn't time for the water to drain off the roads leading to Midway--which is apparently just smack dab in the middle of the southern Chicago suburbs. And of course there was just absolutely bumper-to-bumper traffic to get to the arrivals pick-up. FINALLY got to Lisa, and the two of us headed for O'Hare.

Hey! Did you know that if you do mapquest between the addresses THEY give you for Midway & O'Hare, they're actually giving you directions to the INTERNATIONAL terminal? Yeah, so I had Lisa giving me directions, and she's all "the directions say to go this way," and I'm all "but the signs say to go that way!" But we got there pretty well, other than the fact that there is too much ambiguity between what is the arrivals pick up line and what is the cab stand line--and in fact there are TWO cab stand lines.

On the way back to the hotel we passed Chicago's interactive Mini Cooper billboard, and I explained that if I had one of the special key tags that billboard would put up specialized messages when I passed--but being from STL, I'm not eligible.

Friday, April 27: We get up and get going around 9AM, and head over to Beth's. The woods are WAY less scary in the daylight! Plus, we see deer on the side of the road. Katie--who is apparently from a place where there is no wildlife larger than a squirrel--insists that I stop the car in the middle of the road so she can take pictures. Today is the day Beth gets hydrated, so we just hang out around the house and catch up while Beth drips. So, after lunch at "Panera"--Lisa's first time EVER--(Bacon Turkey Bravos ALL AROUND!!), we've got the whole day and no particular plans, what shall we do?

IKEA!!!!
We take Beth's mom's van so we can bring along Beth's wheelchair (and bring back any outsized purchases we (read: I) may make). IKEA is cool, but we mainly just play "This Will Go in the Beach House." I'm the only one who buys anything--a really cool little LCD lamp. It's around 5ish when we finish, and Beth wisely suggests that this would NOT be the best time to set out on the highways. So we had a very nice meal at the Cheesecake Factory. At this point we'd had a pretty long day, so we made plans to go out to breakfast in the morning, took Beth back home and headed back to the hotel to veg out in the hotel and watch DVDs.

Saturday, April 28: Get a call from Beth that she's not feeling very well, and to give her a bit of time that morning. She calls back in about an hour to get us moving. We go out for breakfast at Walker Brothers Pancake House. YUM. This was about all the excitement Beth could handle for the day, so she sent us off in the city for the day.

As we're driving into the city, we begin a debate the buildings. Katie points out the "Sears Tower", but I'm like, "That is not the Sears Tower." "That big black building with the white antennae? Totally the Sears Tower." And I'm like, "No. That building tapers. The Sears Tower is squared, and set up on a 3-by-3 grid--like a rubic's cube from above, but the 9 sections are different heights." And she was SO insistent, that I started to doubt myself, even as I was pointing out what I believed to be the ACTUAL Sears Tower. "I'm like 95% sure it's the building over there."

We drove down Michigan Ave checking out all the shops, etc., then we crossed over to Lake Shore Drive near the Aquarium and drove back up toward Navy Pier. We pulled into a garage across from the entrance to Navy Pier, which happens to be a valet lot (very Ferris Bueller of us y/n?). As I got out of the car I started to have a tiny panic attack--this was going to be the first time I let another person drive Handsome Rob and it was a total stranger. I reassured myself that this was a professional other peoples' car drive and I should be more at ease about it.

First thing we did once we got there? Bought booze. Yeah! Drinkin' at 11am! WOOT! Mai-Tais and Raspberry Vodka Lemonades. Lisa had mentioned the aquarium when we drove past it, but Katie shot it down, complete disinterest--but she desperately wanted to go on a boat ride. Girl is OBSESSED with boats! I have seen this behavior from her before--at Disney World. So we're looking for the cheapest of the little lake cruises departing from the pier. It comes down to a $15 "architecture tour" or a $7 each way ferry to the peninsula where the aquarium sits. Katie starts to pitch this as a compromise for Lisa & I wanting to go to the aquarium, that we will go TO the aquarium, but not IN the aquarium. Which is nonsense. So I tell her flat out, if I get off the boat at the aquarium, I'm going to the fucking aquarium. Suck on that. So we took the $15 tour. :) By the way, if you were wondering, an "Architecture Tour" just means "Building Identification Tour." The tour guide pointed out the Hancock Building, finally validating me from earlier. :) And he pointed out the building where Oprah has an entire floor to herself (and it is a LONG building).

We finished up our trip with some time over at the Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago's free public zoo. It's no St. Louis Zoo, but it knows that.

How do we finish up this exciting "Culture of Chicago" sort of day? With some freaking Chicago Style Pizza! (They call it "Stuffed Pizza" apparently.) We went back to Beth's, where the three of them debated the best place to order from, and we ended up with Giordano's. It was YUM-MAY!

Sunday, April 29: Checked out of the hotel, and went back to Beth's to just hang out until it was time to go to the airport. Katie was meeting up with her aunt for dinner before she went to the airport, so it was just Lisa and me. We were just trucking along when traffic on the tollway came to an ABSOLUTE STANDSTILL. People were getting out of their cars--Lisa and I took turns standing up through the sun roof to look. Saw a helicopter hovering nearby, and I assumed it was just a traffic helicopter, but then it LANDED ON THE HIGHWAY!!! We were both making phone calls all over the place trying to figure out what was going on and how it was going to affect Lisa's flight. We couldn't really see anything, so we couldn't tell if the problem was on our side of the highway or both or what. Southwest told Lisa that regardless of what happened, we had to go to the airport--even if we'd missed the last flight--to prove that we'd made an attempt, and then they would let her fly out the next day. Fortunatly for us, the accident was on the other side of the highway, and once the MedEvac helicopter was gone, they reopened all the lanes on our side. This is what happened.

Got Lisa to the airport in plenty of time, and headed back down 55. Uneventful drive entirely. But I found out that Handsome Rob can get about 450 miles to his little 12 gallon tank when you're averaging 75mph. Imagine how well he'd do if I could convince myself to go a more fuel-efficient speed!