Last Friday, we teased the above image on our Facebook page with an ominous “Well this just happened. We’ll have more details on a post to come.” What are we doing in this picture? Are we part of a new reality show about dad bloggers? Were we auditioning as a family for the new Star Wars movies? (more on that later).

Ok, before we give you the answer let’s give you a little backstory on how this came to be.  This year we were invited to the Chicago Toy & Game Fair and at the Blogger Breakfast we all got to meet the head of public relations for Navy Pier.  In his welcoming speech he mentioned the upcoming Winter Wonderfest and if anyone wanted tickets to reach out to him and he will make it happen.

When we got to the studio everyone there was so nice and showed us around.  My contact from Navy Pier was there and she talked to us a little about what we were going to do. Next we were lead into a room with a few chairs surrounded by a bunch of green screens and lots of lighting.

After I signed a waiver I had a microphone taped to me and we were seated in front of the cameras.  In front of us was the interviewer and he told us we were just going to talk about Navy Pier and he was going to ask a few questions about the Pier.

The interview was quick and after fifteen minutes we were done.  The interview became exciting when my wife mentioned that we had one of our first dates at the Pier almost 20 years ago and even celebrated our first wedding anniversary on a dinner cruise on one of their boats!

Our history with the Pier runs more than attending the Winter Wonderfest every year. We have taken out-of-town relatives there, we have ridden the ferris wheel there a few times and we even attended the final day and rode it with our kids, which was their first time on it!

We talked about what we liked about the Pier and what excited us about the new renovations that were being made. As I was getting my microphone removed I joked with the guy and asked him, “This was an audition for Star Wars Episode 8, right?” We both laughed about it, but in my mind I wish it was true.

When will you get to see this video you ask?  Well, the video will be shown on Navy Pier’s website in the summer to correlate with the Centennial celebration.  The video will also be shown throughout Navy Pier on their television monitors and also on the televisions in the new ferris wheel when it is completed.

So if you are ever at Navy Pier later this year and you happen to ride the new ferris wheel, you might see my family and myself telling you about what Navy Pier means to us.