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| Miss Brylea turned one while I was visiting and had her first birthday party. |
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| She had so much fun demolishing her birthday cake! |
I had a great time in Missouri seeing friends and family this past week but my first stop was the NKOTBSB concert in St. Louis. After Amber and I went in Chicago, we loved the show but were sad about our horrible tickets. (We bought them during the pre-sale so I'm pretty sure there was a Ticketmaster conspiracy.) Anyhoo, Amber was bound and determined to see them again but with better seats...and we definitely had better seats this time!
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| Amber and I before the show...did I mention it was like a thousand degrees outside and inside? |
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| Donnie!! My favorite. |
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| All of the guys. And our really great view. |
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| Look! Joey Mac is in our section...he's headed this way. Amber might be having a heart attack... |
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| And here he is...we shake hands! *swoon* |
My friends Meagan and Josh came to town for the weekend for Dave Matthews Caravan. I bought a one-day ticket for the music festival and joined them on Friday. I didn't think I could handle three full days of sun. As it turned out, I was right. I could barely handle one full day of sun. Even with my obsessive sunscreen application, I still managed to get a little burned in the spots I missed...like my eyelid that was exposed just above my sunglasses...and my scalp where my hair was parted. Awesome.
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| Some of the people we saw perform on Friday included Dave Matthews Band, OAR, Amos Lee and Ray LaMontagne. |
My friend Laura brought her two teenagers to Chicago for the U2 concert at Soldier Field. They had an extra ticket. Guess who they asked to tag along? (Thanks, Laura!)
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| Laura and I before the show. You know you're officially old when the songs you know word-for-word are circa 1987. |
Joe left today for a weekend retreat in Kentucky at Gethsemani. I had resigned myself to a very boring weekend. Then I found out one of my friends would be coming into town on Sunday (a few days earlier than I had thought) and got a surprise today that my friend Jennifer was in town. I was able to meet up with her and her family at a local hot air balloon festival. Jennifer and I have been friends since college but I rarely get to see her anymore so it was so fun to catch up.
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| Jennifer and me with her two daughters, Bryttney and Bethanie. |
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| The Humpty Dumpty balloon. |
This week I took a 48-hour mini-vacation to visit my friend, Kim in Minneapolis. It's hard to believe but I haven't seen her since her wedding more than two and a half years ago. And not only did I get to see Kim and her husband, Chris but I got to meet their year-old daughter, Hannah! We had fun hanging out, went to the Mall of America for a bit, had a great dinner one night in the Nicollet Mall district and visited the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
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| Kim, Hannah and I standing in front of Spoonbridge and Cherry at the Sculpture Garden. |
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| The famous Mary Tyler Moore statue. And, yes, I tried to do a reenactment of the hat toss. |
Today marked Joe's first Friday off of the summer. (He will have every Friday off for the next couple months in exchange for working ten-hour days, Monday - Friday.) Today's Friday off meant a morning walk to Starbucks and then to the hardware store, yard work, a movie (X-Men: First Class) and going out for pizza. Can't wait to see what else our Fridays will entail.
My blog needed a mini-facelift after several years of looking exactly the same. Thanks, Nichole for the new header for the blog!
Things to love about this weekend:
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| Clockwise: Joe, dad, mom, me, Adam, Declan and Terrie. (Kirk was our photographer.) |
Monica and I met eons ago in Missouri and this weekend I was honored to be a part of her wedding in St. Louis. She was a gorgeous bride! Joe and I had a great weekend celebrating with Monica and Trinity, their family and friends. We arrived home on Sunday to company as Joe's dad and stepmom were here for a couple days visiting. Now back to reality for awhile until my parents arrive this weekend!
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| The photo booth was a big hit at the reception - along with the Ted Drewes frozen custard! Left to Right: Me and the bride; all of the bridesmaids; with Joe; Dorian and I. (Click to enlarge) |
Joe and I did a local housewalk tonight that was an annual event for a local charity. Let me just tell you that I still haven't picked my jaw up off the ground. I wish I could show pictures to you of these amazing homes but of course pictures were forbidden and I'm sure would not do them justice anyway. One penthouse had a rooftop deck with a skyline view of Chicago. It was the kind of rooftop deck you see in movies, only it was someone's real life. We also saw statues from the Ming Dynasty and other artifacts that you typically find in museums and not in someone's living room. We saw a house featured in Better Homes & Gardens, an indoor lap pool, 1500 bottle wine cellar, theatre room and a kitchen as big as our entire house and closets almost as big. It was truly amazing. So interesting and so much fun to take a peek. Afterwards we continued the fun by getting Mexican food at a great new restaurant and catching a late showing of Thor. A little cheesy at times but overall it was a fun movie.
All of this royal wedding talk has me feeling a little nostalgic. Back in 2004, I spent two weeks visiting a friend in Italy who was living abroad for a year. On my way home I had a 16 hour layover in London. Most of that layover was overnight so I got a hotel room near the airport and got some sleep, however, I was adventurous enough to take the tube into the city for a couple hours. The one place I thought I couldn't miss was Buckingham Palace so that's exactly where I went. I stood at the fountain, snapped pictures of the palace and just stood in awe for awhile. I even visited the official gift shop. Afterwards, I decided to make my way to Westminster Abbey. I walked around aimlessly for awhile and even stopped to ask for directions but somewhere I must have made a wrong turn. Finally it was getting dark and I didn't think a young, American girl should be wandering around alone in the dark so I gave up and made my way back to the tube and to the hotel. That was my one and only big adventure in London. Hopefully another more promising London adventure awaits me in the future.
Today I cleaned out my car and gave my title to the insurance company in return for a check. Even though we were going to trade it in before too long anyway, it was really sad for me. I never expected to have to leave it in this kind of condition and it was a very dependable car; I definitely felt sentimental today. I bought that car all by myself with only 4 miles on it and it had seen me through many changes over the past nine years. I had that car before I even knew my husband. But I guess all good things must come to an end. The search for something new? Exhausting. Looking under pressure? Really exhausting.
Just around the first of the year, I was reading the newspaper when I came across a story about a Chicago street photographer, Vivian Maier, whose work looked amazing. (It's quite a story but the gist is that she had some negatives and prints in a delinquent storage locker that got auctioned off, someone bought them and sorted through them, finally did a search on her name and she had died just days earlier.) Her work has been on exhibit in Chicago and immediately upon reading the article, I told Joe that I had to see it. Fast forward a couple weeks later and I received an email from my friend, Laura in Missouri telling me that she'd just read about this exhibit in Chicago and I should check it out. Do you see why we're friends?
It didn't take much convincing but Laura and I decided we'd see the exhibit together. It seems like this weekend has been planned out forever because it sort of has been. Throw in buying a house, moving and Laura's own schedule and we finally settled on seeing the exhibit the very last weekend it was running. She got into town Friday just hours after my car accident so it was the perfect distraction. Yesterday we went to see, "Finding Vivian Maier" at the Chicago Cultural Center. (Definitely check out her work online.)
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| Laura and I also had lunch at the famous Billy Goat before heading to Sanrio in search of some Hello Kitty love. |
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| We also ran into people handing out free Peeps. Gotta love free Easter candy! (If you haven't tried the Peepsters you should because they are amazing and I have never been a Peeps fan.) |
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| I first spotted this car from across the street and I couldn't figure our what was on top of it. Laura soon yelled, "PEEPS!!" |
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| Yesterday was also International Pillow Fight Day so we witnessed a random pillow fight on Michigan Ave. See how much fun Chicago can be? |
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| Joe's attempt at getting me to smile so early in the morning. (And for the record, anything before 9 am is too early.) |
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My friend, Sandi shared the most heart-breaking blog post today of a friend of hers from college and asked that people spread their story with the hope that someone, somewhere might be able to help. I am reposting it here for you to read: Kirill's Story.
The hardest part of unpacking has been trying to find a place for all of my kitchen "stuff." I am a little obsessed with kitchen gadgets and live by the motto, "I need everything." So I crammed everything into the kitchen and even bought a Rubbermaid-type cabinet with doors for the garage to store punch bowls, various sizes of crock pots and servings pieces that I might need but rarely use. And just when I thought everything had a place, I found more stuff that needed to be put away. Oops.
So then today I wake up and Joe had left this newspaper article open on the table for me to read. Hmm. Talk about timing.
So maybe I don't really need a blender and a food processor or two different types of mixers, a mandoline, a bread machine (okay, that's actually Joe's), a griddle or half of the other stuff waiting to fall out when I open my cabinet doors. But I love cooking and I love cooking gadgets so I don't foresee any of them leaving my house any time soon.
By far, my favorite kitchen gadget is my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. I can't believe I actually used to mix things by hand. *Gasp* What's your favorite kitchen gadget?
This is my first post from the new house! The movers did an excellent job (way better than the last time) and we got moved in less time than we originally thought. Now we are unpacking...one box at a time and we're making progress. We went to the townhouse tonight to clean for a couple hours and have some more stuff to pick up there tomorrow. I will be so glad when we are officially settled. I can't remember the last time I was this tired...definitely too much to do to take it easy.
So far this has been an extremely productive and fun weekend. Friday night we took the dogs over to the new house and let them run around in the backyard. I think we definitely got their seal of approval. They loved the yard and were so happy to just run around. It made my heart swell to see them in their very own fenced in yard. Just wait until they realize they can do that every single day. Neighbors on both sides of us have dogs but Crumley and Iris handled it extremely well. Let's see how they do when they realize that yard is their turf.
Saturday we went back to the house to do more unpacking (the big move is on Thursday but I thought it would help to get the kitchen unpacked first) and Joe did some odd jobs. The biggest accomplishment was the carpet installers came - no more blue bedroom carpet!!
In hindsight we probably should have had the entire weekend free to finish up packing and do things that need to get done but a couple months ago I obviously wasn't thinking clearly and bought tickets to events both yesterday and today. Last night we went to see the Bulls play the Jazz. It was our first NBA game and we both had a great time. The 1991 team was honored at halftime to commemorate 20 years since that team won the 1991 championship. Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen were both there with the rest of the team. It was pretty amazing to be there and listen to the United Center cheer and go wild. I wish I had pictures to share.
Today we did more unpacking and work at the house but are now headed to see Fooling Buddha. This was part of Joe's Valentine's Day gift. Happy weekend!
I had grand plans for today. It was going to be a Saturday with nothing to do so I knew Joe and I could spend the entire day packing and really get a lot of stuff done...the stuff we haven't managed to get done during the week because we've had no time. Then my plans were significantly altered. I got word yesterday from our landlord that four sets of people were coming to look at the townhouse today: 9:30 am, 11:30 am, 12:30 pm and 3:30 pm. So Joe and I left the house at 8:30 this morning, took the dogs to daycare (the vet) and made a day of it. First was Barnes & Noble so I could actually get some homework done, then we had lunch and then we went to a movie. After the movie we ran some more errands before picking up the dogs. Finally we made it back home and the house was still occupied at 4:15 so we parked down the street and waited...finally we are now home. Joe says that if anyone else wants to see the townhouse while we're still living here, he's claiming he has the flu.
So far today I have set up a time for carpet measurements to be taken at the new house and also scheduled with the realtor to let us in. I have gone to the city hall where we're moving to set up water and buy tax stamps (which I couldn't do and will have to make a return trip later). I have then set up the rest of our utilities and scheduled stop dates for our current utilities. I have had the moving company come to the house to give us an estimate of our move, have made it to the post office, out to buy groceries, scheduled my "office hours" for the rest of the week and talked to our insurance agent about our home owner's insurance. Now to work on homework and packing...we close on our house one week from tomorrow!
Does the paperwork ever end when it comes to buying a house? Our closing is just a week and a half away and I'm so excited but also keep thinking I'm going to miss something with emails going back and forth between our mortgage people, real estate attorney, etc. It's so overwhelming. Also, we're moving to a town that makes you pay a special tax just to move into their city (isn't that nice?) so I'm trying to understand what paperwork that involves which has so far required several emails and phone calls. I keep thinking that it shouldn't be this hard. I. Can't. Wait. For. This. To. End. Soon.
My good news of the day is that the hospital I'm volunteering with is paying me to work on a special project. So until it's completed, I am billing them and getting paid. It's not much but it certainly makes me feel appreciated and is giving me a small ego boost.
It's Monday and I am pleased to say that I have finally started packing for our impending move. Four boxes so far filled with cookbooks; hopefully I can keep at it. A few boxes a day and I'll be in good shape. My problem is that I usually have a hard time judging what exactly I will "need" before the move which we don't even have scheduled at this point. We're going this week to look at carpet samples and our closing is scheduled in two weeks. Also, looking at a few pieces of furniture. We finally decided on a dining table and chairs and, of course, it's on back order until the end of May. So if anyone visits us, we may be tableless for a couple months.
As for our weekend, it was pretty quiet but we had two wonderful dinners. The first was at a gourmet taco place not too far away and it was fantastic. We were told that we'd have to get there early and stand in line before they opened. We did not believe it since the restaurant is in the suburbs but - lo and behold - there was a line of people waiting to get in before noon on Saturday. The food was really good so we'll definitely be back but hopefully on a warmer day.
Our other wonderful meal was with family members, Terrie and Kirk. We went to a restaurant literally in the middle of Lincoln Park - it was beautiful. Originally built as a warming shelter for ice skaters, we had it all - city skyline, frozen pond outside, delicious food and wonderful company. We always have the best time with Terrie and Kirk. Joe said it might have been his most "civilized" meal ever.
Okay, I am not too happy about having to DVR the Oscars this year (although I am still really excited about the David Gray concert) but thought I would compile my list of favorite movies. We watched, "The Kids Are All Right," last week which means we've seen all ten nominated movies. And while that movie was good, it was in no way an Oscar contender in my opinion. Here's my top five favorite movies from last year in no particular order:
Our driveway got plowed around 9 pm last night and now our neighborhood looks a little eerie with snow piled up everywhere. Joe is still off work but I volunteered today. Most of the roads are down to one and a half lanes on each side but I think things are slowly getting back to normal.
I'm hearing that we had around 17.3 inches of snow where I live last night (much more downtown at the Lake) and the drifts are unbelievable, too. The crazy part is that it's still coming down outside so I'm not sure what the total will be. Here's what we woke up to this morning.
UPDATE: I'm now hearing we got a little over 20 inches of snow but who knows what is accurate. Chicago had the third largest snowfall in the city's history since they started keeping track in the late 1800s. More snow to come this afternoon!
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| This is the view from our patio door. We have patio furniture out there somewhere under all that snow. |
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| This is what it looks like when you open our front door. Since we live in a townhouse and have neighboors next door we can't really just push the snow over to the side. Not sure who is going to tackle this but it's not me! |
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| This is what it looks like when you open our garage door. Joe's poor car! My old thing is safe inside the garage. |
I have a major dilemna. And, no, this post has nothing to do with the up to 25 inches of snow we might get this week.
If you read this with any regularity, you probably know that I love music and love going to concerts. I have been so fortunate to have seen basically anyone and everyone that I really have wanted to see live. The one person who has always alluded me? David Gray. Either he's not touring in the city that I'm currently in or I don't know about it until tickets are sold out or I have to do something stupid instead like go to class...well, finally, I find out that he's coming to Chicago and I am definitely going to see him. So a week or so ago, I got tickets the very second they went on sale. I have been walking on air since then and keep reminding myself, "I'm going to see David Gray!"
The problem? It just occurred to me that the concert happens to be on my favorite day of the year. That's right, I just bought tickets for a David Gray concert for the same evening as the Academy Awards. And I've actually managed to see every single nominated movie this year except for one which will be remedied as soon as Netflix delivers, "The Kids Are All Right" this week.
I'm off to go cry myself to sleep now.
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| Really cool installation art at the museum. |
Over the weekend, we went to Missouri to celebrate my Grandma Dixie's birthday - ninety! She had a blast at her party and about 100 friends and family members came to celebrate with her.
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| Baby Brylea |
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| My grandma, ninety and fabulous! |
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| Miss Adyson |
We're moving! Only about 4 miles away but a move is a move. We started looking at houses over Joe's Christmas break and after seeing 18 houses, we finally found one that felt like home to us. We made an offer and while we were out of town all weekend (that's another story) we finally got word that we had a deal. Of course, today has been worse case scenario with Joe's schedule because he's been in back-to-back meetings all day so I have been talking to an attorney, our mortgage broker, real estate agent, setting up for the home inspection, etc. Soon I will be packing, making moving arrangements and obsessing over carpet samples (anything is better than blue, right?)...oh and I start back at school this week. It's enough to make me wish I had a xanax.
We took Joe's mom and stepdad to the airport this morning and I'm staring down laundry, house-cleaning and a Christmas tree to take apart. I wonder how long I can procrastinate? Some highlights of our Chicago Christmas included some very good food, two excellent movies (True Grit and The King's Speech), going to the Christkindlmarket and seeing A Christmas Carol at the Goodman Theatre. If ever you are in Chicago around this time of year, this is a must-see production. It's quite a tradition around here and now I know why. I am afraid I'll never be able to see it anywhere else ever again or I'll be very let down. Now to the procrastination...
I think I am in denial that Christmas is actually this week. Maybe that's because I did my shopping so early? For the first time ever, we are staying home. We are trying to get the house ready for Joe's mom and stepdad to visit us but still have a lot to do around here and it seems that we're suddenly running out of time. And as unpredictable as the weather is at this time of year, we're hoping that they can arrive and depart without any travel complications. This is also the first time ever that I haven't spent Christmas day with my family - we celebrated with them over Thanksgiving. After thinking about it, I realized that I haven't slept in my own bed or not traveled somewhere for a Christmas or Thanksgiving since I was still living at home during college. Joe has spent very few of those holidays at home, too. So we are looking forward to cooking together, opening stockings at home for the first time and seeing what a Chicago Christmas looks like for us - Merry Christmas, friends!
The department where I volunteer had their holiday party today and invited me to participate in the festivities. Afterwards we volunteered for a few hours at the Northern Illinois Food Bank. Tomorrow is Joe's holiday party so I am baking...and baking...and baking. Last batch of cookies are in the oven. Celebrating is hard work!
Who would have thought that a kidney stone only 2.5mm in size would cause such an ordeal? But Tuesday - after numerous doctors' visits and lab tests, three CT scans, two ultrasounds and one set of xrays later - I had my first-ever surgery. Although I still have more doctors' appointments and possibly another proceedure in the future, I'm hoping that life quiets down a little.
I will say that I am actually very blessed that this is all I've had to deal with thus far (knock on wood!) and am also so blessed that Joe has a fantastic insurance plan. I know that so many people have much more severe medical problems and also have to go into debt or deplete savings accounts just to get the care they need. So that is going to be what I'm thankful for this holiday season.
I also managed to finish my finals this week so I'm going to cherish some much needed quiet time for a few weeks until school starts again. I predict there's going to be some holiday baking in my near future.
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