Our Illinois Trip

I must warn you, this post is picture heavy. We spent 8 days roaming around Illinois, visiting friends and our favorite places, and I'm just sharing a smidge of the pictures that I actually took.

I heart taking pictures.

Thankfully, I have a digital camera, because could you imagine how much money I'd be spending on film and development?!?! It'd be billions, I tell you.

As you might remember, we started off our trip in Chicago to celebrate my dear friend Melissa's wedding. While we were there, we took advantage of exploring the city. Poor Julia hadn't been to Chicago since she was 6 months old, so it was all new for her.

The girls were most excited to have their Nina and Papa with us.
Melissa had booked an architectural boat tour of Chicago as part of her wedding weekend. It was so interesting and we got to see a part of Chicago we'd never seen before. They also served lemonade and cookies, so the girls were content.


After the boat tour, we walked over to Navy Pier for some lunch and rides. Julia saw the ferris wheel and fell in love instantly. She could not wait to ride it.


After the ferris wheel, Jana and Ebeth rode on the swings...
and Julia took a ride on the carousel.

The view from our hotel rooms was gorgeous. I just love Chicago. I need to make sure I don't go so long without visiting.


Why is she so big?
After Chicago, we headed to DeKalb to visit some of our favorite places and friends. Julia was so excited to get to play on a playground. The poor thing hasn't been able to play at a park because of the super hot Texas weather.

Elisabeth went to visit her dearest friend, Avery. It's so fun to see them reunite.
And then, we finally made it to Pekin where this little red head was waiting for us. (Look at those curls!!!!)
Owen is 15 months old now, and though he is protesting the walking (he is a night time walker only), he made sure to be involved in all the big kid playing.


And then there was my Ethan, who is sooooo tall and still moves too fast to get a ton of pictures (although, he does stop and smile for pictures now if you can catch him fast enough!).

Owen loved Evan. He would seek him out for nap time snuggles or reach for Evan if he saw him. It was super cute.
Julia got to take Ethan to preschool one day. Ethan showed her off to everyone. :)

We got to see my grandparents, which I always am excited about.


We went to the Marigold Festival for the first time in years and Julia got to watch her first parade.
We had a great trip. It's hard to only see family once a year (as Elisabeth declared on the car ride back to Texas), but it does make the time you do see them more special.

The Best Wedding in Chicago.

Dude, you guys, yesterday it was only 87 degrees around 7:00PM! We totally went down the street to the park and played for a while. I told Evan that if the weather was more like that, I would complain about Texas less.

So, Evan and I were talking about how this is our first weekend in our house. Well, there was that weekend that was spent unpacking boxes and eating off the coffee table because there was nowhere else to eat, but that wasn't much of a "weekend". You see, one week exactly after we moved into our house, we packed up and headed to Illinois.

In case you were wondering, driving from San Antonio to Chicago takes 20 hours. Yeah...it was a long drive.

But, it was all worth it because A) we hadn't been to Chicago in almost 3 years and I have missed that city like you would not believe and B) we were headed to help my best friend celebrate her wedding weekend. This is my sunshine, Melissa:

She married her fabulous fiance Scott and I was the matron of honor. I'd been impatiently waiting for this wedding for months because I knew it would be such an awesome, happy occasion.
They got married in the heart of Chicago (where they both live and work) in a gorgeous hotel that overlooked the river. The views were amazing!!!

Elisabeth was the Official Greeter and got to get her hair done with the rest of the bridesmaids. That girl loves having her hair done.
She looked so grown up.
The wedding was gorgeous and we all had so much fun. It's so nice to watch an amazing couple get married. Especially when you know just how happy they are to be around each other.
I got to give the toast. Thankfully, my pregnancy brain did not interfere and I remembered everything I'd planned on saying.
Instead of wedding cake, they had an ice cream sundae bar. It was a fabulous choice on the bride and groom's part.

Jana and Keith came up for the weekend to help us out with the girls during the wedding and to explore Chicago with us. They also got to watch my children dance during the reception.
I don't know about anyone else's kids, but my girls LOVE to dance. It's like they have to dance or their bodies will self-combust. It's super fun to watch.

We have had a hard time getting our girls to take respectable pictures with us, so we've settled on a compromise. First we take a nice picture:
Then silly faces:
A nice picture:
Silly faces:
Look! It's like high school all over again...except Nena and I are married and have kids and Mel's in a wedding dress.
Why is Ebeth laughing so hard? Because Evan is singing "It's a Wonderful World" in his Louie Armstrong voice. She was belly laughing at him.
At around 9:45, while dancing to a slow song with her Papa, Julia crashed and called it a night. She'd been dancing for a good 1.5 hours.
Congrats to you both Mel and Scott! We had a fabulous weekend and you two throw an awesome party!!!!!

Back on the Wagon

Hi. It's me and I am back.

Miss me? :)

Dude, I haven't blogged in so long that I don't know where to begin. I guess I could tell you how the move to Texas has been.

It's been hot. Super hot. Break records as the second hottest summer in San Antonio on record hot.

We left in July for Texas and it was the LONGEST TWO DAYS OF DRIVING EVER.

I rode in the car with our two drugged up cats while Evan drove with the girls. The first night we planned on staying in Amarillo, TX and got in around 9:30 only to find out that Amarillo is the only city that has hotels in a good 200 mile radius. Everything that would except cats was booked. We were ready to have to sleep in our cars for the night (I am not kidding) when a very nice man at a Holiday Inn that had rooms but would not let us bring our cats into the air conditioned hotel (it was in the 90s even at 10:00 at night) said he found one "inn" that had a room for us. You know how in the vacation comedy movies (like all the National Lampoon vacation movies) the characters end up in some backwards hotel that there is no way anyone in their right mind would actually stay in? Yeah, we totally stayed in one. The room smelled like an old Moose Lodge, the air conditioning didn't work, the other guests were all pretty sketchy, etc., etc. We made it through that horrific night and made it to my sister's house the next day around 7:00PM and thanked her endlessly for her clean house and her air conditioning that worked properly.

We stayed with my sister and her husband for almost exactly one month. And while we were so appreciative of their hospitality, I am a pregnant mom and needed a place of my own. I won't get into the details of how every time I called the housing office on base they would tell me I was a different number on the wait list (sometimes 9th, sometimes 14th or 15th) and it got to the point where i would cry whenever I had to talk to them. I will tell you that, after almost exactly a month, we got the call that a house on base was available. Oh, and they wanted to know if it was ok that it was a 4 bedroom instead of a 3 bedroom. We said we could live with that.

So, we moved in to our new house exactly a week before we were to leave for a 12 day trip to Illinois.

I won't lie, I am not a Texas fan yet. It is too hot to outside and there are no mountains. I could forgive them the mountains if the weather would stay out of the 100s for longer than a day. Unfortunately, the girls feel the same way. When Julia gets overly tired or is upset, one of the first things she says is she wants to go back home to Colorado. Her "real" home. It makes me cry every time she asks.

But, now that we're back from our Illinois vacation, I am determined to make this place "home". Our house is beautiful inside. All wood floors and lots of rooms for everyone. I am almost done with the downstairs living area (with the exception of the office/guest room, which is now a dumping spot for things we don't know where to put yet) and the girls rooms are set up with the exception of pictures on their walls. We're back to setting up a routine similar to what we had going on in Colorado and I am hoping we'll get to where this place is where we most want to be.
We've done a tiny bit of exploring (when the weather was under 100 degrees) and we definitely plan on doing more as we watch the temperature drop for "autumn".
My parents are coming in early November and our lovely friends Kim and Chris are coming for Thanksgiving with their lovely daughter Kayleigh. We have school and work and dance classes and a baby growing in my belly who will be born in the Army hospital 10 minutes from our house.

So, that's kind of where we are right now. Trying to get ourselves rooted here in this oh-so large state. Thankfully, we now have internet, so I will be blogging more again.