One Year

There once was a boy and a girl who worked at a retail shop
The boy instantly fell in love especially with her red hair on top

And that's the extent of my poetry skills.  Well we made it.  One year.  It can't possibly have been one year.  We decided to take a mini vacation and went to this fancy hotel.  It was just about a half hour down the road and just far away enough to make for an adventure. The outside of this hotel and the town looked pretty sketchy, but the inside was quite nice.

After finding our hotel we went down the street to find the place we had already picked out for dinner.  As we drove up and saw the place, we noticed one car in the parking lot and kept on down the road.  Unfortunately I don't think this town had a nice restaurant.  We saw another place Patrick had looked up and pulled in there, although I'm not sure how much better of a choice it was.  We were one of 3 couples there and were the youngest by about 50 years...no joke.  Then Patrick adds that this place is like one of the places on Kitchen Nightmares...oh boy.  It made for an adventure.

Pizza for our one year anniversary?  Yes, we did just do that!

Sadly this did look like one of the nicest places in town

Think it can't get better...oh it does.  Our hotel was right next to a Sonic.  So lunch on our actual anniversary seemed like a no brainer to us.  Sonic it was.  If we are not two kids at heart I don't know who is.

I can't believe I'm about to say this, but no we do not have a single picture of the two of us.  We do have plans though.  This coming weekend we will be in Charlevoix for Venetian and we have plans for someone to take a nice one year picture of us then.  The scenery will sure beat anything that this town had.  

Now we are left tonight for the last One Year tradition....

We pulled it out today after getting back and with the insane heat right now in Chicago it will be ready to taste tonight.  Unwrapping this cake sure did bring back memories.  Well that and watching our ceremony again together.  I can't get enough of how perfect the day was.  To  EVERYONE that made that day perfect for us, we thank you once again.  To our parents who put in money and time and love,  we are forever grateful and so completed blessed.  

Thanks for one year babe...I can't wait to see what the rest of them could possibly bring!

Taste of Chicago

As we arrived to this new city, we kept hearing over and over "you have to go to the Taste of Chicago."  So when we saw the dates rolled around we marked our calendars and set out our plan of attack.  It was quite the journey getting downtown during this event.  Our typical 15-20 min bus ride took an hour to get downtown. But, trying to find the good in every situation we were entertained by the 3 children sitting in front of us (clearly on vacation) and thankful for the air-conditioned bus.  Upon our arrival we bought our tickets and set out to find some good food!  We decided to go with the "tastes" because they were less tickets and we could try more things. This is what we got...

• Bourbon chicken sandwich
• Toasted ravioli
• Tilapia taco with tequila lime sauce
• Pulled Pork sandwich
• Bacio (chocolate hazelnut) gelato
• Chocolate covered banana
• Cherry Italian ice

And now for why you really look at any blog...the pictures

There was many many people and as we later heard "you don't go at 4pm"....and that my friends would be the exact time we went.  OOPS!  The people didn't matter to us as we were in our own little world having fun.  Our fun quickly came to a stop though as we tried to venture home.  We had to wait over an hour for our bus.  They were all stuck in traffic.  In Patrick's words, "we were literally stranded" with no way home.  The bus did come though, along with 4 others that were all stuck as well.  As I'm starting to figure out though, no adventure will ever be perfect and you just have to go with the flow and make it work.  

In other news...one week today we will be celebrating our 1 year anniversary...SAY WHAT?  Hopefully our cake doesn't take too bad after one year! (Yes I am that sappy traditional girl who insisted on the top of our cake being saved!)

Take care!

We Did It...and Survived!!!

Fourth of July rolled around last week and I thought I'd share how we celebrate America Chicago style!

The morning began with a little parade in our Hyde Park community.  It is called an "everybody's in it, nobody sees it" parade.  Well not having much clue of what was going on we watched it from our apartment window.  It made for pretty good seats.  This was one CrAzY parade!

Yes there was ONE person handing out candy to the few people on the sidewalks.

No joke...everyone was in it!

Age didn't matter!!!

 The parade ended in a park in our community.  They had many fun activities for kids.  Patrick and I walked down to see what was going on and I ended up seeing 3 of my kids and one co-worker.  

Later that afternoon we headed downtown with everything in tow for the rest of the night.  Our first stop was to find me new shoes for work.  It's hard because they have to be closed toe shoes and let's be honest who wears closed toe shoes in the summer?  We ended up finding these gems!

I know...pretty awesome

After finding shoes we picked up our subway and made our way to Navy Pier.  We had no idea what we were getting into.  We loaded into a packed bus and what was suppose to be about a 10-15 min bus ride took nearly an hour.  We hopped off and found a perfect patch of grass right next to the water.  I could hardly believe it.  Was it too good to be true?  I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Our beautiful view and patch of grass

Dinner for two

We were sitting right next to the Navy Pier sign

Notice all the room Patrick has to spread out...remember that for later....

We even had entertainment pass by us.

Does this say teacher of Preschoolers?  I brought our own entertainment.

All of a sudden (within a half hour) this quickly became our view...uh what happened?

This was about the point when they closed Navy Pier because it was at max capacity! 

So as you can see we ended up having our beautiful patch of grass taken away and simply joined the rest of the crowd standing to watch the fireworks because there was no room to stand.  When they ended, Patrick grabbed my hand and this small girl ducked and dodged the crowd.  I am proud to say we were home by 11!!!  Was it worth the crazy amounts of people? Yes!  Would I do it again?  Probably not.

Hope you had a very happy and safe Fourth of July.