Easter 2012

This Easter was a little different for Chris and I this year since we ended up needing to spend it apart. Chris was already scheduled to be in Ohio the day after Easter and so we had planned to spend Easter in Indiana with his family.

Then my dad had open heart surgery a few weeks ago. So I decided that since I had a 3-day weekend, that I needed to go see my family and spend the time with them. This meant that Chris and I would have to split up since it would have been very tiring for him to drive 8 hours on Sunday and then drive all the way to Ohio from home on Monday.

So Chris headed to Indiana (with Maggie in tow) and I made my way down to Missouri. I left on Thursday night after work (and a haircut and finishing packing...it was a later night!) and headed to my sister's house so I could carpool down with them on Friday.

Here are the few pics I took during the weekend...

pretty sunset while driving

We took the long way down to Joplin and stopped at the outlet mall in Osage Beach on Friday. We hit up Coach, Bath and Body Works, and Fossil. (I may have made my first Coach purchase :)

We stopped for drinks (and for gas and to air up our tire) on our way out of the lake area. And I found out they have Jones soda in a can! I used to buy these all the time in high school when they came in glass bottles.

Love the pictures on them :)

We had a good weekend. Saturday was a busy day of helping our parents run errands and lifting things that they can't lift since my dad is still on a 10-lbs. weight restriction and my mom is used to my dad doing the heavy lifting. It was great to see that my dad is doing so well. (And he's even lost a little bit of weight. I'm hoping he will be able to keep it off.) We just wore him out on Saturday since we had to go to several stores in search of a new tv for their bedroom - just a lot of walking for him. And I found out that my dad's heart now sounds like a ticking watch. That was pretty interesting!

We also saw the house that they are rebuilding at the site of our old house. It's different but a similar layout to what the old one was.

We also went to Kohl's on Saturday and I got to do some birthday shopping. That was lots of fun!

Sunday was a good day. I woke up early and ran before going to the 8:00 service. But it turned out to be worth it since I got to see the sun start coming up and that's always really meaningful to me on Easter morning. Breakfast at Immanuel was good as always. My parents had a break from it (for the most part) this year, so I know they enjoyed that.

I sadly didn't get a picture of all 5 of us together but I did get these...

(in front of mom's pretty roses :)

(thanks to my sis for taking my new favorite picture of myself :)

It ended up being kind of tiring weekend and I missed not being with Chris and Maggie and Chris' family, but it was well worth it to spend the enjoyable time with my family and to be able to help my parents out while I was there. I hope you all had a great Easter as well!

Project Life

This year I decided I wanted to try something a little different with my scrapbooking.  I heard about this system called Project Life - basically just a simplified, back-to-basics approach to scrapbooking.  After following Becky Higgins' blog for some time, I convinced myself that I needed to try this out for myself!  It's so simple and fast, which sounds right up my alley (because I'm definitely not fast when it comes to scrapbooking)!

Becky's focus is to capture everyday life.  To capture those moments that wouldn't necessarily end up in a traditional scrapbook.  And this sounded awesome to me.  How great would it be for our kids to look back at how our lives were when it was just the two of us?  What did we fill our time with?  What was life like in 2012?  How was technology different?  And it would also have to be great even for Chris and I to look back and remember our everyday life because those are the memories that easily slip out of our minds years (or even months) later.

So with this system you basically just print out your pictures, write some notes/journaling, and stick both into photo sleeves.  You can get as complicated or as simple as you want.  I decided to order the Clementine edition (of the core kit, which has all of the cards you need to put in an album) because I just love the designs in that set.  And I just ordered the Signature Black Album last week to put it all in :)

Here's the first week of January that I (almost) completed last week - I still have one picture to print out...

I'm not focusing on taking a picture-a-day but just filling the two pages with pictures and stuff from the whole week.  This might slip as the year progresses and I might end up focusing on a month at a time instead of a week.  I'll just have to see how it works out but I'm gonna be flexible about it.

Oh, and this first week I started was Sunday thru Saturday since January 1st was on a Sunday.  I think I'm going to make my second week Sunday thru Sunday so I can get into a pattern of my weeks starting on Monday.  I just think this might flow a little better, especially for the times that we do stuff on the weekend (which would include Saturday and Sunday).  That way I wouldn't have to split pictures from those weekends into two different weeks.

I've only completed one week and I'm already loving it!

Chicago Get-away 2011

disclaimer: this is a really long post with A LOT of pictures!

Almost 2 weeks ago, Chris and I took the opportunity to make a get-away to Chicago. The main reason for this trip was to go to a David Crowder Band concert (as part of their last tour - The 7 Tour)! I've always kind of wanted to see them in concert because I knew it would be nothing short of amazing and I love their music. When I found out they were breaking up, I really really wanted to make it to their concert. So we bought the tickets and off we went!

We decided to take the Megabus up to Chicago from Bloomington, which left around lunchtime. Before we knew it we were pulling into Union Station in Chicago. We left straight from Union Station to head to our hotel to check in. We were happy to get to this place right at check-in time :)

When your husband does as much international travelling as Chris does, then the frequent flyer miles tend to add up pretty quickly! So we took the opportunity to use some of those miles for a one-night stay at the Westin Chicago River North. This was a great hotel to stay at - beautiful inside and out, right on the river, and only a few blocks from Michigan Avenue. And it was only my second time to stay downtown (first time with Chris), so I was excited! Here's our room...

kind of fun to peek in on people's offices next door :)

Chris testing out the bed

great (but limited) views of the river

I was pretty excited when I found out the hotel was right next to these 2 circular buildings. I don't remember the name of them but I think they're pretty awesome!

...and right next door to House of Blues!

...and right down the street from the new Trump building.

Chris had to have a cup of coffee before we headed out to the concert - it was gonna be a long night :)

We made our way to the place we decided we were going to have dinner - DMK Burger Bar! Dan and Cara Crumrine were also going to the concert, so this is where we decided to meet up for dinner before we headed to the concert. DMK's was on Drivers, Dine-ins, and Dives list of restaurants, so we wanted to check it out. (This episode had actually just aired on tv earlier in the week, but none of us got to watch it.)

This place was sooooo good! I had one of their homemade vanilla and ginger sodas along side my bison burger topped with red onions, blueberry sauce, and some kind of cheese (I think). And Chris and I split their yummy sweet potato fries. It was all delicious and I would definitely go there again! Not only was their food really good, but the restaurant just had a fun vibe to it and you felt like you were part of the local neighborhood.

(in the background you can also see Dan and Cara's amazing blue cheese fries!)

With full bellies and smiles, we walked just down the street to the Vic Theater to stand in line for the DCB Concert! The doors opened at 6 but we got there a half hour early so we could get a good spot for the sold-out concert.

i was really surprised at how close we were to the stage. and the inside of the theater was very cool with so many intricate details of an old theater.

killing an hour before the concert started and excited at being probably 15 to 20 feet from the stage :)

John Mark McMillan up first

then Gungor. they were new to me but i really liked them! they even had a beat-box cellist! (apparently this guy was on the tv show The Sing-off.)

Mrs. Gungor played what looked like a modified accordian...

...and a set of bells! :)

And then, Chris August (rocking the suspenders)! He was playing an acoustic set all by his lonesome, but he was great. He has such a good voice!

Then it was finally time for the David Crowder Band!

Seeing DCB live was amazing! It was like one huge worship time :)

they even did a few "southern" songs - songs that they haven't released before

John and the rest of the crew came back on stage to sing "How He Loves Us"

(you can even see Jack's sign off to the right - there were some fans that made a sign for each DCB band member. they had their names and a pretty detailed character drawing for each :)

Soon after this song, the concert was over. Or at least it was supposed to be. Everyone just kept clapping. And they came back on stage a minute or two later and did four or five more songs! It was great! It was about 10:45 before the concert was over! I couldn't believe how many songs they played. I guess that happens when you've been around for 11 years. With sore feet, tiredness, and happy hearts, we made our way back to our hotel to sleep really well!

After a pretty late night, we took the opportunity to sleep in on Saturday morning. When we got up, we got ready, checked out of our hotel, and headed to find some breakfast. The concierge at the hotel had suggested a place called Fox and Obel's for breakfast. This was actually a little restaurant attached to a little grocery store. It ended up being the perfect place for us to go!

I had fresh orange juice (possibly the best I've ever had) and the biggest granola parfait (berry style)! It was so yummy and definitely hit the spot. Chris had a more typical breakfast consisting of an omelet, lots of potatoes, and a few other things. We felt like locals at Fox and Obel's because that's mostly who was in the restaurant. It was perfect - pretty quiet atmosphere even though they were busy, cute and sophisticated style, delicious food, and a view of the sun coming up over the river.

...and it was just down the street from where we had to go for our bike tour.

But we had a few other things to do first. I had to make yet another visit to the Apple store since I was having problems with my ipod (again) and I wanted to get it fixed while still under warranty. Leaving there with an operable ipod that also had the new operating system on it, we headed to a couple stores right next door.

Since we weren't really in the mood to do any shopping besides window shopping and it was an absolutely gorgeous October day out, we decided to take the opportunity to take a leisurely walk along the river. It was wonderful and has such great views!

Before we knew it, it was time to head to our bike tour! We met Hank (our tour guide), got our helmets, listened to a short run-down on operating bikes and the tour, got our bikes (Chris' was named Lulu2 and mine was Homer), and walked our bikes to the first stop on the tour.

There was this group of foreign men who also had a cameraman in tow. They wouldn't leave our bike group alone and wanted us to tell the camera that this certain tennis player was "#1". I forget where they said they were from and I didn't recognize the tennis player's name. They seriously would not leave so our tour guide had us humor them and we gave them a very lame and non-enthusiastic "#1". Meanwhile, there was a building about a block away that had probably 7 to 10 fire trucks surrounding it (with the truck sirens going off on the way to the building). Needless to say, there were a lot of distractions before our tour hardly even started! It was pretty crazy. But Hank eventually got to talk a little bit and then we were off and riding through the streets of downtown Chicago!

our first stop was the Museum of Contemporary Art.

and right next door to the museum is the Water Tower Palace, which is also the home of Oprah on the top floor!

Our next stop was in the Golden City. This is apparently a mansion where Hugh Hefner used to live before they moved out to California.

there's Hank!

another stop - admiring the statue of Lincoln in Lincoln Park.

in Old Town - this yellow house is actually made out of wood from the Great Chicago Fire.

We also stopped at St. Michael's in Old Town. It was kind of crazy because there was a wedding there that afternoon and guests were starting to arrive since the wedding was in a half hour. But Hank said we should go take a look anyway! It was so weird. I felt kind of bad that we were basically crashing the wedding even though it hadn't started yet. But I'm glad we got to look inside since it is such a beautiful church!

we also made a visit to Lincoln Park Zoo. Chris was "admiring" this view...

such a great view of downtown! i think everyone else agreed since we saw 3 to 4 couples/parties taking wedding pictures in this area :)

But we ended with the best view of the day from just off Lake Shore Drive, looking right down Michigan Avenue.

and our silly group picture that our tour guide took :)

I would recommend our bike tour to anyone who is wanting to see a different side of Chicago. It was a great way to see multiple parts of the city and it really was a pretty easy bike ride - very leisurely. Go to bobbysbikehike.com and check out the Lakefront Neighborhoods tour.

And our last stop while in Chicago would be to eat dinner. We decided to have Gino's East Pizza! Chris had eaten there a couple times before and I had actually had some of his leftovers once, but it was my first time eating there.

i didn't know about the tradition of writing on their walls, but I thought it was kind of neat. it definitely adds character to the building :)

big pizza man right by our booth!

(i had to join in on the fun and wrote on the back of my bench)

our supreme pizza with sausage finally came! it was delicious! the cornbread-type crust was definitely better fresh ;)

Gino's East was just what we needed to end our Chicago trip. We had just enough time after eating to make it to Union Station in time to catch our train and hop right in line to board! (Chris was really nervous when we went into Gino's that we wouldn't have enough time.)

all set for my first train ride! it was time to head back home and try our hardest to stay awake, even though it would be late when we got home. the train was really nice and is as good as people claim it to be. i look forward to the next time we get to take it!

This really was a great and quick trip to Chicago. I feel like we crammed a lot into one day and we had so much fun getting to see the city again together!