first snow

Blizzard all afternoon and evening yesterday. We got so much snow! But luckily it rained all night and the sun is out this morning, so hopefully it will be gone soon. 

I’m excited for this weekend. We don’t really have any plans, but I’m excited to be home. We have been gone for two weekends and even if I love to travel it will be nice to be at home just the two of us and Thor. If the two weekends had been somewhere warmer I would probably not think this way though ;P 

I have almost finished editing a Chicago movie for you guys, but it will come up on Wednesday, so stay tuned. If you haven’t checked out my Minnesota video yet, head over to >YouTube< now, leave a comment and like the video, cause it supports my channel. And if you aren’t subscribing yet, then go ahead and hit that subscribe button too while you’re at it;) 

early holiday weekend in Chicago

Blizzard outside here now:( NYC have had lots of snow all day apparently. It arrived here in CT about half an hour ago. Jim surprised me when coming home at 3pm. If I wasn’t considered an adult, I would burst out in massive crying (now I had to force the baby cry away). I’m not ready for this. Every winter I say “this will be the last cold winter” and then next year arrives and I say the same thing again. Still hoping. 

Anyway. Below is our Chicago trip. I did see some snow flakes there as well, but we were mostly just outside when going in and out of cars to drive to different places. 

We had to be on the road before 5 am. I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t fall back to sleep, but I was fine getting up an hour later anyway. Took a quick shower, got dressed, grabbed my backpack and everything went very smoothly after that. We arrived in Chicago a little bit early. Got drive-in coffees on our way to J’s moms house. We didn’t do much, just played with the dog, oh man, there’s no stop to that one year old puppy’s playtime, haha. In the afternoon, we went to a steak place for early dinner. I ordered the salmon. J’s mom and stepdad drove home and we met Bob and Sarah at a bar. We haven’t seen them since their wedding in May. They told us all about their honeymoon in Paris, aww, I want to go too! We then ended up at 350 Brewery a small place inspired by like wrestling. 

The next day, we had a mini Christmas with presents. I got some cozy slippers, a gift card and few other small things. Thor got a toy too of course:) J’s dad came to pick us up around noon and we all went to J’s grandparents house. Football Sunday, pizza, more football, taking napping turns and just spending time with each other. So nice to see everyone. When we got to J’s dads house, we just listened to music and talked for a few hours until we all decided it was time to sleep. 

I was the first one up on Monday morning. I did a 15 minute stretch in the living space and then Anna served me coffee. The two of us chit-chatted for awhile until the boys woke up. After getting ready, we drove to one place for lunch but it was too full so we went to a seafood restaurant. The shrimp appetizers were awesome. I got a cobb salad with grilled shrimp after that, yum.
We got dropped off at J’s moms house and spent the afternoon there. I was exhausted. The whole weekend I was extremely tired. I could barely stand up. Those 4 hours of sleep from Friday to Saturday screwed everything up for this weekend. Anyway. Later that night, we borrowed a car and drove to Mike and Brookes house. They moved to Chicago earlier this year and we haven’t seen their new house that they bought a year ago. They are expecting a baby girl in December so it was nice to see them before they turn into a real family:) We had deep dish pizza (which I thought I’ve had before but according to J this was my first time) and pumpkin cheesecake which was actually really good, I normally don’t like cheesecake. 

Tuesday was very relaxed. We didn’t do much at all. Just packed our stuff, hung out with J’s mom and stepdad before it was time to leave. 
Our flight was delayed for like an hour so we had some time to kill at the airport, but that was ok, because of that we missed the worst traffic in NYC so it worked out perfectly. 

A super relaxed weekend at many different places. Really nice to get some time with everyone. Since basically the very first time I met everyone on Jim’s side, I’ve felt very welcome and I really do feel like I’m part of the family. 

Minneapolis

It’s been a little over a week since our weekend trip to Minneapolis. We’ve had another weekend trip in between, but I thought I would share what we did in MN now. So here’s a long post with lots of pictures for you guys:) 

We had to drop Thor off with the sitter before 6 am and then drive directly to LGA. Everything went very smoothly. TSA pre-check is the way to go:) On they flight I watched the documentary of Alexander McQueen. I tried to find ways to watch it a couple of weeks ago, so I was happy to find it on the plane. We arrived at the hotel in Minnesota before lunchtime. We stayed at the W Hotel – The Foshay. Jim’s favorite steak place is in Minneapolis, Manny’s (better than NY places, and he’s been eating at a lot of fancy steak restaurants) and it was located in the bottom of our hotel, so after freshen up we walked over there to see if we could make a reservation for the night. It was fully booked so we decided to have lunch there instead. So. Much. Food! The bacon candy was absolutely awesome! My filet mignon was actually more cooked than I had ordered, but I didn’t mind. If it had been J’s food, we had sent it back. It was delicious though! 

In the top of the Foshay building they had a mini museum. There’s also an observation deck, so we got a good view over the city and J could tell me a few things about areas or buildings and point at where he used to live or work etc. After our cold rooftop exploration we went downstairs to the Grayfox Coffee and got lattes that we brought over to the hotel lounge area. They had a fireplace there which was needed when feeling so cold.

The most exciting thing for me that I remember from the last time I was there, was the skyways. Hahahha, I’m easily pleased I guess 😀 Since it’s always freezing in Minnesota, the skyways really helps. It’s an indoor pedestrian walk system through the whole city. So there’s indoor bridges between buildings. You can definitely get lost there too as the signs isn’t very clear. I love this idea. So we walked around the city both inside and outside.

Then we walked to Mississippi River. We checked that out the last time as well so I recognized it of course. We ended up in a bar, hung out for a bit to warm ourselves up and then took an uber back to the hotel. We changed (aka I changed into heels and curled my hair, haha) and went to check out the hotel fancy bar on the 27th floor. It was packed and in my opinion not as exciting as I had heard it would be, so we walked across the street and had a few drinks at a whatever bar until we took an uber to North East of Minneapolis to meet with Andy and his new wife. 

On Saturday, I got up before 7 to get ready. I didn’t want to stress plus I wanted to get my joints ready for the day with a few movements and stretching of legs and feet. The wedding was at 9:30am. Very cute ceremony and not very long which we appreciate. We were there when Tony and Jaimie got engaged (at Disney World) so we’ve been waiting for this day to happen for them. The brunch was awesome, lots of food to choose from. The wedding was at a bowling and bocce ball place, so after everyone had brunch, it was time to play games or whatever you felt like. I wasn’t really in the mood to play bowling but the other wives of J’s friends did.

After the wedding we went back to the hotel to change out of our fancy clothes and put jeans and sneakers on. When J took a short nap, I walked around to find a coffee place that was open. The only place was starbucks which I’m not a huge fan of, but I like to order peppermint lattes with extra espresso there. J came to meet me. After awhile, we walked over to a bar where we met up with Mike and Shauna. We stayed for a bit and then we drove to Surly’s Brewery. It was packed there. We didn’t get a dinner table, but we could still order drinks in one end of the place. We started to get hungry, so we drove to Betty Danger’s Country Club, a very cool place I think. The food was awesome and huge. Of course we got on the Ferris Wheel that they have there. They gave us blankets and we went for 5 rounds. Very cool to see the city from afar in the dark. I really did get a good look of Minneapolis from all angles and every way possible in this trip:) 

With changing the clock, we got an extra hour of sleep in the morning. I was still up before 7. I quickly got ready, grabbed my camera and went out on my own. I had seen a Bob Dylan mural from the car on our way to the brewery the day before, so I wanted to check it out. Nobody outside except all the homeless people at this hour (apparently lots of homeless people in Minnesota, which makes no sense at all). It was also kinda raining outside, so I tried to be quick. I came back to the hotel, grabbed Jim and our stuff and we took an uber to the airport. 

A short but sweet trip. We had a lot of fun and it’s nice to get away sometimes.

That was a short trip

We’re back from Minnesota. Felt like we just left and now we are back again. But even if it was short, we still had a great time. Ferris wheel ride, steak lunch, colder temperature, exploring the city, wedding brunch and time spent with friends to sum it up in short:)

We came back home around 3pm, picked Thor up at the sitters, bought coffee and now its football on tv time.

I hope you had an awesome weekend!