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. 

Video: CHICAGO weekend, part two

Here is part two of our weekend in Chicago.
This video was supposed to come up on Wednesday, but other stuff came in the way, puppy was acting like he was sick, hubby was in a car accident and I had no motivation to create it, so..it came up a few days later. 
If you like this video, please give it a thumbs up over at YouTube and don’t forget to hit that subscribe button:)
Have an awesome day! 

Random Chicago pictures from my phone

Hello and Happy Wednesday! I’m watching my neighbors cat for a few days, so after I had said goodbye to hubby and taken Thor for a walk this morning, I went over to feed the kitty. I’m going over there later to play with him for a bit too. Now I’m drinking my morning coffee while I edit photos. We are supposed to have maintenance guys coming today. They need access to our terrace to clean the drains of the building. We got an email about it yesterday afternoon, I kinda wish they would have given a few more days notice so I could plan my day differently, but whatever. It’s a gorgeous day so maybe I take Thor for a bike ride.
I have a video coming up for you guys later today, just need to add music. I had to split my Chicago video into two because it was very long, so part one is coming today.