Anniversary Weekend Celebration: Chicago

On Tuesday, October 2nd we celebrated our second wedding anniversary. I really just cannot believe it has been 2 whole years already. They say time flies when you are having fun and it honestly has flown by. I've heard that it doesn't ever slow down, especially once you have children...I guess I have been warned!

Last weekend we took off for Chicago (about 3 hours away) for a little anniversary get-away. Stephen's parents were nice enough to stay at our house and take care of sweet Louie so I was actually about to relax and not worry about the fur ball every second. Thank you Dave & Bev for taking such good care of him for us!

On the way to Chicago we stopped in Michigan City to hit the outlet mall. The damage was minimal...as it turns out, shopping isn't as much fun when you are pregnant! Stephen did get some new tennis shoes though and that was the purpose of the detour, so I could it a success. We arrived in Chicago at the perfect time to check into our hotel-The Palmer House Hilton. Rant: I have loved this hotel in the past and this is the 3rd time I have stayed there. This time? It did not impress me at all. Also, I didn't sleep well...now, I don't know if that's the hotels fault or my pregnant body's fault. That has yet to be determined. We did decide to try a new hotel next year though! :)

After checking in, I had planned for us to hit the Willis tower but that just didn't happen. I was feeling so tired and Stephen must have been too because he did not object when I suggested to stay in the room and rest/nap. It was so nice!

After resting up, we headed out to our dinner reservations at Texas De Brazil. The walk there was beautiful along the river:

Have you ever been to Texas De Brazil? Oh my, it was DELICIOUS. I may or may not have dreamed about the meal for a couple nights afterwards. No lie. Here we are waiting for our table:

You have to have desert on your anniversary, right?

Walking back from dinner was even better than walking there. The city is just beautiful at night. Seriously, check these out: (taken with iPhone so the quality is not the best, sorry)

Sunday morning we woke up and checked out of our hotel. After checking out we stopped in the city for breakfast at a little corner cafe. We ate here last year and loved it, but this year they seemed to be out of almost everything. It ended up being good anyways and we enjoyed eating outside in the cool weather. Fall has arrived and I am loving it!

After breakfast, where do you think we headed? If you guess Ikea, you are right! We planned on spending some time shopping for a few things for throughout the house and for sweet Baby D. The trip was a total success and we were there for several hours. I really don't see how you could go to Ikea and not be there for at least 2 hours. It's just crazy huge!

Sunday night when we got home the first thing we did was love on Louie. We also settled in to watch The Amazing Race before bed. Monday was coming fast after a busy and fun weekend! As it turns out though, I took a sick day from work due to pregnancy sickies so Monday was actually a nice day spent sleeping in and watching many, many episodes of Grey's Anatomy for me!

Tuesday at work, these beauties arrived:

Aren't they beautiful!?

Tuesday night we decided to use a gift certificate we had for a restaurant in town. It was nice not to cook or clean! We took some pictures before leaving and even made Louie join us for one!

Stephen will probably want to kill me for posting the above picture, but it makes me laugh each time I look at it. He makes the funniest faces when I am testing lighting for photos, it just cracks me up!

And lastly (and not anniversary related), a photo of one of our front tress. It is changing colors and so beautiful! Now it is almost all orange and will soon turn to yellow! I just love fall!

Well, if you made it through this super long anniversary re-cap-congratulations and thanks for reading! I am behind on my weekly bump date, but I hope to have that ready to post tomorrow. Hope everyone is having a great week!

1st Year of Marriage Memories

Two posts in one day...crazy, right?

For the past year I have been working on this memory book chronologically with pictures taken throughout our first year as husband and wife. This is the first time I have ever done a scrapbook of this importance digitally and I am kind of excited to see the finished product. I finally ordered it this week and I cannot wait for it to arrive at our house. You can bet I will be at home waiting for the UPS man on that day. It will just be a replay of last year when I was waiting on our wedding album!

So, if you take the time to look at this please let me know what you think! Have you done any digital scrapbooks with Shutterfly? I have done several, but nothing this big and long! If you are looking for a good site that is user friendly and easy to learn, Shutterfly is it! They also have a new feature when you can customize your page by moving or resizing pictures, changing the background color, adding stickers and borders. It really is cool!

Click here to create your own Shutterfly photo book.

Click here to view this photo book larger

a year ago...

One year ago today, we were here:

In the Jacksonville, Chicago and Los Angeles airport flying to our honeymoon destination:   

We drove a white Mustang convertible to beautiful places like this:

We swam and sunbathed at beautiful beaches like this:  

We admired God’s handiwork and enjoyed our first vacation as Mr. & Mrs.

It was a wonderful adventure and a dream honeymoon for us. The start of a great year!

Read full posts and see more honeymoon pictures here! J  

Cupcakes and a Weekend Wrap Up!

First off, I need to blog about these cupcakes:

These cupcakes were made for our niece, Ainsley's birthday sleepover she had with friends on Friday. Her actually birthday was Thursday when we (Stephen & I) delivered the cupcakes. We arrived at her house just after she opened her new bike and mini penguin pillow pet from her parents. That and cupcakes? She was on cloud 9 I tell you! Ainsley picked these cupcakes out herself from one of my cupcake books, and made some changes to personalize them to her liking. She is so funny! She picked the purple icing, and asked for funfetti cupcakes :) I have not heard how she responded to the purple and pink funfetti when she bit into the cupcakes. I think she was expecting traditional boxed funfetti cake. I thought I was being sneaky and surprising her! :)

So that was Thursday night...this was Friday night:

Stephen and I had a long list of things to complete over the weekend and we decided to get our grocery shopping done on Friday evening. That also meant that we were going out to eat. I was pretty excited about this because recently I feel like we are never home. Between running errands on Saturday and going to church and grocery shopping on Sunday, there is little time left. But I did feel guilty about putting Louie back in his kennel since he had been in there all day, so I gave him lots of extra Mommy loving before we left! I don't think he minded us leaving though, he usually is pretty content in his kennel. Thank goodness for that!

We took some family pictures on Friday evening too. It was a wonderful, cool, fall night in Indiana and I was loving it!

Just to confirm the arrival of fall in Indiana:

Our front yard Friday evening...

After walking Louie and getting our grocery list (yes, I always make a list), we were headed out!

Yay for car pictures! I don't think Stephen will ever really like these, oh well. Also, I am really liking my new nail polish color, Piper by Zoya. It is easy to apply and stays chip free for about 2 days. I think it dries pretty quickly too, since I have been painting my nails during my lunch break, while reading and eating. I am sometimes an extreme multitasker. Guilty.

Saturday we had a long list to tackle at home. Buying an older house means that anytime we want something to do or work on, we probably don't need to look very far. Stephen and his Dad got a TV antenna installed on one of our chimneys (we have 3) so we now get some local channels. I am really excited to be able to watch The Amazing Race and a few other shows. The first thing we watched was the Florida/Alabama game on Saturday night. Let's just say the game started out well for the Gators but they did not hold up. I fell asleep around half time. We also got a bunch of other things done at the house, like taking the boxes from our move to the recycling center so I can now park my car in our garage. Stephen and his Dad also installed some hooks/nails so we can hang some things in the garage. Having things like shovels, rakes, and other yard tools hanging instead if laying in a heap on the floor makes a world of difference. We also mowed the grass and spread some fall grass seed. Hopefully we see the results of that soon! There were some other things accomplished at home too, and I am so thankful for that!

Louie spent most of the afternoon outside with us and he was great. He just followed me or Stephen around the yard, even when we were not holding his leash. We just let him drag it around so if he did take off running it would be easier to catch him. If we stopped in one spot for longer than a minute he would just lay down in the grass. So sweet!

Saturday night while watching the Florida game we broke out our year old wedding cake. The verdict? Well it is a toss up; I did not like it but Stephen did. He ate a good portion of it and put the rest in the fridge which I think he is looking forward to eating during the week. I just thought the cake was too dry, but the icing was not all that bad. I started feeling pretty icky after eating it, but since Stephen did not get sick I think it was just me being tired and having blood sugar issues. Oh the joys of type one diabetes...NOT.

On Sunday, I still not not feeling 100% and after almost getting entirely ready for church I decided that I could not do it. I just felt icky and my blood sugar was too high for comfort so we stayed home and relax for a bit. We watched Nights in Rodanthe and made taco soup that was delicious. Our oldest niece, Emma was playing in a softball tourney a couple blocks away from our house so we decided to enjoy the lovely fall weather and take a walk with Louie to the ball park. Honestly? I was worried about how he would handle bats and balls and lots of people around him. He took it like a champ though! When he was not sitting on the grass watching the game like he knew what was going on, he was curled up on my lap to stay warm. Here are some of my favorite pictures:

Because Louie's exercise has to been monitored and kept under a certain amount since his heart worm treatments, we had to carry him for parts of our walk. He looked so funny with the wind in his face/fur!

I just love how he is sitting and watching the games. So cute and sweet! Have I mentioned how much we love him?!

So that's it folks. Our anniversary weekend all wrapped up. Nothing too special or celebratory, just spending a weekend together and doing normal things. Well, normal minus eating year old cake. It's not everyday we do that!