Updates on a Quiet Sunday afternoon

It's been a while!  June 17th was the date of my last post - but thankfully Heidi has been doing a commendable job kueeping a record of our goings and doings so far this summer.  

She hasn't outright stated it, it may well have been inferred, but we've been rather busy so far this summer.  Every weekend has been filled with trips to visit downtown Chicago (or that one in which we visited Nauvoo), and we spent three weeks in a row entertaining either one or both of my sisters.  Having them here was a great experience, but, since we wanted to give them a good showing of the city, that meant there was little rest for us.  And then this last week, which may have provided some respite was instead filled with dozens of work hours outside of the standard 40 hour/week model.  

So that leads me to attempt to fill you in or catch you up on my job with Sears Holdings Company.  Within that conglomerate, I work for the Kenmore Craftsman Diehard-Brands Business Unit, which, like all other business units within Sears Holdings, essentially operates and competes as its own business, in loose harmony with the other business units in the company.  Within KCD (Kenmore Craftsman Diehard), I work for the Strategy and Business Development Team, working directly for the Director of Business Strategy, who reports to the CFO of KCD - which means I've had lots of senior management exposure already.

My project has been to analyze both domestic and international expansion opportunities for the KCD brands, which has left me doing a lot of market research and competitive analysis.  It's been a lot of fun and a fantastic opportunity.  These last couple of weeks have been especially busy, leaving me with roughly 60-70 hours per week of work (sorry, Choi's, I know that's still nothing when compared to Ethan's schedule...), but I really don't mind as I thoroughly enjoy what I'm doing and the experiences I've been gaining. I've also been using a lot of what I've learned in school, which is always nice validation that I'm not wasting time or money. :)

In our free time, Heidi and I have been watching Master Chef on Hulu (Heidi loves it, I'm kind of enjoying it - I just tire quickly of all of the over-hyped drama in reality TV), and we've also been spending several of our Sunday evenings with a wonderful couple in our ward, Mike and Camille.  Finding couples where Heidi and I both like both spouse and husband equally well is always a tricky thing, but we think we've found a great pair in those two (and their adorable two year old boy).  Mike is in the same business analyst program as I am at Sears - but he started full-time in February.  We're also looking forward to dinner with another young family this week.  They're another great couple who moved into our ward the same time we did (he also works at Sears).

So that's about it for the updates from my end. Sorry for shooting out so much at once, but there's just a lot on my mind!  Now it's time to go wake Heidi up from her nap... 

{Adler Planetarium & Field Museum}

On Saturday the 23rd we went downtown again with Caitlan and took her to the Adler Planetarium and the Field Museum.

Here's us at the 3-D show at the Planetarium. Baby wanted to watch the movie, too!

At one section of the museum they talked about light pollution and asked us to write down our ideas on how we can help reduce light pollution. Here is my answer:

"Be an Owl" Haha - one of the sticky notes said something like "Now we are just wasting paper instead of light..."

Here's Caitlan and the husband seeing how it would feel to weigh less on the moon!

This meteorite weighs over 1,000 lbs...they couldn't move it.

What a stud.

This is at the ancient Egyptian exhibit at the Field Museum.

Gotta love them dinos

One of the exhibits at the field museum walked us through the history of the earth, evolution of animals, extinctions, etc.. and when we came to this section the husband yelled out "ME! This is me! I'm a mammal! Quick - take my picture!!!" it was hilarious.

Yes, I see the resemblance :)

One of the special exhibits was about the history of the horse and how they have shaped our culture. 

SHOES! There was a whole section dedicated to shoes from around the world at different time periods - LOVE.

Sue the T-Rex

Great Museum - loved it. It was fun to go back again and to start with the stuff that the husband and I ran out of time to see with Megan - so, we saw a ton of new stuff on this trip! Pretty cool.

{Baby Pictures!!}

We went to the dr today for another ultrasound. I am currently 30-31ish weeks. These baby photos are so cute and our little one looks much more like a baby and much less like an alien than she did just a mere 10 weeks ago!

She has the most precious round little face - check it out!


Also - I can't get over this shot of her little nose and pouty lips. She is absolutely perfect!!


She's doing well and moving a lot! The dr asked me if I was feeling her move around and my reply was "Yes, all the time" and then throughout the ultrasound he felt her move and kick a couple times and agreed that she is quite the active Little One. We also got to see her blink her eyes during the ultrasound - crazy!!

They estimated her weight to be just over 4 lbs right now - 76th percentile, so a big baby, but nothing crazy. She's measuring well and everything looks perfect :)

{Men of the City}

On Friday Caitlan and I had some interesting experiences with some men of the city.

On the bus to one of our stops, Caitlan sat next to an interesting sort of man on the subway. He looked like a pleasant nice enough man who was just having a nice conversation with Caitlan about her trip to the city. The husband and I stood by and watched closely but couldn't hear anything of their conversation. After we got off the subway we found out that that nice man on the sub was a little too nice for Caitlan's comfort. Apparently this 48 year old man was hitting on Caitlan, telling her how cute she was, etc..... poor thing. Good thing that it was a short train ride. Hahaha......we made a joke that he was hitting on her because a black man always loves braids and for a white girl, Caitlan was sporting quite the braid:

Unfortunately this isn't the greatest picture of her hair, but it shows how cute she is :)

Next man of the city was one in the Indian House restaurant. First off, we went to the Indian House restaurant 2 weeks previously with Megan and LOVED it!!! We had no plans of going to that same restaurant this night, but the place that we had planned on going to was closed due to reconstruction, and everything else had at least an hour long wait, and when you're pregnant, tired, and hungry, about 5 minutes is too long to wait. Luckily, Indian House was close and inside we went to enjoy another delicious meal :) You know it's good, authentic food when the restaurant is filled with Indians.

We were seated near the kitchen where I was facing a huge window where I could watch some of the cooks prepare our food. It was so fun to watch them! Well, one of the cooks was very nice and put on quite a good show. We were able to watch him prepare our food, and through the window he watched us enjoy it, we gave him a thumbs up, thanked him. Anyways, he was very nice. After we finished our meal and got our leftovers packaged up, someone from the kitchen came out carrying another brown paper sack. He said it was a sweet nan bread made especially for us - his treat.

The husband thinks it was my fault, but I don't think that's entirely the case because um hello, I am quite pregnant and I was there with my husband. Anyways, It was quite flattering :)

Good times, folks

{Shedd Aquarium and Willis Tower}

Since Caitlan and Megan overlapped their stay by one week the weekend that they were both here we went to Nauvoo. The weekends that they were here individually were very similar since we bought the museum pass both times and visited the same places. Luckily our visits were just as wonderful or more so the second time.

On Friday night the 22nd we went down to the city and started with the Shedd Aquarium:

And of course the glamour shots outside the city :)

Willis Tower!!!

Fun times! Fun pictures! We really enjoyed ourselves.