{Random pictures from the summer}

Here are some random pictures from the summer that didn't fit into a folder but need to be talked about....just because.

And of course we'll start off with food:

We ate a good amount of deep dish pizza in Chicago.....

 

Also, this is delicious spinach artichoke deep in the crust of a deep dish pizza. 

We went to a Famous Dave's Barbeque restaurant...oh my goodness it was heavenly....

One morning the husband woke up and made us a delicious breakfast quiche! What a talented husband I have! What I lucky wife I am!

we went to go see Circus Boy perform at the neighborhood library... that was an entertaining show!

Here are some pictures of the kids of the family that we were house sitting for all summer. We overlapped our stay with them for 1 week at the beginning of the summer and 2 weeks at the end. As you can note by my smaller belly, these pictures were taken during the first week of the summer.

Main street of our little town

It rains in Chicago like it rains in Texas... this is one of the big storms that we had.... it was crazy! Luckily our power only flickered for a minute as opposed to going off and staying off for the next 3 days like many neighborhoods close by....

Here is some of the debris that I cleaned up the next morning....crazy!

The family we were staying with had a pool table in their basement and during our last few weeks there we played a couple dozen games... it was awesome! Pool is fun even if you're bad....but we got to be pretty decent by the time we left! PS - check out this wonderful winning shot the husband set up for me :)

this is the pile of ironing that needed to get done once we got back to Provo... aughhhhh. I'm kind of OCD about ironing so no, I did not just throw them in the dryer and pull them out, but I [along with some help of some family in town :) ] ironed that whole blasted pile.

We reorganized our DVDs - mostly we were sick of all the room that they were taking up and wanted to do something about that. We thought about just putting them in a CD/DVD book and trashing the boxes, but we hated the idea of losing the cover art and we both agreed that it's quite difficult to find movies that you want to watch without the cover art....So we found this magical book on amazon that has a pocket for the cover art and allows for 2 dvds per cover art. Brilliant. So, now all of our DVDs are transferred to this big book and all those space-eating boxes are gone. [I was planning on just throwing them away, but the husband insisted we take them to the DI and to have someone else throw them away.... ha!] 

The husband's side of the family got us this wonderful desktop for my graduation present - it's beautiful! Plus, it has a massive screen....massive, friends. So, we sold our TV and use the desktop as a TV as well....the only TV we watch is on hulu and DVDs so....it's awesome!

  

{Good bye, Chicago}

Well, we are now back in Provo - a very bittersweet thing. We LOVED our time in Chicago. Loved it. We loved the area we were in, the husband loved his work [I'll let him blog about that sometime....now he's in school and busy again...bummer.] loved the ward that we attended, the wonderful friends that we met, and the millions of memories that we made. It was sad to leave, but exciting to go back "home" to Provo.

I say "home" because we are only living here temporarily while we finish up our collegiate careers, but we have been here for a while. It was nice to get back to our own house with our own things. I love our kitchen, I love our couches, I love our books, I love our pictures hanging all over the walls. It was weird living in someone else's house being surrounded by things that they love but don't mean a whole lot to us. I liked having our "things" surround us again, things that represent us, our values, what we love. It was nice to be back in our place.

We left early on Monday morning and drove all day....all day. We stopped every 2 hours or so for a bathroom/gas/stretch our legs break and then pushed on. Monday night we stayed in North Platte, NE and met up with some good friends of ours, the Porters! They were headed to Michigan to start their PhD program and we were both traveling on I-80 in opposite directions. They called us up and turns out we both had plans to stay the night in North Platte. It was fun to have some dinner/dessert with them that night - random, but good to catch up with them!

Tuesday we left early again and drove and drove and drove and made it to Provo right around dinner time. Our friends, the Rileys,  were nice enough to have us over for dinner that night which was great because they spent their whole summer in Russia so we had lots and lots to catch up on! It was great to see them.....

Here are some pictures of our very long, but fast drive back to provo:

Driving west means driving directly into the sunset - Also, bugs all over the windshield.

In North Platte they were having a cricket plague... nasty. Everywhere you stepped there were dozens of them... gross.

Good - I'm glad they have the best looking cashiers... because that's definitively what I'm looking for at a gas station. No, I did not go in to see if they had the best looking cashiers.... I would only go in if I could have taken a picture of them, but that would have just been super awkward, especially if they were not good looking....so it will forever be a mystery.

This sign was on the front of a gas station.... Yes, thank you for confirming that fact to me. I felt like our whole drive we were in the middle of nowhere...

{Air and Water Show}

When the husband was offered the internship with Sears over the summer he had 2 different options for when it would be. We chose the later date because we had heard such good things about Chicago's Air and Water show that we wanted to be able to see that. Luckily for us, it was going to take place the last weekend we were in Chicago - hooray!

Despite the inclement weather reports that were for that Saturday, we decided to take our chances and head to the beach to watch the show - that is why we took the later date, no? So, we packed up some snacks, water, and our fold-up camping chairs and departed on our journey.

This was a guy selling umbrella hats right by the beach - the husband loved his suit and wants one just like it.

There were a bajillion people there! It was so fun! We walked along the beach until we found a nice little spot for ourselves.

PS - my husband is a stud. Here is proof.

It hadn't started to rain yet, and there was a nice breeze. We got there just in time and enjoyed about the first 30 minutes of the show.....It was great! parachuters and planes doing fancy tricks - it was really fun!

this looks like the worst job ever.....poor guy

anyways, after about 30 minutes it started to sprinkle. Meh, we can deal with a little rain, right? so we sat it out for a minute or two. The guy on the speakers said that a storm was just passing by and that they would get the show started shortly. Well, after a few more minutes the thunder and lightening started. Usually you see the lightening and then hear the thunder a bit afterwards, but this storm was so close they were simultaneous and right on the water.... oops. The guy on the speaker then came on again and said that everyone needed to evacuate from the beach and to take cover because this was a huge storm coming in that was not simply going to pass.

After much discussion the husband and I decided it would be a better use of our time to not sit and wait to see if the storm passed, but to just leave and do something else. Bummer. We also decided that we did not want to carry our fold-up chairs with us wherever we decided to go.... and since they were only $5 each... we.... um... left them on the beach. oops. hopefully they made someone else happy.

We decided to book it and hopefully beat most of the traffic of people who were heading out, and luckily we did. On our long walk back to the bus it started pouring.  POURING. Texas people - you know what that means; Utah people - use your imagination. It was crazy!

Luckily we got to this little tunnel right before the massive amounts of rain started to fall, and we waited it out for a few minutes.

When it cleared up a bit [still raining, mind you] we decided to make a run for it and get to a bus as quick as we could. Now, imagine me very pregnant trying to fit under one tiny umbrella with the husband running through the pouring rain in slippery sandals, trying to reach a bus. I'm sure it was quite humorous to those who saw. We didn't make it far at all before it started pouring again. Oh well...we just pushed through it and got on the first bus we could. 

We had a 1 day unlimited bus/metro pass so we seriously jumped on the first bus and made our plan from there. We sat down and figured out what to do. First things first - food. We just drove along and then jumped off the bus when we saw an area that had some good looking restaurants.

We ate lunch at this place, Las Palmas. It was a DELICIOUS Yucatan place. 

Yum.

Next we decided to go to a modern photography museum. That was interesting, and not in a "wow, that was enlightening" or "I've never thought of that before" or "I'm now inspired and have gained a deep appreciation for this." Nope - not interesting in those ways. Oops. At least we can say that we went right? Now, husband and I are big museum people, big art people, we like to go and learn about that sort of stuff.... but this was just bizarre. One of the main exhibits there was photos of people pretending to be apes....sorry, not my cup of tea. Anyways....

Well, by this point the weather had cleared up a little bit

But we decided that we weren't going to go back to the air and water show, besides, we didn't have any chairs anymore.....So, we decided to make our last stop in Chicago to the public library down town. It was amazingly beautiful and huge!

It was a great library to explore - 11 stories tall. Wow! So we sat and read and scanned through some books just for fun. Also, I may have dozed off a little bit during this and got in trouble by the library security guard...he came up to the husband at our table and told him that I needed to stay awake, that this was a library not a napping zone. Oops, again. :) Give me a break! I'm pregnant! Well, I guess they have to be strict about that so that some random hobos don't just come in and sleep in the library.

So - that was our last day in the big city! Not at all what we had planned, but a big fun adventure anyways!

{Happy 3 year anniversary of our engagement!!!}

3 years and 2 days ago I got engaged to my best friend.

Engagement day! August 30, 2008 - picnic in the mountains :)

Some of our engagements :)

Now 3 years later we are happily married and expecting baby #1 very soon :) Good times, my friends, good times. I'm so blessed to have such a wonderful man in my life.