We had a wonderful time in Chicago and got to catch up with a lot of good friends. We arrived on Friday evening and had a nice quiet evening at Sandee and Nick’s place – and we finally got to meet their baby (now almost 9 months old), Charlie! What a cutie!
Here are the 28 week belly pictures that Sandee took at her house:
On Saturday, we dropped Dave off at a bar around lunch time so he could hang out with his friend Curtiss all afternoon; then Nick dropped me and Sandee off at my first baby shower!
Angie, Aly and Sandee had organized a shower for me at The Drake Hotel. My dear friend John and his friend Ryan joined the four of us for high tea in the gorgeous Palm Court. Let me tell you – if you’re ever in charge of planning a small wedding or baby shower for a friend, consider doing something like this – it was SO much fun and such a special experience. Here are some pictures from the shower:
After the shower, Angie, Aly and I wandered down Michigan Avenue and eventually made it to Angie’s apartment just over the river at the south end of the Magnificent Mile. We enjoyed happy hour there before heading to Café Ba Ba Reeba to meet up with Dave, Curtiss, Sandee, Nick, and Reid (Aly’s boyfriend) for tapas. I think I had more bacon-wrapped dates than anyone else at the table, but no one was counting since they were all busy drinking sangria! Oh, how I look forward to drinking sangria and margaritas this summer after Mojo arrives…
We moved the party to Glascott’s (a Lincoln Park pub) after dinner, and John and Ryan met back up with us there. This is about the time that it became obvious to me that it may not have been the wisest decision to drop my husband off at a bar so early in the day…by this point, he was having a jolly good time, to say the least!
The next morning, we all reconvened for brunch at Uncommon Ground, and afterwards, I bought a happy new yellow purse at the M2 Boutique on Southport. (My justification for this purchase was that my husband had probably spent a small fortune at the pubs the day before – it was only fair that I get to spend a little money while on vacation, too!)
We left Sandee and Nick’s house at 3:00 PM on Sunday to go to the airport for our return trip to Omaha. We supposed to have landed in Omaha at 6:35 PM…instead we landed at 5:30 PM on Monday. Yes, you read that correctly: Monday. It took us a total of 27 hours to get home from Chicago. Here’s a quick run-down of the events that led to this remarkable travel experience:
Sunday, April 19
3:00 PM - Leave Sandee and Nick's house to go to the airport
(NOTE: A small hole in the back pocket of Dave’s jeans had ripped on Sunday morning, but he was too tired / forgot to change them before leaving for the airport - little did he know that he would be forced to wear these same jeans for the next 27 hours! LOL!)
5:30 PM - Board our DIRECT flight to Omaha at O'Hare
6:00 PM - Plane begins to take off, and right before the nose lifted off the ground, the pilot slams on the brakes. This is highly unnerving to all passengers, especially those sleeping like my hungover husband. :) The pilot announces a system failure and heads back to the gate.
6:30 PM - Pilot announces that the plane is fixed but now has to be refueled.
7:00 PM - Plane is refueled. Pilot turns plane back on and system fails again.
7:30 PM - Pilot announces that we are not taking this plane to Omaha, so we all get off.
8:30 PM - Gate agent announces cancellation of our flight.
9:00 PM - We are rebooked for the following: leave O'Hare Monday at noon on a flight to Dallas, followed by a 3:45 PM flight from Dallas to Omaha. They also book us a room at a strange little hotel called the Jameson Suites in Arlington Heights and give us $30 of food vouchers to use the next day.
9:30 PM - Shuttle picks us up at O'Hare. We convince the driver to take us to a grocery store to get some toiletries since American Airlines hadn’t allowed us to get the suitcase we had checked before leaving the airport.
10:30 PM - Dave and I dig in to turkey and ham Lunchables after having checked in at the Jameson Suites. Dave surveys the damage to his jeans; the hole is definitely bigger. He curses American Airlines for not letting us get our luggage while I laugh hysterically.
Monday, April 20
10:30 AM - We return to O'Hare after a leisurely morning spent over coffee and rice (yep, rice for breakfast) at the Jameson.
5:30 PM - I'll speed this up a little; our flights to Dallas and then to Omaha were on time, and my mother picked us up at the airport. We were happy to see our suitcase that had been waiting patiently for us to arrive. The hole in Dave's jeans is now close to 8 inches long.
6:00 PM - We get home. Nina is happy to see us but had torn into the bag of bagels I had left sitting on the counter. The garlic bread that had been sitting next to it was nowhere to be found. Apparently, she was mad that we hadn't returned home when we said we would.
10:00 PM - We go to bed after unpacking, eating dinner, and unwinding. Dave finds the loaf of garlic bread in his closet upstairs in our bedroom. We decide that instead of killing the cat, we would just go to sleep.
And that, my friends, is why we are driving the next time we visit Chicago.
Since this is already such a long post, I’m going to create a new one that details the progress that was made on the nursery over the weekend while we were gone – after all, it looks so awesome that it deserves its own post! Stay tuned!
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