A Weekend in Chicago: Travel Video

Last Saturday we drove 13 hours in the car with R to Illinois for a family weekend to celebrate my grandpa turning 80. We stayed overnight at my grandparents' house, and in the morning we drove into Chicago with my immediate family and extended family.

We went to a Cubs game, ate pizza, saw the bean, and walked over 22,200 steps just on Monday alone. Jordan, R, and I flew home Monday night. We partied hard, and we still haven't recovered, but we did it! R is a traveling rockstar, and I honestly cannot believe all the things we've done with her during her first year of life.

Once again, we had a rough traveling experience coming home. You may remember what happened to us coming home from Virginia in March. Our flight was cancelled, and we had to stay overnight and take an early flight the next morning. Annoying for adults, but when you add a baby to the mix it's SO FUN. It's just how I wanted to spend a day of paid time off. Read my sarcasm.

Well, friends, learn from our mistake and never book the last flight of the day. Our flight home from Chicago got, wait for it, cancelled. Mechanical malfunction or some other nonsense. Long story short, after weighing our options we decided to have American rebook us on an 8:30 pm flight to Dallas. We could stay at my parents' house and fly to OKC in the morning. Not my favorite but acceptable. But THEN, the 8:30 flight got delayed and delayed and delayed again and didn't leave Chicago until after 11:00. R decided sleeping wasn't as fun as crawling around the airport terminal making friends, so Jordan and I took turns chasing her around for hours.

We arrived in Dallas around 2 in the morning. We were the only flight and still had to wait over a half hour to get our bags,even though we didn't actually check anything, but when they gate checked the car seat and our suitcase they decided to put it through baggage claim. By the time we got to my parents' house it was after 3 in the morning. We got up at 6 so my sister could drive us back to the airport for our 8 am flight.

What I'm saying is, I was extremely well rested.

I practically kissed the Oklahoma ground and swore never to leave again. Or, at least never book the last flight of the day because only terrible things happen when you do that. BUT WE MADE IT. And I have another story for the blog. So there's that.

In related but not as terrible news, Jordan and I bought a video recorder as a joint birthday gift, and I took it for a spin in Chicago. I filmed a bunch and used iMovie to put it all together. I think making videos is my lost calling, because it is so fun to make these even though I stay up way too late working on them. The video should be embedded below, but if it's not you can click here to watch it on YouTube. Hope you enjoy! All in all it was a fun weekend with family, and we certainly packed in as much as we could in just two days.

p.s. If you are interested in how we budget for travel, click here.

Illinois, I Love You

Last weekend, I took R with me to Illinois for a fun girls' weekend! In case you haven't been around very long and are confused about my obsession with Chicago and all things Illinois, I grew up in a Chicago suburb and went to a small, private college less than an hour outside Saint Louis. My grandparents and some aunts, uncles, and cousins live in Illinois, and I still have college and high school friends I keep in contact with who live all over the state. I've been back many times in the past eight years I've lived in Oklahoma!

I was nervous to take R on an airplane by myself, but she did great on both flights. (Just as an FYI, I reviewed my post on traveling with a baby, and everything was applicable this time around. I essentially did everything the same! Southwest Airlines did need to check her birth certificate, so I was glad I had brought a copy. Neither American nor United checked it when we flew with her in March.)

We flew into Saint Louis, where a college friend picked me up from the airport. We went back to her house, where R and my friend's daughter had a good time playing together. They are just two weeks apart in age! The cuteness was too much to handle.

Then, another college friend drove down from Springfield, IL, and picked R and I up so we could spend the weekend at her house. She has a three-month-old, and I was so excited to meet him! I want to be respectful of my friends and their babies on the Internet, so I won't post pictures, but just imagine the cutest thing you've ever seen and you can pretend you were there. While you're doing that you can imagine R swatting him in the face and trying to sit on him.

Our flight was early Thursday morning (5:30 flight), and we came back Sunday afternoon, so R and I partied hard for close to four days and had a lot of fun. Never in my life would I have expected to have fun with a ten-month-old, but it's a real thing!

^^^She slept great in the pack-and-play for the three nights we were there! After she woke up to eat around 5:30, I brought her in bed with me and we slept a little longer. We also took a few naps together in the afternoons, and it was glorious. And sweaty. She is small, but she is a giant furnace.

One highlight was R's first trip to the pool! The first time, she didn't like it so much and basically cried the whole time and glared at everyone. We went back the next day, and she seemed to enjoy it much more as long as she was holding on to me.

^^^ Two different days, two different swimsuits! Both from Target for less than $10. The hat is from Gymboree from my mom. I die.

^^^ My friend's air conditioner broke while we were there, and Springfield was setting blazing temps, so it got toasty in their house. At one point I gave R a damp towel to cool off, and then she wore it around like Mother Theresa and I couldn't stop laughing. Also, that tongue is out all day every day. 

Also x2, I tried off and on to put a bow on her throughout the weekend and see how she would do. She went in long spurts where she left it on, but ultimately it always ended up in her mouth. We still have work to do!

She did so great on both flights! I nursed her during takeoff, and then she promptly fell asleep and woke up right as we were landing. She laughed and clapped and cheesed it up to all of our seat mates, and it really couldn't have gone better. Plus, I didn't throw up, which was a legitimate fear of mine after last time coming back from Virginia when I used the barf bag twice in a row. I have problems.

I'm so thankful for friends in exotic locations like Saint Louis and Springfield to spend the weekend with. I'm also thankful for $89 flight deals from Oklahoma City to Saint Louis, which is basically the only cheap place to fly out of here. Amen.

Struggle Bus, Party of One and a Half

I wish I could say that I've spend the last week on vacation at the beach, and I've been too busy to blog because I'm working on my tan. But sadly, no. I've been sick, and it's been terrible. Other than my post-pardum recovery, this is probably the worst I've felt for the longest period of time in my life. R has also been dealing with her second ear infection, so basically it's been a hot minute since everyone in my house has been well at the same time.

I'm cautious to speak too soon, but the medicine I'm on appears to be working, and over the weekend I felt better than I have in two weeks. So yeah. I really want to share some stories and pictures from my trip two weekends ago with R to visit some friends in Illinois, but like I said, I've been busy trying to keep my insides from killing me while we chase R around the house.

So instead, I'm just going to share five things other than illness that have been going on lately:

1. At the end of May, my grandparents stayed overnight at our house. They live in Illinois but were driving to Texas for my cousin's graduation and stopped in Oklahoma to say hello. They hadn't seen R since she was 6 weeks old, and it was so much fun to reintroduce them! 

2. I realized when I got home from work on Friday that R and I matched. It was totally accidental, but I didn't hate it, which is saying something if you know how much I hate matching.

3. That picture up there at the top of this post? That's from our most recent drive to Texas. That is just one side of the rainbow, but we could see the entire arc all the way to the other side. THEN, the skies cleared up and we were treated to the most beautiful sunset. God is a master painter.

4. I don't have a picture for this, but I recently bought these curtains for my big front window! They are exactly what I was looking for, and my obsession with Wayfair continues. Fast shipping, great prices, and such a wide selection! Plus, they have awesome customer reviews, which helps with my purchases. I'm not being paid to say this. I just seriously love them.

5. I took this picture of R and Jordan when we were in Texas earlier this month, and I love it so much that I made it the lock screen on my phone. Her face and that hat and the jean shorts kill me.

This week I am setting the bar low and just hoping for no explosive poops and no one to projectile vomit. (Sadly, I'm not just talking about the baby.) Happy Monday, everyone!

Deer just outside eating fruit from the orchard

After leaving Carhenge (how cool was Carhenge?), we drove for a while, and the scenery looked mostly like the picture above. But as we drove north toward South Daktoa, the flat land of the midwest rose to hills, and trees dotted the horizon, and we knew the Black Hills would soon be upon us.

We stayed in Keystone, South Dakota, at the Backroads Inns and Cabins. Highly recommend! This is the second time we've stayed in a cabin on a vacation. The first was on our honeymoon in Fredericksburg, Texas. Personal cabins are really so much more fun than hotels, and they're not much more expensive. Our one-room cabin in South Dakota cost $135 per night and came with a bathroom, kitchen stocked with pots & pans, dishes, etc., and there was the best little sun room plus our own fire pit in the back! The owners even left us marshmallows, graham crackers, and chocolate for the first round of s'mores. Now I can officially add "ate a delicious s'more around a campfire in South Dakota" to my reverse bucket list.

Jordan prefers cabins to B&Bs because you (these are his words) "don't have to see other people if you don't want to." That guy. But he's kind of right. It's fun being all by yourself.

There were also deer roaming about all over the place, and every time we saw one, we immediately stopped the car and shouted DEER while I snapped pictures like crazy. Because, you know, I've never seen a deer before. (Sarcasm.) I felt like Ross in that Friends episode when he's in Vermont with Emily, and he's like, "Gotta go! There's a deer just outside eating fruit from the orchard." Except there was no fruit and no orchard and no one was filming us. But otherwise it was exactly the same thing.

There were also a lot of turkey. I mean a lot. We actually had to stop our car once and wait for a flock of turkeys to cross the road. Let's just say they were in no hurry.

Keystone is a historic town because when they were carving Mount Rushmore, Keystone was the closest town (about 7 miles) and was essentially "home base." It's a very small town, and the main street is mostly just one block filled with gift shops and some restaurants. We checked Trip Advisor for reviews before we grabbed pizza at Jane's boardwalk pizza on Friday night after we checked into the cabin. The Bumgarners gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Not the best pizza ever but definitely a solid "like" as far as pizza goes.

There's an old train that still runs through the black hills, and we could hear the whistle from our cabin. I loved it. The house I grew up in, in Illinois was near train tracks, and sometimes I miss the sound of trains. 

It can be tricky choosing places to stay when you're planning vacation, but it turned out that keystone was the perfect place for us. I honestly was worried we'd get bored, but actually we wish we'd stayed longer! There is so much to do, and it's so dang pretty that it makes you never want to leave.

-Wednesday, Oct 1: Part 1 (of 2) of my "Life of an Editor" post
-Friday, Oct 3: More South Dakota! Pictures from our trip to Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore
-Monday, Oct 6: Project 12/September <-- HOW IS IT OCTOBER???

Where do you like to stay on vacation: Hotels? Cabins? B&Bs?

"Do You Sell Hot Apple Cider?"

For this story to make any sense, you first need to understand my dad's obsession with experiences. Other than the fact that it was cheaper, I think the reason we always drove and never flew to family vacations was because my dad holds a firm belief that the journey itself is half the fun. He would drive us all over the place looking for that hole-in-the-wall diner as we passed eight chain restaurants and shouted, "We're hungry!" from the backseat. 

In his defense, we ate some delicious meals on family vacations. We'll never know whether or not the diner food was actually delicious or by the time we found it we were just too hungry to care, but the fact is, we made some good memories along the way.

You can, then, understand why, when the seven of us set out to find a Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving, my dad immediately scoffed at the idea of going to Lowe's. "That doesn't count," he said, shaking his head in disgust. "We need to find a tree farm and cut down our own tree!"

Our Chicago family had done this many times before, so that in itself wasn't a crazy idea. But this was Texas, not Illinois. And it was 60 degree and sunny, not 20 degrees and snowing.

My dad spent a good hour or two on Thursday night looking for tree farms in the Dallas area and came to the unfortunate conclusion that the closest tree farm was an hour from our house. Apparently North Texas people don't do tree farms. 

We had limited family time on Friday before everyone scattered to their various places of residence, so we took a family vote on whether we'd rather spend the majority of our time in the car driving to and from the tree farm or go to the Lowe's five minutes from our house and spend our time decorating the tree with lights and ornaments.

Six out of seven of us voted for Lowe's.

I'll let you guess which member of the family was left.

"But don't you guys want to go chop down a tree?" my dad said. "AND..." He threw out his ace card. "...we'll have hot apple cider and spiced donuts." Tree farms in Illinois always had the most delicious hot apple cider and spiced donuts.

"I do love apple cider and donuts," I said. I'm easily swayed when there's food involved.

"Don't we have apple juice in the fridge?" my sister said. "Let's just heat up a glass of apple juice in the microwave when we get home."

My dad looked like he'd just eaten something sour. "That is not the same thing!" We all stared at him. "Fine. Just fine. We'll go to Lowe's."

We piled in the car, and by the second turn, we were headed in the opposite direction of Lowe's. My brother leaned forward. "Dad? Where are we going? We're not going to Denton are we?" That's where the closest tree farm was.

"No. We're going to Justin. I think there might be a tree farm there."

My mom had the resigned look of someone who'd been through this act before. "You think there's a tree farm in Justin? Or you know?"

"Well, you know, there should be one in Justin. Let's just see."

"So you're hijacking us," my brother said.

We drove for about fifteen minutes and soon found ourselves in the middle of Texas nowhere. And then, what did we see while barreling down the open road at 60 mph was this sign: BOWMAN'S TREE FARM.

"WOAH!" my dad said and screeched to a halt. "Tree farm!"

We pulled a semi-dangerous u-turn and headed back to the sign. And there it was: BOWMAN'S TREE FARM. 

Brilliant.

We all cheered, and my mom looked at my dad. "How do you always find stuff like this?"

It was gorgeous Texas hill country, rolling green hills and trees filled with orange and yellow and brown leaves. We turned down a gravel road when we saw another Bowman's Tree Farm sign. My dad was nearing giddy with excitement at the thought of finding a hidden Christmas tree farm by accident.

We drove down the road until we came to our final turn. The iron gate was open, and the gravel driveway was lined with cedar trees. Or, I suppose I should say one side of the driveway was lined with cedar trees. 

On the other side, we saw this:

"Oh my gosh it's a nursery!" someone shouted. 

We all burst into laughter. The kind of laughter where people start snorting and crying.

What I can only assume to be the owner of the tree farm had come out of his house, and my dad drove up and leaned out the window. "Do you sell Christmas trees?"

Clearly, no.

"Naw," the man said. He was older, with thin gray hair and wearing overalls and work boots. 

"Well do you know where I could buy one?"

The old man scratched his chin. "Maybe Lowe's?"

At this, we burst into another round of laughter. Then, my brother leaned forward again. "Dad, ask him if he has cider."

My dad said later he almost asked about the cider but couldn't keep a straight face. "Okay," my dad said to the man. "Well we'll just turn around, then." The man stepped back inside, and by this point we were all dying laughing. DYING.

"Christmas. Tree. Farm. FAIL," said my dad between laughs as my mom wiped tears from her eyes.

So we turned around, drove back down the gravel road, and past the sign for Bowman Tree Farm. By this time we were all hungry, so we stopped at a taco shack for lunch. That's how, an hour and a half after we left the house, we found ourselves at Lowe's Garden Center five minutes from our house, picking out a Christmas tree.

We found one we liked, and my brother held it upright while my dad got on the ground and pretended to saw the bottom. Then we counted down and yelled "TIMBER!" and my brother dropped the tree to the floor. We applauded and laughed some more, and an older couple stopped in the aisle to stare at us.

And just in case you thought I was kidding about the whole shouting-timber-in-the-middle-of-Lowe's thing, I have pictures. You're welcome.

The lesson in all this? Bowman's Tree Farm sells baby trees.

You're better off going to Lowe's.

* * *

Does your family do fake or real trees? 

Have you ever gone to a tree farm and chopped down your own Christmas tree?

What is it with Boys and Pictures: Part 3

(See also: part 1 | part 2)

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I can't decide how I feel about the fact that my thoughts on boys and pictures now has a part 3. Maybe a little sad that it's come to this. 

Enter: Case study #572 on boys and pictures

Last weekend, as previously mentioned, Jordan and I were in Springfield, IL, for a wedding. If you don't already know, Springfield is the location of the Abraham Lincoln museum and the place where Abraham Lincoln is buried. Pretty cool, no? Honest Abe. May he rest in peace.

I've been to the museum a few times now, school trips and such, but Jordan had never been, and since he's a huge history buff, I figured he'd appreciate hitting up the Lincoln tourist spots. 

We went to the museum and then headed over to the graveyard. It's hard to miss Lincoln's gravesite. That thing is large and in charge.

Out front there's a huge Lincoln bust, and I took the token tourist picture touching his nose. It's all shiny because so many people touch it. It's supposed to bring you good luck, so I'm waiting for that to kick in. Any time now...

Do you see me? How I'm smiling? That's how normal people take pictures. 

Or, you can be a boy and take a picture like this:

After we got home, I was showing Jordan the pictures from our trip, and when he saw this one he said, "That's what I looked like?"

"Yes."

"That's weird. I thought I was smiling."

Good grief. I have a serious problem on my hands if he honestly thought he was smiling. 

So again I ask: What is it with boys and pictures? I hope someone else has an answer, because I have no clue.

My Best Friend's Wedding: Justine & Curtis

Is it weird to anyone else to think about bloggers having real lives outside their blog? Like, I know you all have lives outside your blogs, but for some reason when I see pictures of bloggers hanging out with their friends, it always takes me a minute because I'm like, "Oh yeah, they have real life friends!" I don't know if that even makes sense.

Anyway, the whole point of saying that was to say what I'm about to say, which is that last weekend Jordan and I spent the weekend at a wedding of one of my best friends, of which I was a bridesmaid. 

You may remember Justine as the maid of honor in my wedding.

I surprised myself and didn't take too many pictures over the weekend. However, here are a few, mostly for the benefit of Justine, who is currently on her honeymoon in Hawaii but will be back soon and will want to see a few pictures before she can get the real ones back from her photographer.

This first one's just for fun. Justine and her niece, the flower girl. Crazy kid.

This was bridesmaid appearance #3 for me. It's so fun being behind the scenes with the wedding festivities!