things have gotten super weird.

Well, things have gotten super weird since I last posted. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I assume you've been taken captive by minions and locked in an underground freezer for the last couple of weeks. I don't know about you, but I daily bounce between THIS IS THE END OF THE WORLD to It's fine. We are fine. This will be fine.

I told Jordan that God has answered my prayer about being a stay-at-home mom in a really strange way. I've been thrust into the SAHM life with three small children, and all I can say is that I'm taking it one day at a time. I would be lying if I didn't say that selfishly (completely selfishly, I know), I'm really upset that this whole thing has in one sense completely ruined my entire maternity leave.

Instead of lazy mornings cuddling my newborn, zoo trips, and mid-day playdate with friends--all things I cannot do during a normal work week--I'm trapped in my house, running around like a crazed chicken drowning in dishes and pretzel crumbs. I can't even go to the playground! So we are taking off our clothes and painting, and I'm trying to be calm, but this kind of activity stresses. me. out. Anyone else? No chill with messes over here.

There are a lot of sad things happening right now, and one of those is the fact that women giving birth are only allowed one support person in the hospital (their partner), and in some states now I'm seeing that they aren't allowing anyone at all. There is no right answer. I actually get why they are wanting to do this. With limited protective equipment such as masks, it really is important to limit the spread and the amount of people entering the hospital, both for the sake of the medical staff and any sick patients. But that doesn't change the fact that it's heartbreaking for any mama preparing to give birth, and I honestly can't imagine not being able to have even my husband in the room with me to witness the birth of his child.

I love the photos from our Fresh 48 hospital session after F was born, and I'm now even more grateful we had those taken since if I was giving birth now, it wouldn't be allowed! I printed a few on canvases for the nursery and hung them above the crib, and I am just so extra thankful to have them.

Another sad fallout from all of this (again, among so many sad things) is for brides who have been planning weddings for months that they are having to postpone. My little sister was nearly one of those! She has been planning her March wedding for over a year, and her Dallas venue was closed and the governor of Texas was implementing shelter in place. Long story short, they decided they weren't postponing and were going to get married one way or the other. In just under a week they moved the wedding date up, changed venues, cut the guest list, and got married! 

My mom called me at 2pm and said, "Your sister is getting married tomorrow, can you guys get down here?" I immediately put on a movie for the big kids (thankfully F was napping!) and ran around the house frantically for the next two hours packing and cleaning. Why does adding one small baby to the car mean adding 800 more bags? Good grief. At 6:00 we loaded up the mini van and took our first road trip to Texas as a family of five. 

The kids did great in the car and at the wedding. R was the sweetest flower girl, J wore the cutest vest, and I carried F in the Moby wrap and no one touched him all night. I'm so so thankful they were able to get married before all of this craziness really started spiraling.

The bright side to being at home all day is that after almost a full year of "potty training," J has decided he wants to go to the potty on his own without me having to prompt him every 45-60 minutes all day long. I don't know what changed, but it's like a flip was switched and now he's all, "Leave me alone. I do it by myself." God bless him. He's still having a few accidents here and there, but in general I feel like I can finally see the light at the end of the pull-up tunnel.

F is almost six weeks old and the sweetest ever. We think he looks more like R than J, but he does have a look all his own. He's not really on a schedule yet, mostly because I'm too preoccupied and busy with the older two to pay attention to what time he's eating or how long he's napping. But he's gaining weight and working on tummy time, and that's really all that matters. He weighed 8lbs 6oz at birth, and at his one-month checkup he was 10lbs 10oz!

When I was nursing R, I was obsessed with getting her on a schedule and keeping track of how long she was eating on each side. I had an app with a timer and a notepad and everything. I really appreciate the perspective and, in some ways, chill that comes from having more than one kid. I think back to those early days with R and LOL at my crazy self. I feel so much less stress about all of the baby things, and it's really nice, especially since these days I have so much else to stress out about!

Since we can't go the park or the zoo or science museum, etc. (and it's SO sad because R has started asking about why we can't go places; she currently thinks everything is "closed because it's being cleaned"), I've been trying to get outside as much as possible. It rained pretty much all day for over a week straight, which is very strange for Oklahoma weather, so that was a bummer, but lately we've been getting out for walks, and earlier this week I got our splash pad out of storage from last summer. The kids were pumped. Vitamin D really is good for the soul.

I honestly wish I had more time to blog because I have tons of photos I want to share, and I feel the hole in my creativity lately... unless you count trying to creatively think of ways to keep two small children entertained all day long or how to creatively use our food to minimize trips to the grocery store. I have just a few weeks left of maternity leave, and I'm honestly just trying to take one day at a time. The Bible says that each day has enough trouble of its own, and I don't know if I've ever felt that so strongly as I have the last few weeks.

I hope you are well, friends. 
Wash your hands. Hug your husband and your kids. 
Stay home.

The Mimmo Caddy: Solving the "My Car is a Hot Mess" Problem

I received a product for free in exchange for this review.

A few months ago I saw a blogger I follow post about the company Mollie Ollie and specifically their Mimmo Caddy. It has a number of different functions, but I personally thought it looked like the perfect thing to keep in my car for general trips and also our longer drives to Texas. I reached out, and they kindly sent me a Mimmo Caddy to review. Excuse me while I'm awkward need R to get in the photo with me ;)

Before I go any further and you start skimming (I see you), I wanted to let you know that they are having a Prime Day Sale! Today and tomorrow (July 15 and 16) get 10% off 1, 20% off 2, or 30% off 3 of the Mimmo Caddy! If you miss that or don't want to buy right away, you can use the code 10LadyOkie for 10% off starting July 17 and going for 2 weeks.

What I love is that it stays in shape even when it's empty. There are velcro inserts, so you could keep them out and have an even larger center area, or you can have dividers like I did. 

I really like the outside zipper pocket, which has these elastic pieces to hold smaller items, maybe pens or nail clippers or just whatever you think you'll need. And the material is soft and chemical free! 

I'm thinking this will be great for our road trips to Texas and keeping handy in the car for being out and about. My little Ford Focus has treated us well, but that thing is a hot mess and needs all the help it can get.

For now I added a few diapers (actually pull-ups, because A Certain Someone is peeing in the potty holla!) and a thing of wipes, a set of extra clothes for each kid for emergencies, plus some books and a car toy. It will be great for keeping their water bottles handy and any snacks I pack for longer trips.

If you're interested in checking out the Mimmo Caddy for yourself, don't miss their Prime Sale July 15 and 16! Or, use the code 10LadyOkie for 10% off starting July 17 and running for 2 weeks. Thanks to Mollie Ollie for letting me try out their Mimmo Caddy!

sometimes our drive home from Texas takes an hour longer than it should

Hello, and welcome to the new week! I hope you had a great weekend. 

Thanks to everyone who left comments on my last blog post. I admit that I wasn't expecting it, but I read them all and appreciate the honesty and discussion. This year I've really cut back on blogging just out of lack of time mainly in this season of life, and lately I seem to only pop in when I have something more serious to share. I'm excited to get back to blogging about more fun life things too. It's something I've been thinking about lately, and I want to do more of it! Of course I'm not afraid to be serious, but I've been missing just hopping on here to write and share more casually. I'm grateful to all of you who take the time read, whether you've been following for years or just joined! 

We drove to Texas this weekend to celebrate my niece's first birthday. If it's a smooth trip without hitting construction or having to make extra stops, it takes about 3 hours exactly from our house to my parents. We make the drive every 6 weeks or so, sometimes sooner depending on what family events we have going on. A few times we've gone 2 weekends in a row, although that's for special circumstances. Sometimes our trips are really smooth, and sometimes they are a total disaster. Since having kids, our drives usually fall somewhere in the middle of those two extremes.

Our drive home this time was a disaster for so many reasons. We drove right into a huge rainstorm, and people were actually pulled over on the side of the road with hazard lights on waiting it out; we stopped at Whataburger to go to the bathroom and get some breakfast biscuits, and not only were the bathrooms out of order, but the biscuits took twenty minutes and were burnt and hard when we finally got them; we hit two spots of construction, and when we finally got through all of that, J had a giant poop explosion. 

We pulled into Braum's, and I could not believe they didn't have a changing table in the bathroom! But by then it was too late, and poop was literally falling out of his shorts (I found a little bit dried on my ankle later, I'm not kidding), so I changed him on the counter next to the sink. People kept coming out of the bathroom stall, and I'm like, "So sorry, there isn't a changing table in here." The positive side was that since I was right next to the soap dispenser I basically gave his legs a bath with wet towels and foam soap. I'm pretty sure I horrified a few people, but what restaurant doesn't have a changing table??? Has anyone else had this happen, and what did you do? Should I have changed him on the floor? So our little drive that's supposed to take 3 hours took just about 4. Hopefully we earned ourselves a few good trips coming up.

But we of course always love our time in Texas with family. My sweet niece had an adorable "One in a Melon" birthday pool party! So fun. J's birthday party is in a few weeks, and I need to start planning!

After we got back from Texas, J took a nap while R and I played. Then I took the kids on a walk. They are getting heavier to pull in our wagon! I kept asking R to look at me so I could take a picture, and she literally spun all the way around until her back was facing me. Ha! They both crack me up so much.

Hope you all have a great Monday with no bodily fluid explosions!

A Visit to Pioneer Woman's Restaurant

RIP, my blog, am I right? Ever since we came back from England, I have not been able to get into a rhythm. I can't seem to get my crap together in basically any area of life. 

You don't even want to know the weird meals we've been eating due to my lack of meal planning. More than once the past two months, Jordan's been like, "um... these things don't really go together..." THERE'S A VEGETABLE AND A PROTEIN JUST EAT IT. Never mind that the vegetable is a bag of microwavable steamed broccoli for the fourth day in a row because my children are both aliens and love broccoli. They eat it all and ask for more. I'm not going to ask any questions.

Anyway.

What I'm here to tell you about is not the fun times of my personal cooking life but about the super fun trip I took this past weekend to the Pioneer Woman restaurant and shop in Pawhuska, Oklahoma! 

Toddler Toys & Activities for Road Trips (other than an iPad!)

A few months ago I mentioned the idea of putting together a post of road trip activities and toys to keep toddlers entertained in the car, and I'm finally getting around to it! As most of you know by now, we travel 3 hours one way to Texas to visit my family every 6 weeks or so, sometimes more often when there's a special event. There have been a few times I've gone two weekends in a row! Although that is not my favorite because it makes for a hectic work week in between. 

Both R and J went to Texas for the first time around 6 weeks old and have been regular travelers up and down I-35 ever since. We also drove with R to Chicago when she was 11 months old, which is a 13-hour trip one way!

Two Texas Weekends

*affiliate links are used in this post

I don't know if any of you longtime blog readers have caught on to this, but I really don't like writing posts that are a collection of things. Blame it on my editor brain that I just can't seem to turn off, but I prefer each post to be About Something. It is for this reason that I find weekend recap posts to be for the most part very dull. Sorry if that offends anyone, but I'm just being honest. The other reason I don't like random posts is because I never know what to title them! And any good editor will tell you that titles are half the battle of getting anyone to actually read something (the first half of the battle being, of course, actual good writing).

Pumpkins and Other Things

Last night we went to a Protestant Reformation party. It's okay to be jealous. Hashtag my friends are cooler than your friends. I made homemade Luther bread from a recipe my friend found online, and it actually wasn't terrible and I ate the leftovers for breakfast this morning.

We were supposed to dress up, and Jordan and I wanted to go as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his finance Maria, but in true form we thought nothing about costumes until four hours before the party. I really want to be one of those people who is creative and fun for costume parties (and Halloween), but I'm just not. Jordan went to five stores looking for small wire-rimmed glasses, but since stores like to, you know, carry things that people in 2017 will actually buy, I told him not to expect much. In the end I just printed their faces out, and we carried their heads taped to straws. We wore black and white because photos from back then are usually in black and white. Effort.

Yes, I have a picture. You're welcome to pin it for later.

It's so fun seeing all the Halloween costumes people posted on social media. I normally don't care too much for Halloween or (gasp!) October (minus the weather because hiiiiiii), but this year I was totally into it. The pumpkins of all shapes, colors, sizes, and textures. The trunk-or-treating and the fall festivals. Plus seeing R in a busy bee costume and J as a cuddly lion was kind of the best thing ever. I bought both costumes at a consignment sale for $14 each, and we one hundred percent got our money's worth since we wore them multiple times!

I know November and December are magical months, but I was actually loving October this year and I'm sad to see it go. Plus November is my last month of working from home. The last four months have absolutely flown by.

This past weekend I took R and J to Texas to visit my parents. It was my second road trip with just the two of them by myself, and the drive there wasn't awesome, but we survived. It took a full hour longer than the usual three hours due to a diaper change, a nursing session, and a certain toddler who refused to keep her seatbelt buckled and kept undoing the chest strap and then getting her arms out and leaning forward. I had to stop five times to get her back in her seatbelt. Threats mean nothing because obviously while I'm driving I can't actually do anything to enforce my stern reprimands.

But.
We had such a lovely weekend! On Saturday we visited the pumpkin display at the Dallas Arboretum, which was a Wizard of Oz theme. We got there at 11 and stayed until 3:00! It was just gorgeous weather and both kids did pretty well. We had a stroller, but I ended up carrying J in the Ergo for the last hour or so.

Then on Sunday we went to my brother and sister-in-law's church in Fort Worth, where they were doing a trunk-or-treat! The trunks were legit, and most people were giving away full-size candy bars! It was gorgeous weather, so we stayed way past bedtime and I had a blast with my busy bee and little lion cub. Plus two of the cars were giving out books. Books! Best Halloween candy ever.

Our church had a fall festival on Tuesday for Halloween, but we ended up just staying at the Reformation Party (IT'S NOT NERDY IT'S COOL) and passing out candy to trick-or-treaters. R had such a blast. which was unexpected but adorable. She would stand at the door holding the bowl of candy and saying, "Here go, evbody." I'm a huge fan of this age where she's old enough to get excited about holidays but still too young to actually care about the mechanics of candy or gifts.

I think that's about all I've got for the moment. Thanks for checking in even though I'm a super sporadic blogger right now. I hope you had a lovely October, and happy November!

Crash Day

Last weekend I took R and J to Texas to visit my parents. Jordan stayed home for a couple different reasons, and I drove by myself three hours with both kids. It went well overall, and both of them slept  most of the way. There was one panic moment when I heard R say, "Mama, I beed," and I looked in the rearview mirror and saw blood dripping from her nose. She has nosebleeds sometimes, but I was in the middle of traffic on the highway and there wasn't any place to pull over. I reached in her backpack, which was in the passenger seat, and grabbed the first thing I could to give her to hold to her nose, which happened to be a pair of her (clean) underwear. (I keep underwear in her backpack now because we're potty training. I can't believe my baby is this big.)

I finally was able to pull over in a picnic area and cleaned her up, and the rest of the drive was uneventful. I always make sure to drive carefully once I get to their town, because I've gotten pulled over twice mere blocks from my parents' house, once for rolling a stop sign and once for going 23 in a 20 school speed zone. Clearly I shouldn't be given keys to motor vehicles with that kind of reckless driving.

We were in Texas Thursday to Sunday, and it was really nice to have some extended time to hang out with my family. They love my kids so much, and it makes me so happy. On Saturday I had what I'm calling a Crash Day. I woke up with the worst headache I've ever had--not quite migraine status but definitely worse than your average headache. I ended up sleeping the majority of the day and basically only woke up to eat, feed J, and I had one outing around lunchtime to visit a friend of mine from Saint Louis who happened to be in Dallas on business. My dad drove me to meet her because my mom didn't think I was fit to drive.

I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to make it home, but thankfully after taking about 6 naps on Saturday, I woke up on Sunday feeling almost back to normal. It was the strangest thing, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, but my mom just said she thought I needed to rest. "For the past month," she said, "you have added a full-time job to your schedule and taken away nothing at all. And,"--then there was a dramatic pause--"you've stopped taking naps." I told her I don't have time to take naps anymore, and she just stared at me. "You're exhausted. I want you to start taking naps again."

I've been thinking a lot this week about my schedule and our routine. I've gotten a few comments about how well I seem to be doing adjusting to two kids, and while I do feel like going from 1 kid to 2 has been so much easier than going from 0 to 1, my crash day has given me a lot to consider about how well I'm actually doing. The truth is, I'm still adjusting. I forget sometimes that I just had a baby three months ago, and that's a lifetime when you're awake yet again at 3am, but really it's nothing.

I'm not happy with the skin flab on my stomach, and although I can fit into most of my pre-pregnancy pants, I'm self-conscious about how most shirts fall on my stomach and end up rotating the same two shirts that I feel don't look terrible. I'm frustrated that I want to go running but I literally don't have the time right now unless I want to workout at an absurd hour like 4am, which I really just don't. I don't like that I haven't read a book in about five months. And I really, really don't like that I haven't been diligent about committing to a daily quiet time to pray and read my Bible.

I am a firm believer that people do have time to do a lot of the things they say they don't have time for. But sometimes it feels like I honestly, truly don't have to time to do all the things I want do to if I also want to sleep at least a few hours at night.

People talk a lot about giving themselves grace, but if I'm honest, I'm really bad at it. I am a bit of a perfectionist, and I can be pretty hard on myself. I try not to compare, I really do. But I see other moms with babies the same age as mine getting workouts in before their kids are awake or moms with more kids than me getting the family up and to church on time, and I just feel a bit defeated. Which sounds so silly and dumb. I KNOW.

I think being back at work has been harder and more tiring for me than I realized until I slept 90% of Saturday while my parents watched my kids. And Jordan helps. He's an awesome dad and husband. I don't want to act like I'm a single parent over here. But guys, I am terrible at delegating. I'm terrible at letting people help me. That's something I'm constantly working on.

Anyway. What is the point of this post? 

I have no idea. Except to say that I promised my mom I'd start taking naps again, and I have taken an afternoon nap every day this week so far, and it has felt amazing. Also, I took both my kids on a road trip to Texas for the weekend and survived (barely).

I'm trying to nail down some specific goals moving forward that will allow me to feel like I'm able to keep more things in my life without wearing myself thin. Here are a few I've got so far: I want to join a gym and go 2 nights a week, I'm thinking Tuesdays so I can watch This Is Us while I run on the treadmill. I want to be in bed by 10:00 at the latest every night (my mom is going to call me and say that's too late, but again, that's at the latest. Ideally 9:00). I want to be intentional about carving out time for more naps. I want to establish chores that Jordan and I each have.

And I really do want to give myself grace, so I'll have to work on that too.

So, um.... I intended to share some pictures from what we've been up to lately, and this mess came out. I don't even know.

Hope you all have a great weekend! Try to take a nap. My mom said so.

does it count as a "babymoon" if you bring your toddler?

Hello, I'm alive!

The funny thing about being off social media is that if I'm not posting anything on the socials and I'm not blogging, I am basically entirely off the grid. It's like I'm back in the dark ages of the '90s and I won't lie: I don't hate it. I need to increase the suspense factor in my life every once in a while, you know? Keeps things interesting.

My life has pretty much been go, go, go since last Friday, when Jordan, R, and I left town for a mini family vacation! I don't know if it technically counts as a "babymoon" if you bring your toddler along, but back in the beginning of the year I told Jordan that I wanted to take a long weekend and go on a family trip together before Baby Boy arrives and we have no money and no energy to travel ever again. My location requirements were as such: 1) somewhere I'd never been, 2) somewhere not crazy expensive (read: how we budget for travel), 3) somewhere within driving distance, which for this trip meant 6 hours or less (I'm not scared of the 16-hour road trip, but in this case we didn't want to waste an entire day in the car).

Ever since I moved to Oklahoma in 2009, all I keep hearing about is how everyone takes family trips to Branson, Missouri. It's apparently the place to go! At first I was hesitant about the idea because it felt too cliche, but it fit all of my vacation criteria, and the kicker was that our Sunday school teacher's mom has some kind of time share at the Hilton downtown, so our lodging was going to basically be free. And I'm not kidding; we stayed three nights at the Hilton in a nice big room with two beds and a balcony, plus free valet parking, and it cost us $25 TOTAL. Basically all we had to pay for during our vacation was food and gas! (And boy did we eat gooooood this trip. We've had a few lame experiences food-wise on previous trips, but that did not happen this time. I'm semi-nervous for my weigh-in at the baby doctor on Monday.)

We left Friday evening after work, drove 3 hours, and stayed the night at a hotel just on the other side of Arkansas. I had never been to Arkansas before, so I added a state to my list! I wanted to do that because then we only had a few hours left of our drive to Branson on Saturday, so we didn't feel rushed at all to get going in the morning. We ate breakfast at the hotel and then stopped mid-morning at a local park to let R run around for a bit. We ate tacos at this super hole-in-the-wall place in the middle of Arkansas (the name was literally the Taco Shack) and arrived in Branson around 3:00 that afternoon.

We were there Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and checked out Tuesday morning and drove the five hours back home. For some reason R stayed awake for the entire drive home and didn't even come close to falling asleep once, which we thought was weird but whatever. She got mad a few times but mostly just read books and drew pictures and pointed out body parts and made duck noises and then laughed at herself. 

At one point she started screaming, and when we asked her what was wrong she pointed to her bottom and said, "Pooooo," so we said, "Did you go poop?" She nodded and continued to scream, so we pulled off the toll road to check her diaper. (She had correctly identified a poopy diaper just a few hours before.) This time, however, it turns out she had just farted, which confuses her sometimes. Considering we paid 75 cents to get off the highway and another 75 cents to get on, that was one expensive fart.

When we finally got home around 3:00 in the afternoon, she refused to let us unbuckle her and just sat happily in her carseat watching us unload the car. She is weird and awesome, and I love it.

The vacation came at a perfect time, the weather was mostly wonderful, and it was kind of a slap in the face to go back to real life. Cooking dinner? Laundry? Work? What is this madness????

The post-vacation blues hit both Jordan and I hard on Wednesday morning when our alarm went off, and I haven't had time to go to the grocery store or put anything away because we've had things scheduled every night this week so far. But. It's almost the weekend, and I will hopefully have time to get myself in order and relax a bit. I'm certainly not complaining, but why does it always feel like you need a vacation from your vacation? (Possibly it has something to do with the fact that having a toddler on vacation is hardly what I would call relaxing, even if it does up the cuteness factor by 1,000%.)

I took a bunch of videos throughout the trip and am working on a travel video, so I'll share that when I finish. I've made a few travel videos (Bahamas, Virginia, and Chicago) and I think they are such a fun way to look back on our trip. I love having R around, but one thing that does make me sad is just that, especially when we are on trips, I've found it very hard to take pictures and videos like I used to, and I miss it. But I still did get some good stuff, so there's more to come from Branson!

Hope you all have a great weekend!

Whirlwind Weekend in Chicago

Last month, Jordan and I drove with R to Chicago to celebrate my grandpa's 80th birthday with my family. From Oklahoma, it is about a 13-hour drive. We have now flown with R multiple times (9, to be exact) and done a major road trip! She is one traveled baby.

I already shared the video I made with highlights of our weekend, but I wanted to make sure I shared some pictures too! It was an absolute crazy weekend, and we packed it in. I won't lie: it was stressful at times. Traveling with a baby adds a certain level of nutty that you can't really describe, but I feel like Jordan and I are getting better and better at going with the flow for the most part. Although I still have my moments, believe me.

^^^ Four generations! Doesn't my grandpa look good for 80?

We drove from Oklahoma to Rockford, where my grandparents live, on Saturday. We left at 3:30 in the morning and arrived right at dinner time. My grandparents make the best homemade ice cream. My grandpa used to own an antique store, so they have a lot of fun stuff, including this tandem bike! Jordan had never ridden one before, so we took it for a turn around the block, and he might have run us into a tree but it's not a metaphor for our marriage or anything so it's fine. It's FINE.

R did great on the 13-hour drive. Fantastic, really. Couldn't have asked for anything better. We had to stop every few hours to change her and eat, but she only cried when she was hungry or needed to be changed. It probably helped that both Jordan and I were sitting in the back seat with her. My brother drove the whole way and did a great job!

^^^ Sunday morning we drove into downtown Chicago to go to an afternoon Cubs game. First we checked into our hotel, and R had her first poop explosion. We stripped her down and gave her a bath in my grandparents' hotel room. Luckily, I had decided to wait to change her into her Cubs onesie, so the day was saved. Stellar mom move right there.

My uncle travels a lot and got us all the hookup with our hotel. The view of downtown was amazing, and R loved looking out the window.

It was so fun being back in Wrigley Field. Our seats were in the shade and there was a good breeze, so it definitely could have been worse for the middle of July. The Cubs lost 1-4, which was a bummer, but it was probably a good thing the game was short because R was getting fussy by the end, and we were all hungry for dinner. Pizza, of course!

R might have done well on the car ride, but she did not sleep well for either night, and Jordan and I were like zombie people. It would have been funny how terribly she slept if I wasn't too busy trying not to fall asleep while standing up. She woke up and cried all. night. long. both nights we were there, and it was as much fun as it sounds like.

Monday morning we woke up in the hotel and spent the day downtown. We walked over 22,200 steps. That's twenty-two THOUSAND steps, people. R, once again, did great! She was a trooper in the stroller all day, taking a few naps (ha! Because she was so tired from the lack of sleep during the night) and just people watching. 

Near the end of the day, we walked down Michigan Ave to Lake Michigan. We took R down to the water, and my brother looked over at me and said, "What's that on your shirt?" I smelled it and yep. Poop. It was all over my hands and down R's leg, and I ran across the sand back to Jordan so we could change her. Ah, memories.

^^^This photo does not even show everyone who was there for the Cubs game. It was a big group! You can't even see R sitting in the stroller sleeping.

I will spare you the rest of our pictures, but just know that I have tons more. It was a full weekend with lots of family, lots of walking, and lots of Chicago sightseeing. It's funny to me because I have been to Chicago so many times, and we always hit the major tourist spots like the Bean and Portillo's for lunch and Lake Michigan. All of those hold so many memories, so it makes it special to revisit those places even if they are "touristy." Plus, Millennium Park is where Jordan proposed.

I mentioned in this post about our terrible traveling experience home. Our flight was cancelled and then our new flight was delayed, and long story short we didn't get home to Oklahoma until the next day around noon. We immediately passed out when we got home for a few hours. Our weekend in Chicago was certainly was not relaxing in any way, but it was fun nonetheless, and I'm so glad we were all able to do it!

Chicago, thanks for the memories. I love you forever.
See my Chicago weekend travel video here.

p.s. Want to know how we budget for travel? Go here.

What city holds the most memories for you?
Do you go back to all the same spots when you're there or see new places?