a little lake geneva weekend

for christmas this year the mr and i decided to do an us gift for each other instead. we decided a weekend getaway was the perfect gift. lake geneva is just a couple of hours outside the city. it's beautiful and has some great resorts. we got a great deal on  a snowy weekend. we started counting down the days to the last weekend in january.

we packed up early afternoon on friday and enjoyed the drive up. it was fun driving through new little cities and really feeling like we were getting out.we stayed at the abbey resort in fontera. it's the cute little town on the west side of the lake. with all the snow this year the sleepy lake town looked dreamy. we quickly checked in and hit up one of the hotel restaurants for dinner. to my surprise they had coconut shrimp. i've been craving coconut shrimp since this time last year when i had some in detroit. 

anyway we spent the rest of the weekend relaxing, watching movies, reading, swimming in the beautiful heated pool, eating way too much, sleeping in, taking naps and a little studying for the mr.  it was the perfect weekend. friday night we got to join in as sarah opened her mission call (yay we're so excited for her). as sad as we were to be away from family being in a nice resort made up for it. 

saturday morning we woke up and decided to venture out to get breakfast. we found this hilarious little place in another town over. it felt like we were in some kind of igloo with whoville decorations. but the food was fantastic! 

all in all it was a great weekend. i think i could go to really love our new tradition of christmas presents! i can't wait to go up to lake geneva in the summer. i can only imagine how beautiful it is with the non-frozen water, boats and green! 

day date to the street fair

saturday was "edgefest". a little neighbor hood party in our new neighborhood. our friends bianca and greg live just a couple of blocks from us also in edgewater. so we decided to venture out and get to know our new home. 

i think both bianca and i had larger expectations. in my mind edgefest was a lot bigger and better. but we always have fun with bianca and greg around. there wasn't much to see or do so we just walked around, checked out a few little booths, listened to music and enjoyed the amazing back up dancers (hilarious i tell you). we had a blast just hanging out. even though edgefest wasn't what we expected we still had a good time. 

lovin' our hater blockers. as we can tell we are as cool as we look.....haha not! 

sorry for the phone pictures....i need to learn to take my camera with me. but here is the group. this was taken mid laugh. i thought the random lady taking the picture said something completely different than what she said. apparently i thought it was hilarious. 

we entertained ourselves with finger puppets. why not right? i think my favorite part about this picture is the fact that it focused in on the awkward couple behind us. she was helping him put on a new bracelet. spence was sad i didn't get him a bracelet. 

we finished the night all tucked into our office. the mr. studying and the mrs. planning her lesson. maybe next weekend we'll learn to do our work before late saturday night so we can play instead...haha...or not.

now we just need to find another awesome street fair to hit up this weekend. rib fest anyone.....

a little glazed and infused with a mix of art effects = perfect weekend morning

saturday morning we had a "free" morning. those don't happen all that often so we decided to take advantage. a little donut breakfast and exploring in lincoln park was our "touristy" thing for the week. i had heard a lot about glazed and infused and after some debating we decided to make the drive down. 

lincoln park is one of my favorite areas of chicago. if only we were rich and could afford to live there my life would be complete. i am also a huge sucker for a good donut. thanks to my dad for that one. we decided to share an old fashioned, seasonal glazed (sprinkles...yum), and the chocolate 3. the chocolate and old fashioned stole my heart. i couldn't decide which i liked better. spence really loved the glazed. but lets be honest...they were all fabulous and i am counting down the days until we can go back. 

after our oh so healthy breakfast we walked across the street to art effect. art effect was a "sydney" store. little homemade goodies, books, toys, home decor and cute clothes. i could have stayed there for hours. i am a sucker for cute stores with little things to look at. i think it would be a great place to pick up birthday gifts for friends and such. 

and of course i found my dream house. i almost bought the book on the spot. because lets be honest...it is my "style"...aka bright, colorful and a  bit classic chic. somehow i made it out of the store without anything. yay for our budget.

i should have taken a picture of us but we were in our saturday morning best....aka basketball shorts, sweatshirts and high pony's.

i have loved our little weekly adventures. we are really finding our favorite places in this city. our list is long but slowly we're going through it. there is just so much to see and explore in chicago. too bad most of the things on our list involve food....we're going to be big ol' fatties by the time we move. good thing we're starting insanity again!

weekends are my favorites. but somehow they seem to go too fast. i'm already planning our next weekly chicago adventure. come visit us...we have good donuts!!!!

rainy day quilting therapy

so sometimes i have really bad days. those days are usually associated with "that time of month" but lets be honest. a period stinks for anybody, let alone this girl who wants nothing more than to have no more periods (for at least 9 months anyway). needless to say i had a rough weekend. but i decided i wasn't going to let a little ol' period get me down. so a few months ago i decided to work on things i loved once a month (get where i'm going with this) to make me stop thinking about what a little period means.

this month my project was a quilt. it is a big project but a needed a big distraction. i have wanted to finish a quilt for so long now. mr's family are big quilters so i felt like i wasn't fitting in unless i was one as well. i have started way too many and decided it was time i finished one. i actually bought the fabric months ago but never could get around to getting all my sewing stuff out. this weekend was the perfect time. bring on the basket weave quilt. i hate cutting tiny little pieces so this was the perfect quilt for me. just long strips of fabric. i can handle that. 

i spent a couple of days cutting all my fabric and then yesterday decided to put together the quilt top. spence even joined in (and was a lot better at the weave than i was). it was a lot easier with two people. we actually had a blast working on this. we turned on the disney channel and just relaxed all afternoon/evening quilting. i uses this tutorial but made a few changes.

i wanted my quilt to be a bit larger. so i doubled everything. i also added another color. i used 2 yards of white fabric and a little less than 1 yard of each color fabric. i cut 21 long-way 2 inch strips of the white and 9 wide-way 2 inch strips of each color. i tried weaving one at a time but decided to pull all the white strips down and weave the color into the white. i taped down the white strips once i had them all pulled down. 

the weave took a bit longer than expected (about 2.5 hours) but i was making dinner in-between rows. like i said the mr helped so that was nice. he would weave and then i would go and "clean-up" the rows a bit. 

once we finally finished the weave i tapped everything down. now i have to go try and find freezer paper in chicago. why is it so hard to find crafty stuff in a big city??? for now the cute little top is just hanging out in our family room. 

i'm going to add a little navy boarder to make the quilt a bit bigger. then hopefully the backing fabric and binding will come so i can completely finish. this is the closest i've ever gotten to finishing a quilt. i guess i just needed a good heartbreaking period to get me motivated...haha! 

so yeah, maybe this weekend was hard. but it's okay. and honestly working on projects for just me make it a bit better. maybe i'm not making baby quilts, finding pregnancy workouts or deciding on nursery things but i'm growing in my own way. heck i just made a quilt top (a simple one but hey a quilt top nonetheless). working on this dang quilt made today so much easier to face! 

happy monday. hopefully by next monday i'll have a more updated quilt to show you!!!

oh the weekend

yay for friday. this weekend couldn't come at a better time. we have been so busy with school (for the mr.), work (for the mrs.), church, cleaning and everything else that takes over the week. we are excited for a beautiful weekend to relax and refocus a bit. this weekend is general conference for our church as well. one of our most favorite weekends of the year.

so excuse us a bit while we relax, learn, and enjoy a whole two days together. starting with the temple tonight. maybe we'll throw in a picnic on the beach tomorrow...considering chicago has finally decided to warm up. thanks chicago for thinking of us. 

happy weekend!!!!

a little weekend recap

this weekend was the start of the mr.'s first ever spring break. (yep byu didn't believe in spring break). sadly i think this is his last. dang northwestern for not really believing in spring break either. 

either way we were excited to celebrate. friday we went out and tried another deep dish place. since chicago is known for their deep dish we figured it was best we could compare them all and give our favorite. friday was lou malnait's night.

first off....i LOVED the location and the restaurant. such a fun vibe and atmosphere. it was loud but we were in the back and weren't bothered by the noise level. also, our wait was only like 15 mins which for a friday night was awesome.  

personally i think lou malnait's is my new favorite deep dish. i am a big crust girl and their butter crust won me over. spence on the other hand liked it but still put giordano's in first. i think we are up to 5 places now so if that tells you anything. 

of course we had to try the deep dish dessert. pazookie as we like to call them (maybe that's a utah thing???). anyway, it was fantastic. i think i would go back two times a week just for that.  don't mind my awkward pulled up'd hair. it was just one of those fridays. let's just say i was ready for a weekend.

saturday was a little more exciting. after running around all day we had the missionaries over for dinner with our sweet friend gina. i'll tell more of that story later. 

anyway....as it turns out this here mrs. left the gas on on the stove for about 1 hour. whoops! our neighbors noticed the smell and got worried. they called the fire department. love our chicago's finest. a few good things came out of this.... 1. we now know the fire dept. can make it to our place in about 1 min (awesome). 2. we met some of our neighbors that we didn't already know. so excited about this one. 3. the fire dept blamed the upstairs neighbors on the gas smell so we're still liked in our building. 4. the fire dept noticed that our street sign was pretty much impossible to read (meaning no one can find our place) and informed the city. now we have a nice new shiny sign. 

success....i would say so! 

sunday was a nice restful day. we dressed up in spring clothes because we are fighting the chicago weather. maybe if we pretend it's warm it will warm up....ha. church was wonderful as usual. we're now meeting in a school which is interesting (more on this later as well) but provides much entertainment. 

after church we rested and ended the night with dinner and great friends. i love our little chicago life. it may not be the exciting big city life that one would expect but it's ours and it's simply wonderful. i couldn't help but smile as i went to bed last night. we have a great place to live, fun places to explore and amazing friends who i didn't want to leave because we were having so much fun just chatting. 

 all in all a very successful weekend. now off to our official spring break....detroit here we come!

our weekend

our weekend was just perfect.

the mr. has been studying like crazy

he has yet another test next week (boo tests boo)

so friday he hit the books 

finally around 8 pm i coaxed him out of the study for a date night

we set up our air mattress 

turned off all the lights

lit some candles

and had ourselves a little "camp in"

i so wish i had taken pictures

my favorite part was roasting s'mores over our stove

just us two, sitting in the kitchen

eating our weight in chocolate

telling stories about when we were little

we feel asleep watching a movie

it was perfect

saturday the mr. hit the books again

i went to lunch with some girl friends (again wish i took pictures)

and then headed home to clean

this past week i have been trying really hard to keep our place clean

this is a new one for the mrs.

and let me just tell you it has been amazing

we then went out to a little med-school comedy show

it was fun (not great but good type of thing) but we honestly had more fun hanging out with dan and nicole.

so glad they are in this med school journey with us! 

and then i took some random pictures on my phone....

i think this week i'll work harder to take good pictures

on a real camera

with us doing real stuff....haha

maybe! 

 i have consumed more water this past month than i think i have in my entire life. i guess i just needed a free purple northwestern cup with a straw. dang wish i would have learned that trick years ago.

 discovered these beauties at the grocery store on friday. i knew it was only a mater of time before another company made the hostess look a-likes. now maybe i'll get the guts to try them out. i'm still heart broken about my ding dongs....

 me and my teddy. momma barfuss sent us this cuddly guy last week. yes i'm 24 and yes i still sleep with a teddy bear. spence's arm just isn't as soft. funny how you can see my little bear on our bed. thanks momma barfuss for mo (and yes we named him).

 a while ago momma heaton sent us this miracle in a bottle. this is something my mom has used in her cooking my whole life. for some reason i never discovered this goodness. so, after getting frustrated my food doesn't taste as good as hers she sent me this. this week we've been eating good!

our family room has looked like this every night this week. my new years resolution to keep our place clean is really working well (so far). check out kyle our space heater (yes i named him as well, but that was back during freshman year) we can't seem to keep warm so kyle follows us wherever we go!

oh happy weekend how we already miss you already!

a wisconsin style weekend

our weekend was simply perfect.

friday we dressed up and headed to wisconsin. i'd never been to wisconsin....so needless to say i was excited. we were invited to go hear elder nelson speak to a group of medical students up there. it was a great opportunity to hear from a hero in the medicine world as well as a hero in the mornon world. it was also nice to be around more lds students than we're used to.

dan and nicole let us carpool with them. how grateful we are for them and all they do for us!

 after the fireside we stopped at this whole in the wall mexican place. which was actually really yummy.  then we searched for the nearest cold stone. chicago doesn't have a cold stone....i think the people are a little too good for chain restaurants in chi-town.

spence and i LOVE cold stone so we were beyond excited to find one our way home.

 here are the boys! two best friends taking a night off from studying to eat ice cream...nothing better in the world!

 we ordered a rather large one to share. as you can see we were both so excited about having cold stone for the first time in months that we might have over done it. i did try and convince spence to get the really large party bowl. you know, so we could save some for later. this is what we got instead...sad face!

i went through my closet this week and decided to do some outfit mixing. here are my two new attempts for this week. i am not going to start a fashion blog but i wanted to share the mr's comments...
1st outfit "wow...thats bright. just a lot of color". i went with it anyway
2nd outfit "whats with the belt?" haha last year i wore this sweater and spence said it made me look wide...so the belt was supposed to combat that. guess his mind change in the past year!

anyway our weekend was just great.
saturday we drove some friends to the airport and i got to practice driving on the freeway here. i need all the practice i can get for when we get our car out here (hopefully in the next month). then i got to hang out with nicole and cute baby l for the day.

i sure love our chicago friends and truly consider them family! good thing little l. is warming up to his favorite aunt sydney. i have a feeling he's going to be my little buddy for a long time!

what did you do this weekend?

chicagoween

oh wow...how grateful and blessed we are for all of your sweet comments on my last blog post. we thought long and hard about posting that (i actually wrote it weeks ago) but are so humbled by the response. all the love and prayers have been felt. it really means so much to us! words cannot describe the feeling of love we have for all of you!

though this journey will be rough sometimes, all of the support and love makes it so much easier! thank you so much!

...........

we decided to do a little exploring this weekend. i had heard a bit about chicagoween at the frankenplaza (aka daley plaza). i was so excited to do something festive. we worked hard during the morning to get things done (homework for the mr. cleaning for the mrs.) and then bundled up to head downtown.

it was our first time at daley plaza. we're not in the loop much (we need to change that) so we were excited to explore a bit.

i'll be honest....i had big hopes for chicagoween. and let's be honest again....they were crushed. frankenplaza turned out to be a few halloween tents, some little kids, radio disney and some bitter cold wind. not much more than that.

they did turn the fountain orange...pretty cool i thought! we explored a bit and then decided it was just too cold. we hurried to the el and headed home.

even though chicagoween turned out to be a bust i sure loved just hanging out with my mr. it's fun exploring new areas of the city. maybe next adventure will be a bit more exciting!

happy monday!

the weekend update

this weekend was perfect. it's great to finally feel like chicago is home. we relaxed, ran errands, played with friends, visited new baby lincoln and just enjoyed being together. i did manage to take a couple of pictures.

lately the mr. has been more and more nay on the picture taking. i don' like this new side of him. i think he is embarrassed to look like a tourist in his own city. so....you get awesome pictures of me (not). but it's the best i could do.

friday we spent all day excited to meet new baby lincoln. our good friends dan and nicole texted us friday morning that they were at the hospital. finally later that day we got to go visit the new little family of 3. how special it was to be there with dan and nicole. of course baby lincoln was perfect. i'm kicking myself that i didn't get any pictures.

after we got home we rushed over to some friends to watch the byu game. we're grateful for our friends with real tv to share in the football goodness. i would have one sad mr. on my hands if we didn't have good friends to invite us to watch the games! (thanks alex and nate).

hey its us outside wrigley stadium. we were waiting for the bus and decided to snap a few pictures in front of the stadium.  even though we live just a couple of blocks away we still haven't gone to a game. slackers i know. we'll catch one in the spring for sure. 

saturday we ran a few errands and decided to head downtown to visit baby lincoln once again. (seriously i can't get enough of his little face). we did some window shopping and enjoyed the mobs of people. the ryder cup was this weekend and brought likes of fun to the city. 

of course i fell in love with these huge golf balls around the city. you can't see the whole thing but it says "chicago says hello".

we have been waiting for what seems like forever (or maybe just the two months we've lived here) for the niketown store to open up. spence was super excited to check it out.

so this picture....
me: "hey babe let's get a picture of you in niketown"
mr.: "okay sure"
me: "where do you want to take it"
mr: "i don't care"
me: "okay smile"
mr.: "syd there are people all around"

so this is our awkward picture while people were staring at us. the things this mrs. makes her mr. put up with.

me again....with another golf ball. love this one!

after walking around for a couple of hours we needed a break. we stumbled upon m burger. we didn't try the food (which looked awesome) but did get a dipped cone and shake (yep we got both).

we finished the weekend with some studying for the mr. the relief society general broadcast for the mrs. and two dessert nights with friends on sunday.

it's safe to say we are loving our new home and city living.  and always safe to say we love the weekends!

thoughts about being mr. and mrs.

so i saw this on another blog and i loved the idea. share some thoughts about marriage. sometimes i get too wrapped up in the next stage of our lives that i forget how awesome it is to be newlyweds. and yes....i am still considering us newlyweds (because i can!).

last night the mr. got home a little later than normal. or is it our new normal? i had dinner all ready for him. i made a new meal. i think i am finally falling in love with cooking and hopefully baking soon. i have a dear friend out here who is a great baker. i need to convince her to teach me her ways.

anyway...after dinner we relaxed a bit. watched some tv. i decided to "work out" during the commercial breaks.

side note: commercial breaks are a foreign thing for us. we are not used to live tv without dvr. last night i was watching something and spence got mad at me for not pausing it. i yelled back and informed him we are poor now and can't pause tv. haha one day we'll get used to it.

so my work outs are simple but the mr. joined he. he started playing copy cat with my dance stretches. first lesson learned. the mr. doing dance stretches is hilarious. second. he wants to be just like me :-)

at the end of the night we both crawled into bed. i was starving. the mr. decided to solve my problem. so instead of going to bed like we were planning on (or should have done) we both got bowls of cereal and ice cream and ate in bed while watching the voice on hulu.

sometimes staying up late chatting, picking favorite singers, and just being together is so much more fun than sleeping. one day we'll realize we need sleep (maybe when kids come). but for now can i just say how awesome it is to cuddle in bed with your best friend eating coco crispies and laughing at cee lo.

those are my thoughts today about being mr. and mrs.

the weekend

this weekend was nice.

we had big plans this weekend. but they changed. and thats okay.

the mr. took his first test on friday. i had made big plans to celebrate. but we had a little hiccup. and instead we stayed home. cuddled up on the couch. the mr. holding me because i was sad.

how did we go from me celebrating the mr. to him supporting me. all i can say friends is that i am so grateful for a kind loving husband and eternal marriage.

so saturday we tried again. this time with a little more success. we spent the morning cleaning (not part of the celebration but badly needed). and then ended the night with a big city date night. i didn't take any pictures though. maybe because i was just loving the mr. and mrs. time.

we finally saw the new batman movie. boy did i love it. more than i expected to. we ate soup. walked around navy pier. got lost. tried on really expensive (but urber warm) coats. and basically just fell more in love with each other. i'm finding we're doing that more and more lately.

sunday was spent with the kiddies at church, new friends, wonderful food and my space heater.

yep, chicago has officially decided to welcome in fall. i didn't expect the cold to come so early. and maybe have refused to turn on the heat this early. how is it that my only picture this weekend was of my toes and my space heater who i named kyle (back during freshman year people....i'm grown up now and don't name objects....maybe)

they say it will warm up a bit....let's hope "they" are right.

how was your weekend? hopefully a bit more exciting for you!

the weekend.

our weekend was perfect! i am falling in love with our big city more and more each day. mr. med school over here has been struggling with a cold. so friday night we stayed home and just rested. saturday we ventured up to the chicago temple with some friends. it was an early start but a prefect way to start our long weekend. the temple was so peaceful and beautiful. right as we walked in i felt at home. what a great blessing!

we were going to have a beach day after the temple but as you can see the weather decided to veto that idea.

loving the self portraits....we had a lot of those this weekend!

instead of the beach day we went to lunch with dan and nicole. how great it is to have such wonderful friends already. we tried the brownstone in north center. recommend by my good friend who used to live here. it was perfect, great food, good prices, and football for the boys.

thanks tara for the great recommendation!
we spent the rest of the day running errands and catching up on weekly things. aka homework for the mr. boo homework! i guess i'll have to get used to that idea.

sunday was again perfect. we are loving our ward here. meeting so many new friends. so great. sadly the cold got to me so the mr. and i spent a bit of time just cuddled up in our pj's.

labor day! what a good day for a break. with both of us struggling with colds we took things easy. slept in, watching a morning moving, ate a big breakfast and relaxed. we finally decided that we needed to get out of the house. it was the perfect day to hit up the beach.

we loaded up our bikes and made our way to the beach. i was so in love! the weather, water, and sand were just perfect.

check it out! i now live next to the beach. too bad it's freezing half of the year. good thing it was perfect yesterday though.

we walked hand in hand down the beach and just enjoyed being outside. we loved watching the little kiddos playing in the water. the heat was a lot easier to handle next to the water.

we took a pit stop to wait for our table for lunch. of course we kept ourselves entertained with "draw something" and self portraits.

i am so in love with this man!

sadly saying goodbye to our beach!

howie officially loves chicago. lakeshore drive is perfect for my cute bike. it was so nice to be out and about. i've been a little scared riding my bike because of bad traffic. yesterday was great practice and i think howie and i will be getting around a lot more!

last night dan and nicole invited us over for a great bbq. we had the most amazing ribs ever! yum. we spent the night talking, laughing, eating and just enjoying new friends.

the girls!

the goods. dan loaded us up with extras. i'm thinking lunch...holla!

it was a great relaxing weekend. we're slowing recovering and hopefully by tomorrow will be operating like normal. gotta love the late summer cold. at least we were able to enjoy a bit of our holiday.

ps. thanks to everyone for your sweet comments on my last post. it was just what i needed to get a fresh new look on life. i'm ready to try some new things and get out and serve!