a little family photo shoot

thanks amy jo for the most beautiful pictures! i'm so happy you caught these simple moments. our first officially family photo shoot as a little family of 3!!!! loved being able to include our little bug in these photos. i was 13 weeks along when we took these. 

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! 

amy jo royall photography

have you ever met someone that you just immediately know you were meant to be friends? that some how you think the same, act the same and can agree on almost everything? 

thats how i felt when i met amy jo. now if you have met amy jo you know what i am talking about. she is one of the most uplifting, happy, inspiring and beautiful people on this earth. i am so grateful to call her my friend. she has been just what i have needed these last couple of months. 

now not only is amy jo amazing she is an incredibly talented photographer. long story short i actually discovered amy jo before i knew amy jo. i'm one of those weird people that looks for new photographers before she moved to chicago....haha i know! i ran across amy jo's website and fell in love. over time i discovered that we had mutual friends in chicago. but i was too much of a chicken to say anything to her.

fast forward a couple of months....amy jo and her husband moved just a couple of blocks from us. we've been fast friends ever since. when we found out we were expecting i wanted some pictures. amy jo was on board and i couldn't be more excited.

i'll post some more of those pictures later but i wanted to show off some she took of our family room. i love how she can make a family room look beautiful. i also love that i get to keep these pictures forever and have a reminder of our favorite chicago apartment. i just wish i would have had her take pictures of our old place. 

thanks amy jo for making our little home look beautiful! now i just need to clean my bedroom and kitchen so you can come back and document those!!!

our photo wall....i had too may pictures to share and not enough wall space! thank you ikea shelves

love our over stuffed game baskets. we are just game people i guess

thanks to my beautiful mother i have the most perfect fabric for my windows....now i just need to finish the last 3.

so random but i am in love with our brick walls. i didn't realize how much i wanted some until we started looking at new places.

our glider for the baby. we bought this before we moved to chicago. i can't wait to finally have a baby to rock in it!

a little birthday celebration!

so even though the mr. had a big ol' scary test today, and was maybe studying all day on his birthday, we still found time to celebrate. we had some friends over for dinner and dessert to welcome spence into this 27th year. we had a blast eating way too much, playing games, and catching up after everyones summer break.  the mr was spoiled with lots of love. 

my mr has a thing for brownies and ice cream. every year since we've been married i've made this for his birthday dessert. one year i attempted a cake as well but he said he liked the brownies and ice cream better ;-) 

love the great blowing out the candles pictures! 

of course we had to get a group photo! i personally love the funny picture the best. dan was mid throw of baby linc....too bad our self timing was off. 

i sure love my mr. and i sure love celebrating him. and even more i love celebrating for days. we have big plans for dinner out just the two of us tonight to continue the celebration! 

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.....

2.5 years // awesome

today is a great day

today marks the mr. and mrs. 2.5 years of marriage
we're celebrating big today

because maybe we really didn't celebrate at our 2 year mark.

celebrations started with this AMAZING parking spot. okay so may seem simple to you but be excited. we got princess parking with this baby. our car right outside our gate = happiness. i'm never moving the car.

okay so maybe that was just how the mrs. was celebrating.

tonight we're dressing up
and going out on the town
reservations at a super fancy place downtown
and we may only order dessert
because it's our anniversary
and we can

 ........................................................................................

husband.
happy 2.5 wonderful years of marriage. i couldn't have imagined how incredible being married to you has been. you are my everything. you are my best friend. you are my forever love. you are more than i ever thought i could want.

thanks for putting up with me. for taking care of me. for everything.

i love you to the moon and back (twice).

see you tonight!

field museum day

tuesday i played hooky from work for a bit

don't worry i made up the time later...one HUGE benefit of working from home

nicole and i decided to head to the field museum.  all the museum's in chicago offer free days for il residents. good thing i'm now a resident. one perk of big city living...always something fun to do

good thing we choose the coldest day of the year (actually coldest day in the past few years)

it seemed everybody else was staying indoors. it was so nice not worrying about all the people

this little dude was my buddy all day. 

isn't he the cutest thing around!

i'm not sure what it was about this book but i feel in love. i told the mr. we have to buy one when we have kids.

 i love how in this picture neither of us is looking at the camera. haha gotta love self portraits!

no words needed! pure awesomeness

oh and afterwords we went to the beach!

oh wait...we live in chicago. we don't have things like this here! even though it was fake, the field museum beach area made me feel warmer. oh gosh how badly i want to live in cali!

the museum itself was beautiful. it was such a fun building. i loved just walking around this big place.

gotta love "sue". she was HUGE. i know i'm small but seriously...i look tiny. i can't imagine one of these walking around.

seriously had a blast going back millions of years in history. i am a big museum fan but hate spending the money. i think free museum days are going to be my new best friend! 

brining in the holiday cheer // christmas in chicago

we bought the holiday cheer this weekend big time

friday night we hung out with dan and nicole and explored some uptown neighborhoods 

it was christmas time in the city

and i loved every min. of it

first stop was our favorite bakery

they had a choir caroling and were offering free goods 

i think i ate my weight in their amazing butter rolls

second stop was andersonville

which is quickly becoming my favorite part of the city

we ran in and out of stores

exploring and finding new fun ways to keep ourselves entertained

we even spotted santa!!!

dan couldn't contain his excitement about the woolly mammoth 

a dream of a store we pass every sunday on our way to church

nicole and i were too freaked out to go inside

so we hung out outside with this champ and let the boys do the exploring!

 we spent the rest of the night at....drum roll please

an ice cream shoppe

yep, we found our first legit ice cream place in chicago

it was a big night for the b. family

we LOVE us some ice cream and finding a good place for it was a big score

check out their hot coco list

man we were in heaven

 we had a great night with great friends

how fun it is to just hang out and explore some new areas

there is always something going on in this city

especially at christmas time

i couldn't be happier

saturday we spent the day cleaning

and i mean a good deep clean

that our poor little house badly needed

we finished off the day with christmas vacation

thanks dan and nicole for showing spence what he has been missing

(seriously my husband had never seen it...is that possible?)

how was your weekend?

throwback thursday...summer lovin'

so it's not a long time ago but i'm missing summer today.
the weather was so great last night that both spence and i could taste relaxing summer nights.
back in july we went to st. geezy with our besties! i was so excited to hang out with mj and parks for the weekend.

of course we went and saw aladdin. and seriously was not disappointed. the show was fantastic. i loved the little changes they did and the music they added!

i love how spence has a normal smile. parks and meh are so meant to be together forever!

it was hot but the night ended up cooling off which was nice!

check out our sweet glasses. i loved that part of the show was in 3d. seriously...how they did it blew my mind. i never thought a musical in 3d would be possible let alone awesome!

us right before we took off for home!

our cute best friends!!!

we spent the weekend eating, laughing, playing games and just hanging out. it was such a blast being with partks and mj before we moved. they will always be our best friends! can't wait till the day when we have lots of monies and our weekend trips can be to hawaii or something awesome like that.

can't wait to summer 2013....only 8 months to go..haha!