July 4th Weekend
Since the website was down over the weekend, we weren’t able to make any posts…so here it is all at once.
We had lots of company this weekend. Joey Houle and his wife, Kristin, and their two daughters Tatelyn and Teryn were up visiting from Bismarck, ND. We hadn’t seen them since our wedding, so it was great to see them. I hadn’t seen the baby since she was born, so it was fun to meet her. They flew in on Friday morning. The sun was out and it was about a million degrees outside, so we spent the afternoon down at the beach. Tatelyn had fun playing in the water…so did Joey.
My uncle Karl, his wife Judy, and my cousin Katherine from Texas stopped by on Saturday and joined us for a some sun at Lake Michigan. I hadn’t seen my uncle since my 1997…he hasn’t changed a bit! My cousin Katherine is almost two, she is such a sweetie.
That afternoon we packed up the family and took the train to Chicago. We went to Millenium Park. While we were there, I bumped into my highschool classmate, Thea Rothmann and her husband, Guy. They are currently living in Maine and just happened to be in Chicago that day…what are the odds?? It was good to see them and catch up a little.
We decided to go to the “Taste of Chicago”. Basically, it is like a big food fest. There were roughly a million people there. I think we ran into each one of them at some point. We didn’t stay too long as the body order was so strong we thought the kids might get sick.
Everyone we came into contact with agreed that Tatelyn and Teryn Houle are the cutest kids in the world.
Alex Klingbeil and his fiance Brienna flew in on Sunday morning. We all went to dinner at our favorite restaurant in town, Franchescas and for dessert we headed down to the beach and made smores. Thomas, Alex, and Brienna took a late night dip in the lake.
The next day (Monday) we all went to brunch and shortly afterwards it was time for the Houles to pack up and head to the airport. So Thomas, Alex, and Brienna and I hopped the train to Chicago. We decided to meet Sarah, Thomas’s cousin, and her friends at the “Taste of Chicago”…we hadn’t had enough I guess. It was a good time:) The funnel cake (a.k.a. elephant ears) were worth it!
Afterwards we all went to Millenium Park and watched the Macy’s Fireworks Production, which was unbelievable.
On Tuesday, we went to the Lake Bluff parade…the longest parade imaginable. It was pretty cool. We layed low and hit the Lake Forest Fireworks that evening. It was so much fun spending time with Alex and Brienna.
Oh and July 3rd was our 2 year anniversary! Thomas was pretty good this year, so I guess I’ll think about keeping him for another year :-)
Here are some pictures!
Call Tom...
Hey…..my phone’s screen went dead…I lost all my numbers. Please call me sometime so I can store your # again…
On a sidenote…I found this application which will sync your phone’s address book with your Yahoo! contacts…for free. Pretty nifty…if only I had used it when I bookmarked it last week…..sigh….
Carving watermelons is now cool
I have found a new hobby.
In my down-time, I will be practicing this.
Roof Top Patios
This past weekend Thomas and I went to Minneapolis to visit John and Kris. They took us out to two awesome restaurant/bars that had roof top patios, Stella’s and Brit’s Pub. It was awesome. Brit’s even had lawn bowling, but they were booked up for the night, so we didn’t get to play. The weather was great and the views of the city were amazing from the roof.
Here are a few pics.
John's Surprise 30th Birthday Party
We were in Minneapolis for Thomas’s brother John’s surprise 30th birthday party on Saturday. They had a catered pig roast with all the fixings, which was incredible. It was a great surprise! We were able to see a lot of friends and relatives.
Here are a few pictures.
We're back up...
It’s been a long weekend…especially considering you probably can’t tell that much was done to the site or our server. However…the hard drive on our server went bad so we essentially had to set up the whole server from scratch and then restore the data we recovered.
Since we were in the ‘thick’ of it, we decided to update a lot of the software that powers the site also. We will do our best to get all of the old posts & pictures over without breaking any links, but this is a little trickier than it may sound. The photos have not been restored yet…but we are working on it & will let you know as soon as that area of the site is back up.
For those of you that check out the site frequently and have noticed it has been down or very slow lately, know you know why. The changes made this weekend should make the site much more reliable…and hopefully faster.
Let us know if you can tell a difference…
Three New Restuarants
Yesterday afternoon, Thomas and I took the train down to Chicago and tried out not one, not two, but three new restuarants!
We started out in “Greek Town” and had lunch at this place called Santorini. We originally were wanting to go to a restaurant called Pegasus but when we got there we found out the patio didn’t open until four o’clock and we really wanted to sit outside. The restaurant Santorini (the name somewhat ironic, being we are going to take a trip to the island of Santorini next month) was right next door and had an open patio so we gave it a try. It was very yummy.
After lunch we started to walk around a little and it began to sprinkle, so we went back to the restauarant Pegasus, which had been recommended to us and had some dessert and drinks. We stayed there for the better part of the afternoon.
By now it was getting close to dinner time, and we had heard that Frontera Grill was suppose to be a pretty cool place. It was packed! There was an hour and half wait for a table in the restaurant portion, so we decided to go into the bar area and just as we went it, a couple was leaving their table, so we were able to grab a seat right away and enjoyed some Mexican appetizers and drinks. We let a nice couple from Oklahoma share our table and had fun chatting with them.
We ate SO much good food that our pants are a little snug today…but it was worth it :-)
The Price One Pays to Stay Cool
Last evening I noticed the air conditioning didn’t feel as cool as it normally does…I checked the thermostat and sure enough it wasn’t staying at the temperature I set it for…so this morning I called to get it serviced. When the tech came out, I showed him to the closet where the A/C was. He then asked me where the main unit was…at this point I was thinking-Whoa, who is this guy…I pointed and said your looking at it. He shot me the look that I had just shot him, probably thinking to himself that he was dealing with a real moron. He proceeded to tell me that it was probably on the roof of the condominium and asked if we could go up there and take a look. Being that I am not an avid visitor to the roof I went across the hall and knocked on my neighbors door, luckily she was home, and she gave me the number of the maintenance guy for the condo. I called him and told him the situation and he met me and the tech in the lobby and showed us how to get up there. We took the elevator to the 3rd floor and then went to the stair way and had to climb through this little hatch to get onto the top. The opening for this hatch was tiny…it felt like an opening one would have in at attic. The ladder to the hatch only went up so far and then you had to hoist yourself up the rest of the way using your sheer strength…this was somewhat difficult for me… I was concerned with what the tech must be thinking as he was watching me trying to project myself through this hole, I am sure he was laughing inside, I damn near started to but thought if I did I would get weak and have to start at the bottom again. Anyways, we made it to the roof which was just redone and painted white- this is about 11:30 am so the sun was so bright as it reflected off the roof, that I had to squint, only really using one eye at all times…did I tell you it was 90 degrees outside…well we walk across the roof which is filled with air conditioners- literally at least 100, so we hunted for the one that matched up with our unit. Now the roof isn’t just one flat surface, it has different platforms if you will, so we would go across one level and then down a ladder to the next and so forth in search of this air conditioner, all the while with one slit of an eye to look through and sweating to beat hell. As we are on our quest, we pass all different makes and models of A/Cs- the tech pointed out one really old one, and said hopefully yours doesn’t look like this one…guess what…ours was identical! Close to 30 years old I come to find out. The tech opens it up to run his test only to find two hornets nests inside- now there are bees galore all around us- he runs, so do I. We hang out on the roof together plotting our next move, squinting and sweating. He gets the courage to go try and swat away the hornets nests- that works- there aren’t as many bees hovering around the unit now, so he does his thing and then tells me the wonderful news. I was so glad, I really wanted a new air conditioner, one that I didn’t even know I had, for on top of the roof…I call Thomas at work give him the news, he was ecstatic as well. We are so lucky sometimes…well they came back in the afternoon to install the new unit- they ran into problems…yep…don’t they always. Well come 7 o’clock, they report that they will have to come back in the morning to finish…yeah that’s cool we say, we like to sweat, I am thinking this might be good for my weight loss…it’s 8:21 and I’m HOT…Thomas is STEAMING…I try to keep positive humming the tune from the movie “Annie”…you all know it, “Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow, your only a day away!”
Tomorrow we will be cool and it will only have cost us 4 G’s…man…did I mention how pumped we are?
Baron's 1st Birthday
Last Saturday Thomas and I went to Baron’s 1st Birthday Party. It was a lot of fun.
Click here for some more pictures of the little guy. When you get to the flickr website, choose view slideshow in the upper right corner.
Enjoy!
Photo Update
If you have been checking out the site recently, you may have had issues with viewing the photos. We were using an older version of the web applicaiton called Gallery. Some of you commented on the length of time it took for the photos to load…so we have switched to a new photo web application called Flickr. By switching to Flickr the pictures load super fast because they are actually hosted on Flickr (which is owned by Yahoo…they have a wee bit more space than our server at home).
I have uploaded our photos from the month of July and modified the links in the July blog posts. So if you read a post during this month and were unable to or didn’t want to spend the time waiting for the photos to upload, give it a try now.
We still have broken photo links on the posts prior to July, but I will continue to work on modifiying those too. It may take a while, but soon they will all work again.
So far the switch to Flickr has been positive for us. Let us know what you think!
FARKLE...
This weekend Thomas’s brother John and his wife Kris came to visit. They taught us how to play this game called Farkle. You play with 6 di and each roll combination is equivalent to a certain number of points depending upon what is rolled. You play to 10,000. It is a LOT of fun! We had a few intense games of that before we pulled out the cards and played a few games of Pafrance…another fun game! We had a great time and can’t wait to see them again…hopefully it won’t take another YEAR for them to come for another visit (hint…hint)! :-)