Catch Up

A few recent highlights that I haven’t had a chance to highlight until now:

TIFFANIE’S VISIT
One of my favorite parts of moving to the Chicago area is living close to  several of my girlfriends from Taylor University. We like to get together for lunches, games, crafternoons, dinners, and great conversations, sometimes with husbands and kids, sometimes just us girls. We had a girls’ night planned for the first weekend of March; Tiffanie (another TU friend who happens to live far too far away in VA) had the fantastic idea to “crash” the dinner! She and I threw together last minute plans for her to fly to Chicago, surprise everyone at the dinner, and then  stay at my house. It was great! Everyone was so surprised and excited—Tiffanie has that effect on people. Tiffanie is the kind of friend who shows up wearing the same outfit as me and bearing all the seasons of the Gilmore Girls for me to borrow. She’s a gem! Of course, Allie was totally charmed with our house guest. We loved having her around!

NANA ALICE’S VISIT
In mid-March, Nana Alice came up from Tennessee to spend a few days with us before Seth and I left for Vegas. Allison starts smiling and giggling as soon as Nana shows up, because Nana is so much fun! She’s very good at introducing songs and games and things to do that Mom and Dad haven’t thought of. It was hard for us to leave Allie behind – our first time apart and for four whole days! – but we knew how much love and fun she would have while we were gone. And she did!

LAS VEGAS
Seth’s company sent him to a technology/web development conference in Las Vegas and I tagged along. As I said, it was hard to leave Allie, but I knew she was in very capable hands. It turned out to be a wonderfully relaxing and fun vacation for me. The best part was the weather: 70s, blue skies, and gorgeous! After weeks and weeks of snow on the ground, it was like being dropped right into summer and I loved it! I slept in, read, journaled, walked around, window shopped, sat out in the sun, and  generally just enjoyed not having any responsibilities. We stayed at the Luxor, which is based on an Egyptian pyramid. It actually had several things in common with the actual Egypt: it seems pretty cool at first glance, but things are darker, dingier, and more chaotic once you’re inside. At least that was my experience when I spent two months in Egypt back in 2001, but that’s another story. Luckily, the Luxor is connected by a shopping mall to Mandalay Bay, a brighter, nicer area with better restaurants and places to spend time.

I think we expected to not like Vegas – you know, Sin City and all. And while it’s not a place I’d go back to again and again, we had a better time there than we expected. We took a long walk up the strip, looking into the fancy-pants lobbies of the big hotels and casinos, ate at some delicious restaurants, went to a show (the very entertaining Beatles’ Love by Cirque du Soleil), and watched old movies on TV. Things are definitely flashy and overpriced and there is certainly a very dark side to the city, but we still enjoyed ourselves. Well, I guess it was mostly me, because Seth did have a conference to attend all day long (with occasional work things on some evenings).

It was a nice mini-vacation, but we were so happy to come home to our smiley little bundle of joy. And she was very excited to see us!

Consider yourselves caught up.