St. Patrick's Day Parade & Da Bulls
How many drunk people can surround us in one day?

Chicago celebrates St Patrick's Day early-- the Saturday before the Holiday. So when Ryan's cousin Cameron decided to visit us that weekend, we were so excited to show him all that Chicago has to offer. Unfortunately the good came with the bad :)

Friday night we spent in Wicker Park walking through the boutiques & eating at Piece (BBQ and Mashed Potato Pizza=YUM!). We even got to spend some time with Shaniqua, one of my young women :)

Saturday we walked the entire city. From the Bean, to the Green River, to Grant Park for the Parade to River North to meet up with Cameron's old rommate for lunch. It was a little more challenging to get around with the extra thousands and thousands of crazy St Party's Fanatics flooding the streets. They were dressed in all kinds of Green-- it was awesome, but also smokey, yuck. Check out some of our good times below:

After a day of walking we rested up and hit up the United Center for the Jazz vs. Bulls game. The only time this year Ryan's team would be playing in Chicago. Sadly, the Jazz played terrible and the Bulls played spectacular so it was a rough night for Ry. We also had the pleasure of sitting in front of a group of 16 people there for someone's birthday... let's just say they couldn't hold their drinks or their tongues. The 2nd half of the game was much better after they got kicked out.

The highlight of the game was the halftime show when they honored the 1991 Team who won the World Championships -- Scottie Pippen and MJ were in the house.

Thanks for the great visit, Cameron!! Come again soon.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!
Chicago likes to really celebrate this holiday. 

For starters, they dye the RIVER green. Like lime green. Check it out.

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I had big plans to cook a traditional irish meal and make Shamrock Sugar cookies but I just don't think its going to happen this year. Enjoy the Holiday!

SLC
There are perks to serving a Mission in Salt Lake City. 

We were lucky enough to fly to Utah for a few days to attend a family wedding this week. The wedding was gorgeous and it was SO GREAT to spend time with our wonderful family. One of our favorite memories & the one I want to post about first is getting to see my my little brother, Matthew while he is serving in SLC! His new area is downtown SLC, so he got permission to meet us at the temple. He is such a stud & it was so great to get to see him, even if it was just for a few minutes!! We got lots of photos, but here is the one from Ryan's phone:

Also, here is an excerpt from his last letter:
The work is going well when we started working together on Wed we had no people on date and now we have two people on date for baptism. The work is really moving forward. Both were miracles. Last night i finally met Chanelle and wow she is prepared. She has been taught before and when we told her that she could be baptized in two weeks she was stoked!! Its truly amazing to see how the lord works and how he prepares people. My companion is young but amazing he is a great missionary and we are working hard. We get along great and work well together so its just a great fit. 

Yesterday in church they had a speaker fall through and asked me to speak last minute i didnt really know what to say until i stood at the pulpit and the spirit told me what to do. It was a faith building experience. I taught of Christ rejoiced in Christ and testified of Christ. I know it touched my heart and those who listened because the spirit was the speaker. What an amazing experience to be an instrument in the lords hands. I hope we all can have similar experiences this week.

i am going to see kiley at 12 and excited it will be great to see her. The work is going great and getting even better. We added 5 new investigators this last week. That is one per day since i came into the area what a miracle. It wasnt me but the lord. All i did was put for my faith. My companion did as well and we pushed each other. I cant wait for miracles to see because i know they are on their way.

March=Spring.

March 21 is the first day of spring. Well, we are only 2 short weeks away from that and it is NOT spring! On Saturday it was snowy and freezing and resembled nothing of Spring, so I decided to buy my own spring. Yes, I just said, BUY. I saw some Tulips and I just couldn't resist. They make my little heart smile every time I look at them. They remind me that Spring will come. One day.

Spring Tulips- Day 1

See how brutal it looks outside?

By Day 4 they totally opened up.

Don't you just hear them screaming "Hello, Spring!"

Loving these tulips. Can't wait to find Ranunculus at the store next ...

History.
So maybe we're a little nerdy on the weekends...

With our recent addiction to Netlflix, we looked up cool documentaries about Chicago. Unfortunately, we learned there really aren't that many to choose from. We found one about the early start of Chicago and rented it. Little did we know it was 4 discs!! Slowly but surely we made our way through each disc (disc 3 was by far the best) and we found ourselves learning so much about this city we live in. Such as, Who is Jane Adams? And why are there diagonal road all over the city? Also-- why is Little Italy, Little Italy, and what makes Greek town so Greek? Don't worry--- when you come to visit us we'll share ALL of this insider info with you.

We also got hooked up with a Museum Pass for the History Museum, so it was really cool to see some of this history we were learning about come to life. Check it out:

Ryan's favorite part of the museum was the dioramas. They are actually a part of history themselves--- they've been teaching about Chicago for 50 years!

The Great Chicago Fire.

One of my favorite parts of the museum-- a steam engine!!

Inside one of the original "L" cars!

A few other modern-day pieces were cool too:

MJ's shoes.

Life-size hot dog!

Gotta love a Chicago-style Hot Dog!

Welcome to our World:
A glimpse into Chicago mid-rise living. 

We get a lot of questions about what its like to live in Chicago; if we live in a high rise, and what it's like. Usually our first response is "well, we actually live in a mid-rise" -- which makes us sound even more like city-folk :)  See, a high rise in Chicago is considered 30-60+ stories tall. Our building is a mere 22 stories tall, so we don't quite make it to high rise status. We also live on the 9th floor, so we're not really all that high up. 

I've had lots of requests to post pictures of our place, and I've been reluctant for a few reasons: 
(1) My house is 99% of the time not photo-worthy. We live in a small space, and I work from home, which means we use every single inch of this small space each day. It's hard to keep it picked up, no matter how hard we try. 
(2) I'm still working on getting things how I like them. Why is it such a process? I'm not sure, but it is and I'd like to add/change a few things but haven't had the time or creative energy. 



This weekend we did a deep dive into our space and cleaned and organized and I just love how it feels. So I actually took a few pictures and thought I would share. 

Our Living Room/Dining Room.

Kitchen.

My Office- with a view!!

The Master (only) bedroom :)

View from the master.

Daily sunset views to the west.

 Our place is cozy but we always have room for visitors :)

OPRAH at HARPO Studios. 
A little dream come true. 

Ever since we moved to Chicago, I've been trying to get Oprah tickets. They are surprisingly hard to get (especially since it's her last season in Chicago). I wrote essays and applied multiple times for tickets but to no avail. I got busy with work and life and kind of gave up on going to see a taping of her show. To my surprise, a friend got tickets and invited me to go with her!!

We live just a short 5 blocks away from HARPO studios, so we walked over on Wednesday for the taping. I had no idea what the topic would be for the show, and I could not have been more pleased! The Show is "The Worlds Most Talented Kids" including a performance by Willow Smith (Will and Jada Smiths 10-year old daughter) who has an awesome single out "Whip your Hair" (see below). Willow rocks-- she is so confident. We also got a sweet bonus-- her parents came out behind the scenes to congratulate her, and wave hi to the audience! Sweet!

Other highlights of the show included:  

12 year old dancers D'Angelo and Amanda - I saw them first on "Live to Dance". They ended up winning the prize of $500k from the show, and were featured on Oprah for their amazing dancing skills. Check out their video below.



 Other highlights of the show include an 18 year old guitar genius. He would jam out in his basement--then one day his friends recorded him and put it on youtube. Within 3 days he has over 100,000 views. He played for us and I loved his sound. Hopefully he goes far in his music career. Oprah heard that Lenny Kravitz saw this kids' youtube video and thought he was good, so she asked Lenny to come to the show and meet this guy. The kid's facial expressions said it all when Lenny walked on stage and asked if he wanted to "jam" with him. It was awesome! The icing on the cake was the guitar that Lenny gave to him. 


Thanks Tiffany for inviting me to go to the Oprah Show with you!! I had a great time dancing and singing and watching in awe at these incredible young kids!!


Tune into the show on Tuesday March 1 if you want to see what I'm talking about.

What's your dream car?
Ours is a 2002 Nissan Xterra

But we still enjoy looking at cool cars at the Auto Show

We joined a couple of friends at the Chicago Car show the other night. It was really fun to see some new concept cars that seemed to be a little "out there". It was also great to see new cars out on the sales floors and the cool test tracks throughout the convention center. We saw some awesome stuff, but one of our favorite things was playing the race car game on the Kinect. It was awesome! Ryan won the highest score of the day. Great job, babe!! We walked away exhausted and drove home happy in the Xterra. 

Do you want this to be your minivan?

Do you want to be a "car girl"?

Ryan's new dream car.

Ok for real, this is Ryan's dream car :)

This is for Nic!!

Also for you, Nic!

 

I Love V-Day.
Who doesn't love a good reason to celebrate L.O.V.E.?

I love holidays and especially a good holiday to remind your amazing hubby how much you LOVE and appreciate him!! I offered to make a romantic dinner at home this year, and Ryan replied, "Sure, we can do that, but we'd have to cancel the reservations I made" ... SO THOUGHTFUL! Thanks, babe.

I was also surprised when I was told to go downstairs and "check the mail" at 1pm. To my surprise, Ryan had sent 36 gorgeous long-stem red roses to my home office!! Again, so sweet and thoughtful this year.

I wanted to do something sweet for Ry so I pulled off this:

Yes, the heart shaped balloons are from me! It was so fun to make the most of the holiday. Dinner was delicious and oh so romantic next to the fireplace at the restaurant, and strawberries and sparkling cider made the perfect ending to the night.

xoxo.