Chicago in a Nutshell

One of my favorite things about my husband being in the military is that he gets a lot of three day weekends. Now that we're located near so many places, it's easy to just hop in the car and head somewhere for those weekends!

And for Columbus Day Weekend, we went to Chicago. It was especially nice because we were able to stay at a friend's apartment, which saved us money AND allowed us to catch up with her!

We rode on a lot of public transportation...

We went to the top of the Willis Tower, which we both still call the Sears Tower...

We ate the best pizza on Earth...

We saw a piece of the moon...

We also saw some really cool sailboats...

And got a great panoramic shot of downtown Chicago past Lake Michigan...

We played around at Millennium Park...

And had dinner in China Town...

We rode the ferris wheel at the Navy Pier...

And my handsome husband got his pre-college dog back! Yep, the real reason we went to Chicago... but more on that coming in a separate post soon! ;-)

We went to the best candy store EVER in Indiana... and bought way too much sugar.

And ended the weekend with this sweet gummi bear keychain!

• Do you normally "get away" for three day weekends?
• What's your favorite driving destination?

We're Baaaaack!

Okay, so we've actually been back for a few weeks, but since we weren't planning on being back, I decided to continue my break from blogging... just because everything has been so overwhelming that I haven't had any time!

Let me catch you up.

Since my last post with our wedding recap, we have:

• driven from Colorado to Missouri to drop off one car and leave the cats with my grandma
• flown to Pennsylvania to watch a couple friends marry each other
• gone on our AMAZING month-long European honeymoon
• traveled back to the USA (Oregon) last minute to say goodbye to Dan's mom
• walked a mile and a half to In N Out Burger from the LA airport for lunch
• packed up our entire house and moved out within five days (and let me tell you that there WILL be a blog post about our first (awful) PCS experience
• driven from Colorado to Ohio, with stops overnight in Kansas, Missouri, and Indiana
• unpacked our entire new house
• flown on a private C-21 from Ohio to Maryland Space A for my birthday... just because we could
• found a church in Ohio to go to (and it only took two tries - the first one was NOT for us)

Phew! We are exhausted after this crazy summer, but my handsome husband in-processes for his graduate school program this Friday, and things will return to normalcy (or close enough) once we have structure. I can't promise any blogging in the next week or so, but I hope to make it a regular thing once again.

Thanks for bearing with me this summer as I have not posted once since the very beginning of June. Oops.

21st Century: Meeting Internet Friends

Warning: This story is going to sound super strange, but I promise it's not THAT weird.

When I was 13, I found a forum online. I started posting there, and I made several friends from all over the world. Now, I'm 26, and I still keep in touch with many of those people. It's so great having friends on several different continents! That said, I became very close friends with a girl my age named Lucy. We talked and talked. We noticed we have MANY similarities. We are "twins". The problem? She is from England. SO FAR AWAY.

When Dan found out he was heading to England for three weeks in the summer of 2012 for Air Force OPS, I instantly knew he had to meet Lucy for me. Luckily, he was able to. She showed him around London, and he even got to go out with Lucy, her boyfriend Simon, and some of their friends. I WAS SO JEALOUS.

And then she planned a visit to the USA for June of 2013. TALK ABOUT ECSTATIC! We planned for MONTHS on end, figuring out all the fun things we would do while she was here. She came with her boyfriend, Simon, and Dan took his three weeks of leave while they were in town.

We showed them all around Colorado, and then we drove to the Grand Canyon. We checked out the Hoover Dam and stayed for a few days in Las Vegas. Their trip concluded with more wonderful tourist spots in Colorado. WE HAD A BLAST. I did not want them to leave. Thankfully, they are coming back out next May for our wedding, and Dan and I will be staying with them for the last few days of our honeymoon.

It's truly WONDERFUL having such a great friend, despite the fact that she lives all the way across the ocean. Isn't technology AMAZING???

I hope you enjoyed the exorbitant amount of pictures of us posing with things. We didn't mean to take so many, and Dan and Simon were definitely not impressed. They had a wonderful time too, though, and they even got to have some guy time. They were SO SICK of taking pictures for us by the end of the trip (or maybe by the second day).