8 Days till the move...Yikes!

Ok, so I'm almost done packing....well, not really! I have most everything that's going into storage packed and ready to move tomorrow, then I just have everything else to pack. I'm already looking forward to unpacking!!!


I thought I'd do a little series of posts about some differences between McKinney and Evanston.

1st difference: Weather

In McKinney the forecast for the next 10 days is sunny with highs in the 90's.


In Evanston the forecast is sunny/overcast with the highest high for the next 10 days set at 74. Which means that some of those days the high is in the 60's and lows in the 50s. Seriously? It's June folks!


Don't get me wrong, the weather will be great to keep me running all summer, however I'm pretty sure I'm not running in the winter in Chicago. I've never done a gym membership before so I might break that and get one if I want to keep running through the winter.

I also need to find my jackets that have been put away since April because I think I'll need them at night there!

Little difference #2 Tom Thumb

Tom Thumb in Texas=Grocery Store
Tom Thumb in Evanston=Craft Store

Things I'm looking forward to:

-Due to the fact that we'll be in an apartment, there will be no lawn mowing/edging/weed whacking for the next year! Woo hoo!

-Christian not having to commute 1 hour each direction to work. Our apartment is 2 blocks to campus and 1/2 mile from the building all his classes are at so his commute should be 10-15 minutes in each direction, walking.

-Eating more/learning how to make delicious thick crust pizza!

-All hardwood floors in the apartment. Cats and carpet don't mix!

-Checking out Trader Joe's. I've heard that they have awesome and unique food at their little grocery chain and am excited to see what it has to offer.

I'll post some more later!

16 days until the big M Day

That's "M" for moving day. Have I packed? I'll be honest, not really! I have gotten rid of everything that's not coming with us and had a semi-successful garage sale last weekend. Now all that's left is the stuff that's moving to our storage unit next week, and then all the stuff that's moving with us the week after that.

We had a good trip to Evanston a month ago. It was really cold and windy! (Yes I know Chicago is the windy city!) When we landed it really didn't even look like spring and I must admit it was a little disappointing. The tulips were JUST coming up and there were NO leaves on any of the trees yet. Not even little leaf buds... while in Texas we have full grown leaves! Sigh...

Picture of flowers just coming up. They sure were pretty!

Soon to be MBA student in front of Lake Michigan.

We were there for about 5 days but most of the time was spent at Christian's new student orientation. That was like 2 1/2 days, then Sunday which we spent going to our soon to be new ward and relaxing. Monday we found a place to live.

It's called Castle Apartments and was built in the 1920's. Let's just say it has lots of vintage character! It had better for the $1300 a month price tag! Good news is that it has all wood floors and an updated kitchen including a dishwasher. Unfortunately the laundry room is down 3 floors and there's no elevator in this building. Looks like it will be fun moving in! It is only about 2 blocks to campus and 1/2 mile from the building that Christian's classes will be in!

View Larger Map
(I'm also still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is no parking lot, only street parking, and parallel parking at that. I can't parallel park so this should get interesting really quick!)

Tuesday we did a little shopping and sightseeing before catching our flight back to Dallas.

Here's the Sears Tower. We went up on the observation deck 1353 feet up in the air.

View of Downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan. (The black building is the Hancock Tower.)

View of sculpture from the Sears Tower.

View of the same sculpture at street level. It looks like a little insect from way up high!

Did a little shopping along the magnificent mile. (Found this massive chocolate bar at the Hershey Store. I didn't buy it because as much as I love chocolate I don't know what I would do with a 5lb. bar of it!) Mostly we were just trying to stay inside as much as possible because it was 40 degrees and windy and all I had was a short sleeve shirt on underneath my jacket. Brrr!!

This is my favorite picture of a display outside Macy's for the Kitchen-Aid Stand mixer. I love the color striped background!

We had some awesome deep dish pizza from Lou Malnati's Pizza. I can't wait to go back for more! I'll have to try to make my own too, it can't be that hard, right?

In other news, the house was listed for sale right after we got back, we had two showings the same day, and the next day received and accepted an offer, so we close on the house a week after we move. Perfect timing!

Live from Chicago!

Ok, so I blame Facebook for my lack of personal blogging. It's so much easier to announce something on Facebook than having to create a post...but in light of recent events I decided that I'll be updating it a little more! Mostly as I come to grips with the fact that we are moving... Yep, you heard that right!

Christian will soon be a MBA student at the Kellogg school at Northwestern University just north of Chicago! I'm SO excited for him! And even more excited that's it's only 1 year. I think I can manage lots of snow for 1 year! We'll be going out to visit next weekend to find housing and get acquainted with the area! It's been about 12 years since I've last been to Chicago so I really don't remember too much. Here's the campus in the fall:

Isn't it gorgeous! I am excited to have a clear and distinctive fall, but I'm not sure what to do when the summer high temperature is in the high 70's to low 80's. I suppose running throughout the summer won't be an issue...but there is NO way I'm running in the winter! So stay tuned and you can discover Chicago with me!

Erin

P.S. Leave me a comment if you still read my blog...I really don't even know if anyone checks it. (I wouldn't, since it hasn't been updated since January...oops!)

Why it really is a Lean lunch...

Looks innocent enough? Not really. This mean little lunch had me running to the bathroom within the hour, and didn't stop for almost 24 hours. So it's only Lean because I lost a few pounds getting food poisoning from it! Yuck! (It's a good thing I only ate about 2/3 of it!)

Check this out

I decided to type LDS into the Etsy search to see what types of LDS related crafts I could find. I found many more than I thought would come up. So here are some of my favorite stores:

Real Hero Posters- Really neat illustrations!

Persimmon and Pink- Great modern graphics!

Apricot Tree Accessories - Great modern CTR and YW's necklaces

I know, not much of a post...but we're pretty boring right now! :)

You know it's bad when you forget the password...

Yep, I forgot the password to this blog because it's been so long since the last post. How bad is that?!? So to recap:


November:
-Ran the Turkey Trot in Dallas. 8 miles in about 1 hour 21 minutes, which is about 10 minute miles.

This is where I DIDN'T line up! I think I would have died if I ran that fast!

-Celebrated Thanksgiving with our friends the Brasfields. Once again they didn't disappoint with the most delicious turkey, gravy, stuffing, and everything. I'm usually a canned pumpkin fan...I know, I know. However I'll have to get the recipe from Celia because her made from scratch pumpkin pie was delicious! And I'm a changed woman!

December:

-Got a bad case of flu and strep, all at once! YUCK! (And as I type this I'm fighting off a sinus infection. If only the weather would not jump from 19 degrees to 70 degrees it would be fine!)

-Friends took me and my friend out to Sprinkles for the most delicious Chocolate Peppermint cupcake ever to celebrate our birthdays. Thanks guys!

(Ate cupcake too fast to take picture. Sorry!)

-Celebrated Christian's birthday. It was the big 3-0 but we didn't mention it...and he only got one candle on his cake.
I made this big banner for him. It says:

Yadhtrib Yppah!!!!
Christian asked if it was Hebrew....nope, you can laugh now! It's Happy Birthday except it's backwards! I set the alarm for about 3 o'clock in the morning to wake up and decorate for his Birthday to surprise him. I blew up balloons, hung up crepe paper, and made a banner. I was a little tired!
Try printing out a banner, then fighting off the cats who just wanted to walk away with the string that you're attaching the letters to. I stapled every letter to the string so the spacing would stay put....as soon as I finished I realized that I had laid it out backwards. I was too tired by this time to fix it and I figured Christian would get more of a kick out of it anyway if it was like this....so now you get a laugh too!

He had yummy banana crepes with cinnamon cream sauce for his Birthday breakfast! First time I've made crepes since French class in high school and they turned out really well!


-Went to the ICE exhibit at the Gaylord Texan. VERY cold...like 9 degrees F cold. But very fun! Here are some of our favorite ice sculptures:
This is before we went into the exhibit. Notice the penguin hat of mine Christian is wearing... His name is Mr. Tuxedo. I wear him for fun sometimes!
High five the penguin. He doesn't look too happy!
Ice ornaments. These things were huge. About twice my height!
This extremely large ice cupcake looks delicious!
Huge "gingerbread" ice house. That's Christian in the window to the right.
Me getting stuck in the ice slide. Not enough momentum I guess.
Christian NOT getting stuck in the ice slide.
Ice covered branch walkway....This was soooo pretty!
And our favorite, a life size nativity completely out of ice!
I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

Hopefully I'll post more soon, now that I know the password....and my only other excuse was that I hated resizing all the photos to post them. But I learned all about actions in Photoshop and now all my resizing is automated, so I have no excuse now!

Erin

Cake Wrecks

Ok, I know I've mentioned this website before...Cake Wrecks, but in case you don't check it often, they had a great post here today. So go check it out!