Our Most Unexpected Trip

As I'm sure you're all aware (since we saw many readers of the blog!), Mitch and I spent the weekend in Chicago instead of our intended destination of Marco Island, FL.  Originally, my parents had given us tickets to spend the weekend with them to celebrate my upcoming birthday and have the entire family together, as Winnie and Sarah live down there, and my parents, Katie and Boston were vacationing.  The plans had been made and were quickly destroyed when those damn United people decided to overbook the plane and bumped us.  Surprisingly, Mitch handled the entire situation incredibly well (although my pregnancy hormones were RAGING something terrible), and we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would not be in FL this weekend.  The airline put us up Friday night, and we went to the hotel and regrouped for the weekend, calling friends and hoping no one had plans for the long weekend.  

Because our luggage made it to Ft. Myers (of course), the only things that Mitch and I had were our the clothes on our backs and our carry-ons, which included a purse, two bags filled with magazines and books, and our beach bag.  I used my beach cover-up as pajamas, while Mitch decided that he would enjoy his swim trunks even though we weren't in Florida.

Hot.  

The next morning, we got up early, rented a car, and drove to Elk Grove to start making the rounds to see our friends.  We started with Fred and Wilma, went to breakfast, and spent the morning being entertained by Pebbles.

It was so great to see them!  We then headed south to Oswego to make a stop at Target for underwear and socks and to visit TubaLady and Rachel and spend Valentine's Day with them.  

They were so incredibly generous to let us use their laundry and shower (our luggage still hadn't showed up yet), and we had a blast lounging with them, laughing and talking.  We did a very romantic Valentine's Day dinner at Giordano's pizza, which was INCREDIBLE (it's all about the food right now).  After a competitive game of Phase 10 (Mitch won), we retired to our hotel in Oswego for the night.  (And our luggage was still nowhere to be found).

Sunday was a big day- OUR LUGGAGE ARRIVED!  It was so nice to have our stuff - clean clothes (not that we could wear any of the warm-weather stuff we had packed), my makeup and Mitch's razor.  We got ready and headed into the City to visit more of our friends.

Pooh-Bear and Piglet live in the Lakeview neighborhood, and we haven't seen them in a long time, so it was great to catch up with them.  Pooh-Bear and Mitch used to work together at Raddon years ago, and have kept in touch.  We had lunch at a delicious pub (I got fish and chips - yummy!), and watched the Illini beat Indiana.  

After spending a few hours in Chicago, we were too tired to really get out and do any shopping (I know, we're wimps), so we just went to Cin & Tom's to relax and get ready for the next meal and social time.  The four of us met Zan and The Mrs. at La Mex, my all-time favorite Mexican restaurant.  I had been craving flautas for at least a month, and they tasted SO good, once they finally made it to the table.  (Of course the waiter messed up my order and got everyone else's correct - oh well.)  It was so much fun to catch up with everyone and listen to them tell kid stories - soon we'll be able to contribute.  

This morning we went back to O'Hare to come home (and of course our flight was delayed about an hour - par for the course for the weekend), and we then spent the rest of the afternoon napping.  Unfortunately, Mitch spent the weekend with a cold, which got progressively worse as the weekend wore on.  He's feeling pretty bad today.  I'm hoping to not catch it.  

Although it certainly wasn't the relaxing weekend we were anticipating with my family (and we were SO SAD not to have seen everyone), we made the best of it and enjoyed spending so much time with our friends.  The silver lining?  United gave us two free round-trip tickets for anywhere in the continental US.  Can you say "spring break"?  Hello, warm weather in April!